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Thursday, December 16, 2010

A Note on the Marginalia

Via Alissa Wilkinson check out A Year in Marginalia: Sam Anderson. This site offers a snapshot view of the books Mr. Anderson has read this path year with his marginalia included. Since marginalia inhabits its own curious niche of book history this is a really enjoyable post except for the fact that this post is actually what deeply frightens me about any sort of extensive marginalia because in some moments where I think I really do need to write something profound/meaningful in the margins of a really good paragraph/sentence/thought only to find myself thinking "If anyone ever opens up this text and reads it, what are they going to think of my written thought?" which is a fairly crippling thing and keeps my pages cleaner than they really should be as an active marginaliast quote unquote should have a certain amount of disregard for the perceived sacredness of the printed page which presents a sort of double bind where the individual most likely to output really good marginalia is a book person who tends towards possessing an incredible amount of respect for the whole idea of the book in the first place.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Two really good sources on Wikileaks and its implications

1) Twelve Theses on Wikileaks
Good summing up of some of the issues, both positive and negative, that are and might possibly be generated by the WikiLeaks. One of the more humorous parts of the article is the reference to Cablegate which is a nice term and sums up the whole mess nicely.
Lovink and Riemens together have valuable insight into how Assange/WikiLeaks is "...using IT to leave IT behind..." and some of the issues contained therein. What is interesting is that several of the observations made here about the way WikiLeaks has taken advantage of a networked world mirror closely those made by Galloway and Thwacker in their book The Exploit: A Theory of Networks.

2) From Jonathan Zittrain a FAQ about WikiLeaks is also a really excellent summation from a historical timeline perspective. What is particularly nice about this article is that it discusses how the four major news organs (The Guardian, Le Monde,and El Pais. The Guardian shared their cables with NYT.) got the cables, how many were received and a brief discussion of the implications of getting those cables.
The first link is a philosophical understanding of the implications of Wikileaks while the second is a historical summation and description of the ongoing process. These two links provide a good summation of the implications and history of how WikiLeaks got to capture so much media and global attention. If you don't really feel like wading through the seemingly infinite piles of media blitz and news bites, these two articles are your air-boat.