heartening statistic

In a discussion of the importance of public libraries in countering the effects of the commercialisation and technical lock-down of intellectual property, Siva Vaidhyanathan's 2004 book The Anarchist in the Library (which I keep misreading as the Antichrist in the Library - probably the same difference for some folk) states that, at that time anyway, "there are more libraries than McDonald's restaurants [sic] in the United States" (p.123) - best news I've come across for quite some time.

Further down the same page he says "Libraries are leaks in the information economy. As a state funded institution that enables efficient distribution of texts and information to people who can't afford to get it commercially, the library pokes holes in the commercial information system." lovely stuff!

toolbox

I can see how other experiences, technologies, and websites feed into this: creating and maintaining a website for work has eliminated a lot of the anxiety about my potential to blow up the whole network - as well as being quite proud-making.

And if you watch IT specialists, even they will often have quite a lot of goes at something before they get it right - there are many many paths to the same goal! Usually if you keep fiddling about you get there in the end.

Also, I'm starting an online course - Copyright and Academic Culture, with Siva Vaidhyanathan at the University of Maryland - using a delivery system called WebTycho and a server called Nighthawk. The names alone are seductive! Anyway, there's a training course in the use of Nighthawk before one even gets to the classes, so that's going to add to the tools.

Chatting to one friend in particular (similar age, similar luddite tendencies - as well as ludic) about the ways in which we learn: particularly with digital stuff - both are now quite competent at a surprising number of techniques, but that's because we both learn to use a particular skill when we can see its use as a means to an end, rather than simply as a skill to acquire in isolation from a purpose.

Haven't quite got to a goal for this project yet - other than the enjoyment I get from increasing my capabilities in pretty much any direction. Enough for now.

day 2

Creating this wasn't too bad - although getting used to firefox's layout was an added complication - and I did get stuck with 'accounting' as my industry for ages when I couldn't find the precisely right place to alter it - and I did manage to disappear the progress chart wikithing at one point when I went in to note that I had completed the task... thank goodness for ctrl z!

However, by this morning I had forgotten (if I ever knew) where to go to open up the blog to add a new post - and finally worked out that it's almost too simple: via gmail.

my first post

"hello world"