Digital bookshelves

In the ancient times, only the rich owned books. Usually the bookshelf consisted of one, sometimes a few precious grimoires.

Then came Gutenberg. And knowledge (and doubt) became more accessible.
Today the Gutenberg galaxy appears more and more to loose its touch with the digital era. As a graphic designer, I'm trained into getting things published on paper. Now I'm learning to become a webmaster and it's an entirely other trade. Some say the printed book has no future. Others - mainly a renaissance man like Umberto Eco- seem quite sure of the contrary. Eco even questions - a relevant question IMHO - whether the internet will still exist say 20 years from now on. And it's likely no, the internet won't exist - not like we know it today.
The jumping Jesus phenomenon as described by Robert Anton Wilson is now reaching a level where not only knowledge grows exponentially in all the domains of science and high-brow technology, but the tech gear is here in our house, quickly filling up layer after layers, and now the information technology is shapeshifting faster and faster.
I started studying social media for my job and quickly came to the conclusion that I simply cannot keep up with the evolution. The blogs and forums of the past quickly surrendered to Facebook, torrent and Twitter, there are thousands of ways to cook up a decent RSS, and now it's the era of Google Wave and Hexagon. The internet is constantly mutating.
And yet, people keep reading books.
Tomorrow digital ink will combine the texture of paper with the interactivity of the web. Provide an antenna in the cover, just link it up to web version 3,14 and there you have it, all the books in one. Write on the back with the stylus and it's a communicator. Watch movies. Record music. Whatever.

The bookshelf of the future might consist of just one book.

I just started on the new MLA course by Marc Pesce, "Share this course". A treasure map to digital media.

The crazy associations of Isidro Ferrer

The last issue of the Correspondancier du Collège de 'Pataphysique had wonderful illustrations (so-called 'culs-de-lampe') in shadowform. Done by Isidro Ferrer, member of the altissimo Instituto de Estudios Pataphysicos de La Candelaria, an extremely gifted graphic designer, typographer and sculptor. Some of his work reminds me of Jacques Carelmans 'Objets Introuvables' as Ferrer tends to associate visual elements from different semantic worlds but which seems to fit as part of a formal grammar. Some examples.


















Portfolio
Blogroll (mostly Spanish but lots of other illustrations):
Señorita Puri
Un color Especial
Tsuru
Animalarium
Equinoxio
21 grams of creation
Bertigo

Tale of the tribe

I joined my dissident friends of the Maybe Logic Academy in a new forum, courtesy of Bobby Campbell .
It's called Tale of the tribe and it feels just like the MLA used to 4 years ago when I first joined. I probably will refrain from posting here in a while as I'm trying out the blog module over there. And, well, the interface seems better than Blogger's.
PS I just started courses to make me a webmaster for the end of the year, and hopefully and expert for the end of April. So maybe Drupal (and its better siblings, ModX and ExpressionEngine) will offer me even newer tools for blogging. I especially put a lot of expectancy in Google Wave which should appear at the end of September.
PS2 This is my 23rd post this year… of course.

l'Ymagier du père borsky

Pound, Fuller, Korzybski… and Fenollosa

I read the French translation of Pound's interpretation of Fenolosa's text, "Le charactère écrit Chinois, matériau poétique"

Here's a brief and biased summary:
At first Fenollosa examines the absence of a true grammar (which he defines as the differenciation in a language of verbs, substantives etc.) in Chinese. He claims that basically, all words are born in verbs; more, he claims that in Sanscrit all words were verbs!
For example, the English statement "he who reads learns how to write"becomes in Chinese "Reading provokes writing". Here I see a connection with Buckminster Fuller's famous statement "I seem to be a verb".
Secondly F. feels the Chinese poetry to be closer to reality than ours, as it states actions, no abstract qualities. In fact according to him most verbs in Chinese are transitive and thus appear somehow a modulation of the verb 'to have' as opposed to the verb 'to be'. It seems that great British poetry, like Shakespeare's, seldom use the verb 'to be' (with the exception of the obvious Hamlet soliloquoy) , prefer transitive verbs, and as such appears closer to reality. F. claims the use of 'to be' brings forth abstraction in a language and should be kept to a minimum. Here of course there's an obvious connection with Kellog's (hence Korzybski in the title) e-prime, and maybe c-prime has a tautologic quality.
"The study of Shakespearian verbs should be at the base of every style exercize" - E. Fenolllosa

Hoo Fhasa

I was flyering in the neighborhood
about a week after that my cat had disappeared, thinking there was little point but what the heck
after half an hour went looking for a place to hang a flyer where there was no chance he could show up
and almost pasted a flyer on him jumping from a windowsill.

Excelsior
(I had to lie down on the pavement for a few minutes before he trusted me enough to jump in my arms)

No idea whatsoever if there is a god (and frankly I never cared)
but I thank him. Today life is really, really good.