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Stephen Greenblatt in Marvelous Possessions writes,
Anecdotes then are among the principal products of a culture's representational technology, mediators between the undifferentiated succession of local moments and a larger strategy toward which they can only gesture.
The definition is subtle, but here you can see a hint of Greenblatt's program of tying literary devices to the slippery thing known as “history.”
Besides being interested in Apple technology generally, I am very intrigued by the new iBooks textbook functions premiered today from the standpoint of a teacher. The idea of being able to produce a highly interactive textbook that tie in with iTunes U sounds marvelous to me. That Apple seems to be working hard to drive down the price of textbooks only makes the whole proposition sound even better.
I think the one thing that is disappointing (though I can hardly expect Apple to fix it) is that the iBooks platform remains iOS-only. To me, a truly good e-textbook platform needs to work at least on Macs and PCs in addition to tablets and phones. Being able to use the Kindle app on my Mac to quickly cite materials I have highlighted is invaluable.
Relatedly, mobile device compatibility is also an issue. While iBooks works on iOS, the Kindle book platform works on iOS, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry OS, etc. In as much as one must have an iPad to use the new iBooks functionality, it seems to me that professors could only take advantage of the technologies Apple showed off if all students received an iPad as part of their tuition package.
That's unfortunate.
George Steiner's opening line in Grammars of Creation asserts an interesting dilemma. “We have no more beginnings.” But, did we ever have more than one? While considering the loss of new “grammars” brought about by the dissolution of belief in God, Steiner essentially approaches the issue with an assumption that is only valid based on his final conclusion. If there is a true beginning, there cannot be more than one beginning in a univocal sense.
Steiner acknowledges this to some extent when he tips his hat towards mimesis, stating that “[a] rigorous understanding of mimesis (as in Plato's Republic), a strict reading of imitatio (as in certain Neo-classicists) and extreme realists knows of only 're-creation'” (23). Mimetic criticism recognizes that the artist's role is ultimately, as Prince Hamlet said, to hold a “mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” We might question precisely which nature the artist imitates, but the artist is always, by necessity, one whose expertise is seeing what is real better than others and telling of it. He or she is a Tiresias who tells the fate of the world by that which he knows.
A little Robert Frost seems apropos to me tonight.
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
The ever interesting Stanley Fish wrote awhile back on students wanting to observe their own “dialects” and “styles” instead of proper English grammar:
And if students infected with the facile egalitarianism of soft multiculturalism declare, “I have a right to my own language,” reply, “Yes, you do, and I am not here to take that language from you; I'm here to teach you another one.” (Who could object to learning a second language?) And then get on with it.
I don't always agree with Fish, but here is one place we are in perfect agreement.
Richard Paul writes in Critical Thinking:
When a mind does not systematically and effectively embody intellectual criteria and standards, is not disciplined in reasoning things through, in figuring out the logic of things, in reflectively devising a rational approach to the solution of problems or in the accomplishment of intellectual or practical tasks, that mind is not 'creative.'
An astute comment often overlooked, especially in poesy. The good poet is creative not because he vomits raw emotion onto a page and calls it “art,” but rather because he labors tirelessly on the meaning of each word until a collection of words transcend themselves and becomes something more. A poem.
This looks just too good. The real value of an e-book is finding ways to do things with a book that a normal book can't do. I think this might be such an e-book.
Personally, I longen to read this in April.
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
The Times reviews those potentially outdated “gadgets” one may be able to do away with, finishing with a well argued point about books:
Keep them (with one exception). Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries.
Well said. Too bad the Times fails to include newspapers in the list of technologies that can be increasingly replaced by superior electronic alternatives. Maybe that's because their own electronic alternative is absurdly priced.
I wrote on March 12, 2010:
With that in mind, and with full disclosure that I am an AAPL shareholder, let me suggest that I think $250/share is not an unrealistic price target within the next three to six months.
Apple closed today 345.43, down 8.13.
