Mur – Mauer – Wall

Racontée et redite, l’histoire du Mur -celui de Berlin en particulier- invite à sélectionner les meilleures vues :

- Le reportage-dessins de Patrick Chappatte.
- Le livre-articles de Cees Nooteboom, Une année allemande : Chroniques berlinoises 1989-1990 publié en français chez Actes Sud (titre original : Berlijnse notities).
- Le dossier sur les murs dans Books(Mag) d’août dernier.
- Schlagwort “Berliner Mauer” in Der Zeit.
- Le webdocumentaire du Monde.

Etc. car la curiosité est assez passe-muraille.

Timed monography about the Internet

At last !

Thanks to the excellent EH.net portal (Economical History, it means), here is a review of a book about the history of the internet : Paul E. Ceruzzi, Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945 to 2005. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

How is technology “rooted in place” ? How do “defense spending, land use policies, highway construction and suburbanization” intertwine ? Read further : “Ceruzzi does a remarkable job exploring the intersection between defense spending, land use policies, highway construction and suburbanization. He ends with a futuristic glance. Edge cities like Tysons Corner today are challenged by larger demographic trends, as transportation systems feel the strain. As people drive through Tysons Corner, they likely don’t see the enigmatic buildings around them, prompting questions about how technology is rooted in place — but only see the bumper in front of them. (…)“.

& :
- Innovation and the Growth of High Tech (another EH.net review) | Economic History resources (EH.net unfolded).
- Eco on WebOL.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Le lyrisme est une chose, la compréhension critique une autre en général.

- Les articles-recensions-discussions portant sur CLS, par La Vie des Idées : Lévi-Strauss en mode mineur, Les cosmogonies de Lévi-Strauss, etc.
- Le mythe CLS, par Book(mag) qui offre lui aussi une rafale d’articles, de discussions pour se rappeler que toutes les idées se discutent, se cisèlent et qu’aucune d’entre elles n’est au-delà du débat.
- Le dossier CLS de Sciences Humaines, intégralement -temporairement ?- disponible en ligne.

Etc.

Sharp words

The London Review of Books is now 30 years of age ; a good article in FT Week-end by John Sutherland tells the story of this marsupially child of the New York Review of Books.

Good reviewing, excellent writing, witty criticism are vital friends of sharp minds.

& :
- Books, which is very excellent in french as the title does not show. Les derniers nés peuvent être brillants ; à dévorer chaque mois pour les articles qui sont parfois des traductions d’articles des sources citées ici, ou des brèves particulièrement informées de la planète Livres.
- La Vie des Idées, one of the best in french only online. L’intelligence n’attend pas le nombre des années ; rien de littérature mais tout de l’esprit critique dans les sciences sociales.
- Esprit, the ancestor from France’s 1930s and still valid. L’âge n’entame pas l’intelligence, même si l’impression pointe parfois d’une quête éditoriale incertaine.
- Le Matricule des Anges, from France and for contemporary litterature only.
- Pierre Assouline, librairie aiguisée à lui seul.
- The New Yorker, high brow from 1925 onwards & Granta, resuscitated 30 years ago.
- Intelligent Life, if only for a short but very sharp article on Lydia Davis (@LitteraturOL).
- (…).

& :
- Pour le lectorat francophone, là où il est question de la vie des idées chez WebOL.

MusicEverybody

Imaginons pouvoir écouter de la musique en ligne (en streaming), pouvoir la télécharger au format souhaité et avec la qualité requise (mieux donc que du MP3 courant) et avoir le droit de profiter d’un vrai choix.

Il est d’autres boutiques plus fournies, et plus agréables et faciles de consultation (plus ergonomique, dit-on) comme celle frappée de la Pomme mais MusicMe.com vaut la découverte ; citons :
- “Fichiers 100% compatibles” : PC, Mac, iPod, iPhone, baladeurs MP3, clés USB, téléphones, autoradios, etc.
- “Format et qualité” : MP3 (de plusieurs qualités), AAC, Lossless (sans compression), etc.
- “Gravez en toute liberté” : fichiers copiés sur CD sans contrainte et sans limite.

Le rêve, peut-être ? Passionnant à étudier de second degré que ce rêve : économie de la chose, diversité du support, qu’est-ce-que la qualité, nouvelles pratiques mélomaniaques, etc. Mais cette mélomanie y trouverait bien son compte gageons-le, un rêve qu’il semblerait : comment comparer des interprétations différentes…

(Merci à GO).

Markets’ broader scope

Oliver Williamson is renowned for his transaction cost economics, in the wake of Robert Coase and Herbert Simon. Elinor Ostrom works at the crossroads of economics and political science. Their works just honoured by the Nobel Prize go far beyond the superficial criticism of markets.

Few tips :
- FT’s editorial for the clearest short presentation | Nobel prize’s rationales | NYTimes’s article | Econoclaste’s post (in french).
- Econoclaste’s Introduction to “Economie de l’entreprise“  (in french too) | EcOL’s The other hand of Adam Smith.
- OW’s page (Berkeley Univ., US) | EO’s page (Indiana Univ., US).
- (…)

How much free is free

Chris Anderson is renowned for his best-seller The Long Tail (his own blog nicknamed alike too). Editor of Wired, his new opus deals with gratuity, free economy, abundance and scarcity : one article (February 2009), another one (June 2009). His book can be read for free but only when one browses it in the USA.

Any articulate idea deserves discussion. Malcolm Gladwell published a very good and critical paper in the New Yorker (July 2009). For french readers, here are Rue89’s comments, quoting Les Inrocks’s ones.

Digital Art Memory

Bilingual magazine in français+english, ArtPress published a special issue on Media Arts, Conservation and Restoration (Arts technologiques, Conservation et Restauration) few months ago.

As Catherine Millet wrote, “It will be seen (…) that some of the problems involved in conserving media art are not so different from the difficulties arising with installations and other works involving ready-made objects. It will also become clear that technology-based arts are in fact continuing the reflection on the definition of art begun by Conceptual Art. For to address practical questions of maintenance is also to reflect on the status of the artwork in the age of its dissociation from its material support.“

Worthy bundle of links from the magazine :

- Archiving the Avant-Garde (Univ. Berkeley, US).
- CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval, EU).
- DOCAM (Documentation and Conservation des Arts Médiatiques / Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage, CA).
- Inside Installations (EU) – Project from 2004 to 2007.
- Matters in Media Art – From Tate Modern (London), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (US), the MOMA (NYC, US), the New Trust.
- Variable Media Network – From the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (US) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation (CA).

& :

- V2_Capturing Unstable Media (NL) – Project in 2003.
- Ars Electronica Archive.
- EAI Online Resource Guide for Exhibing, Collecting & Preserving Media Art.
- New Media Encyclopedia.
- Daniel Langlois Foundation (CA).
- Media Art Net (DE).

&& @WebOL :

- IT Art.
- Art video.

Codex Sinaiticus

Point d’emphase indue, le manuscrit ne présente rien moins que la plus ancienne version intégrale connue du Nouveau Testament. Cette bible incomplète, datant du IVe siècle conservée au Monastère Sainte Catherine dans le Sinaï au bénéfice d’un air si sec, fut numérisée puis mise en ligne, que voici avec toute la simplicité d’un clic.

Les participants du projet sont principalement  la British Library, la Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, le St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai et la National Library of Russia, St Petersburg aux côtés d’autres encore.

So what ?

“Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. In the Codex, the text of both the Septuagint and the New Testament has been heavily annotated by a series of early correctors.

The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the reconstruction of the Christian Bible’s original text, the history of the Bible and the history of Western book-making is immense.

(…)“

“European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research”

European-Cooperation-in-the-Field-of-Scientific-and-Technical-Research, or COST,  is a truly trans-disciplinary forum. Last illustration to date, The Good, the Bad and the Challenging was the striking title of the meeting held in Copenhagen few weeks ago :

- The programme, which is mind-watering : “Users as innovators“, “Humans as eActors“, “The multiple cultures of the Information Society“,  “The future in young and old hands: towards an inclusive broadband society“, “Participation and Representation in the Design process: A Broad User Spectrum (COST Action 294 MAUSE)“,  “ICTs and Asian Countries“, “Sonic Interaction Design (COST Action IC0601)“, “Telecommunications Economics (COST Action IS0605)“, “ICTs and generations“, “Cyberbullying – coping with negative and enhancing positive uses of new technologies, in relationships in educational settings (COST Action IS0801)“.
- The other most important point is that the proceedings are online : sorted out by sessions, sorted out by authors.

Furthermore, the Program #298 of COST is the following :

“The COST 298 Action ‘Participation in the Broadband Society’ is the successor to COST Actions 269 and 248, and hence has a track record covering 15 years. The conference is a follow up to the conferences The Good, the Bad and the Irrelevant held in Helsinki in 2003 and The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected held in Moscow in 2007.

COST 298 is an Action in the domain ‘Information and Communication Technologies’ of COST, an intergovernmental framework for European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research. In COST 298 European scientists from telecommunication research departments, universities and operators together with independent consultants collaborate in cross-disciplinary groups to analyse the social dimensions of people’s relationships to information and communication technologies. The Actions have produced a range of articles reports such as Communications on the Move: The Experience of mobile Telephony in the 1990s (1997) and the books Everyday Innovators, Researching the Role of Users in Shaping ICTs (2005) and The Social Dynamics of Information and Communication Technology (2008) based on previous conferences.“