I can skip straight to the dish on the Digital Genres conference, because it has already been blogged by both AKMA and David Weinberger, with photos on Kiplog…
Five cool things about Chicago:
- Streets running east-west are numbered, so in that one dimension, even I can’t get lost.
- I got to hear some of Frank Paynter‘s un-given talk on Cole Porter.
- Korean lilac in bloom smells wonderful–and because Beth Hastings knew what the plant was named, I might be able to get some myself someday.
- To get more perspective on life, I went to the Oriental Institute and hung out with people who died three thousand years ago.
- To get less perspective, I went to the Penang restaurant (2201 S. Wentworth) and drank beer and coconut milk with Alex Golub and David Weinberger.
Five cool quotes from talks:
- “Is the Talmud really written, or is it just written down?” (David Rosenberg) [The question can also be asked of most people’s weblogs.]
- “You see warnings on slash writing that might offend–for example, ‘PWP.’ That stands for ‘Porn Without Plot’, or ‘Plot? What Plot?’ ” (Holly Swyers)
- “Listing words alphabetically lets you avoid deciding what’s more important.” (Dan Headrick) [He also pointed out that search engines let you find information stored with no organizing principle.]
- “An archive is not a library. The former stores everything it produces or collects; the latter is selective.” (Theo Van Den Hout)
- “A weblog is like a Dada street performance–both the production and the consumption are interactive.” (Steve Himmer, aka OnePotMeal.)
Five cool quotes not from talks:
- “Bill Gates would be a lot less happy about how rich he is if he had to lug it all around.” (AKMA)
- “Our [Western] relationship with our physical bodies is already mediated by culture and technology much more than was possible in most other societies in history.” (Alex Golub, who lived on sweet potatoes for two years while doing his anthro fieldwork in New Guinea)
- “When you live in a virtual world, you need a really good chair.” (Alex again, this time quoting a web-obsessed friend who has a bad back)
- “What’s the difference between high church and low church? My faith is so low-church that we eat the bread and drink the grape juice while believing that we don’t know what’s going on.” (Trevor Bechtel)
- “We can argue if you disagree with what I said. But if you say we can’t talk about our values–I don’t see how we can argue from that premise.” (David Weinberger)
Props to Alex Golub for organizing a great conference!