January 22, 2016
The War to Preserve Everything
I’m interested in all the different ways we use the word, the concept, the illusion of preservation, from food to corpses, from digital data to taxidermy, from photographs to endangered […]
October 11, 2013
Skyscrapers of Light
In 1938, Westinghouse buried a time capsule in a section of Queens described as a “valley of ashes” in The Great Gatsby. The time capsule was supposed to contain a […]
August 20, 2013
Café of the Future
The Long Now Foundation is hiring volunteers to curate their “Manual for Civilization,” a collection of 3500 volumes to be shelved in the Long Now Salon. Founded in “01996,” Long […]
July 31, 2013
Life is Like a Comic Book
I was raised on comic books. I never read them, but I did flip through them, since my dad gave me one of those long white boxes full of them. […]
July 31, 2013
Digital Artifacts
The books and films of the world are going digital. As we digitize, whether in the name of preservation or access (usually it’s both), we make new texts and images. […]
July 15, 2013
Confessions of a Book Killer
Last Wednesday, I killed a book. I doubt anyone will miss it–Microphotography for Libraries: Papers presented to the Microphotography Symposium at the 1936 Conference of the American Library Association. Bound […]