Digital Bibliography

Trouble sleeping lately, so I’ve been taking to reading before I go to bed. A novel. To take my mind out of the scholarship, historical, analytical mindset in which I’ve been immersing myself these dissertating days. Cory Doctorow’s new novel: Makers. (You can download a free copy here.) So far, it’s about what I’ll call “tinkerers”. Maybe I’ll go into tinkerers later, but for now, it’ll suffice to say that it’s about people who like junk, who like to figure out how stuff works, how to take stuff apart and put different pieces of different machines together to make a sort of hybrid machines. Oh, and they’re cool. Like iPods, tight t-shirts, fixies, messenger bags, and Lady Gaga cool. Commodified, definitely. Commercial, optional. Junk. Gadgets. Soldering irons. Circuit boards. Geek chic.

I’m about 50 pages into the novel. The story is dull. Sort of a ghost-of-Ayn-Rand-in-the-machine sort of thing. Compelling ideas, though. Lots of exposition. (An journalist interviewing a pair of tinkerers.) But it’s a blast to read. Read the rest of this entry »