I like books. I like the feel of paper and, like many, I am in the habit of writing in margins. But I also hate moving boxes of the things every time I move. Reading onscreen can be tiresome, and not always practical. I can’t bring my pdfs into the woods with me on a camping trip. Also, reading onscreen sometimes hurts my eyes. On the other hand, I can’t search my paper books for key terms. I would love to see a device like the Kindle that allows me to write on it and save my notes.

I think Michigan is making a wise choice, publishing electronically but giving the option to print-on-demand if you want an actual book. One thing I worry about is the idea of licensing books to libraries, etc. When a library buys a book, it gets to keep it, but what if the license expires on an e-copy, or the publisher wants to change the terms radically? All the books from that press just disappear for all intents and purposes. I also worry about losing access to individual books if I lose affiliation with my university library. In the end it comes down to the price scheme for the individual user, both for e-books and for print-on-demand. What do you think?

You can still enjoy a book without explicitly concentrating on where the narrative will take you two chapters out, but in gameworlds you need that long-term planning as much as you need present-tense focus.

He doesn’t prefer one to the other, but stresses that they work different abilities. His analysis here is convincing and nuanced, drawing many parallels not only between video games and novels, but also between different types of writing and how they affect cognition.

He also talks about television, much of which was excerpted in that NY Times article, and which I have alraedy addressed. One of the things he does here, though, is to compare reality tv to video games in that in both the rules are not known at the outset, and challenge the viewer to figure them out as they go. His argument that television is more complex and relies less on “flashing arrows” — signs that tell the viewer that something is significant — and plunges the viewer into arcane language and multithreaded chaos parallels the fact that, in video games, the player often does not know what the rules are in the beginning, but must figure them out, even as they change.

Reality television provides the iltimate testimony to the cultural dominance of games in this moment of pop culture history. Early television took its cues from the stage…In the Nintendo age, we expect our televised entertainment to take a new form: a series of competitive tests, growing more challenging over time. (92)

The other factor that reality tv activates is social networks in the form of websites and fora, but also in the sense of viewers actively participating in figuring out complex social interactions based on subtle cues, which activates different abilities than traditional tv.

He writes also about film, citing a few examples, contrasting Star Wars with Lord of the Rings in terms of complexity, and rightly points out that television shows have much more times, in the tens to hundreds of hours, to flesh out relationships, while movies have a few hours. LOTR, he points out, is ten hours long uncut, so can allow a little more complexity.

So far, I am still unconvinced of the causal effect between more complex viewing and more complex thinking, but he hasn’t really gotten to that part yet. While Part I sets up the complexity of new media, an argument I do agree with, Part II sets up the causal-cognitive evidence. I look forward to reading that, and when I am finished, I will report back.

One of the most chilling aspects of the novel is the indeadted, who are people who died while in debt, and are reanimated to do mundane tasks like scavenge for discarded recyclable materials until they pay off the debt, which never happens due to high interest rates. Even death does not allow escape from debt, and everyone seems to be in debt.

The main character, McNihil (it took me half the novel to get the name) has implants in his eyes that make everything look like a film noir. The “cube bunny,” or low-class sex-worker that comes to his apartment looks like Ida Lupino to him, and it is always night. True to form, he is a tragic antihero, looking out only for himself, and self-sabotaging on the way. It is interesting that the future for McNihil, and for Jeter, so resembles film noir, a dark fantasy of sex and betrayal, where no one is pure and everyone is the agent, object or both of lethal deception. People here have use-value so long as they can help someone else profit. Even the church is a online, for-profit enterprise.

Amidst the many science fiction film updates of film noir, spanning from Bladerunner through Dark City and Strange Days to Minority Report and even Sin City, Jeter self-relfexively updates the pulp detective novel with all the visual trappings of the film genre, positing the techno-global-capitalist future as the ultimate film noir. And it is connecting scary.

I was in a Printing-house in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave’s mouth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave.

In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock and the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver, and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air: he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite. Around were numbers of Eagle-like men who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire, raging around and melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were Unnamed forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.

There they were received by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books and were arranged in libraries.

The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life and the sources of all activity; but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds which have power to resist energy. According to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.

Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring. To the Devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.

But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer, as a sea, received the existence of his delights.

Some will say: `Is not God alone the Prolific?’ I answer: `God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men.’

These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies: whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.

Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.

Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite, but to separate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! And He says: `I came not to send Peace, but a Sword.’

Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies.

For more, check out the Blake Archive.