This evening at midnight Motherboard.TV is hosting a party in conjunction with the BLIP festival in Williamsburg. It’s at Babycastles, this crazy arcade full of one-of-a-kind video games-cum-art projects.
OBSOLETE (aka me aka Anna Jane) will be hosting two typing games at the event: a two player game (“The Typewriter Skillz Speed Challenge”) and something I’m calling “Twitter on a Typewriter.”
Hope you can make it! I’m actually looking for an extra electric typewriter that someone can lend and transport to the event (at 285 Kent Ave near the Bedford L). Must be in good working order. I will guard it with my life. And give you a free copy of Obsolete for your trouble.
3
A review of an obsolete book…
You know what’s fun about obsolescence as a meme? I can write about anything old and I don’t need to peg it to something going on now. It’s anti-news! This is a really good excuse to not feel guilty about not reading today’s paper. You know?
Here is I piece I just did for Vice Magazine’s Motherboard.tv
Some people sleep walk. Some sleep talk. I sleep shop. Specifically, I buy for books on Amazon.
As for as vices go, this is a pretty fun one. I’m always getting these surprise packages in the mail! Fortunately, I’m usually quite frugal in my somnolence—my sleeping self only buys books that are under $10 (including shipping). What’s more, she has interesting taste. The other day, for instance, she ordered The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos.
This tome, by Michael Hyatt, is a work of nonfiction. I say this as you should not confuse it with Hyatt’s novel published the same year, Y2K: The Day the World Shut Down. Millennium Bug is a thoughtful look at how we got into this whole Y2K mess and how we are going do to survive it. Because your safety is important to me, I’ve created this digest version of the book. I’ve jumped around page-wise, but I’ve tried to not take anything out of context. Okay? Okay. Here we go.
(To read the rest of the review, click here)
(PS: Some post-sleep-shopping Googling makes me think I initially found the book at Paleofuture—a super-wonderful-lovely site all about past ideas of what the future would be like.)
I am not ready to toss aside my books for all those familiar, vaguely arbitrary yet highly emotional reasons: for the feel, the smell, the covers, the page-turning pleasure. In a world where e-readers replace books I will also miss… knowing what subway readers are into. How else will we be able to make snap judgments about strangers? We’ll be forced to ask them what they are reading. We’ll be forced to engage.
M. Blake Montandon, On Late Adopting, Nooks & Me via Motherboard
