Posts Tagged ‘books’

In this talk given at the Columbia University Journalism School. Steven Johnson argues that the future of digital texts could go in two divergent directions. They could be confined in iPad-like “locked glass boxes” that cannot be shared or remixed. Or they could remain fungible and shareable in open formats that resemble the commonplace books from centuries past, personally curated collections of aphorisms and quotations.

I was asked to speak on a panel last week that discussed the practitioner’s perspective on providing accessible educational technologies for learning with disabilities. I wasn’t sure how to translate my experience into the role of “practitioner” – I’m not a special ed teacher or rehab counselor – then I remembered an essay I wrote 15 years ago that explained how my disability is my practice. There wasn’t enough time on the panel to explain this idea in detail, so I’ve revised the essay and posted it in the Fair Use Lab. Disability as Praxis draws on Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire’s influential 1973 book on literacy and liberation, to understand how the adaptations made and accommodations negotiated by people with disabilities represent a significant form of creative work and cultural production. The essay remains one of my clearest statements of what I know and believe about living with a disability.

I see red whenever I run into the pompous assertion that reading by listening to a book read aloud is not really reading. Then I ask (loudly, of course, to anyone who will listen), how did I read Ulysses (three times in as many decades) and Finnegans Wake (not quite once, completely)? How did I read À la recherche du temps perdu, Gravity’s Rainbow, and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? Was I deluding myself, or merely faking it?

I received a request recently from David Shields asking to clear copyright to quote from one of my early essays on literacy and disability. He plans to quote one sentence about list-making and the advent of literacy in his forthcoming book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.  The sentence is actually a summary statement of ideas in [...]

Bless you, Chris Anderson! In 35 years of reading by listening to talking books, this version of Free is the fastest access I’ve ever had to a newly published book. You have set the gold
standard for audio book accessibility.
Available formats: Buy the print edition of Free: The Future of a Radical Price. See the free [...]