Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Daily Thoughts 03/06/2018

Poster for a December Issue of the Inland Printer Magazine - J. C. Leyendecker
Poster for December Issue of Inland Printer Magazine, 1900

Daily Thoughts 03/06/2018

I checked the library Twitter and Facebook this morning.

I read some more of Dawn of the New Everything.  I am reading about Jaron Lanier's tenure as the CEO of  VPL Research.

I also started reading Treating People Well The Extraordinary Power of Civility At Work And In Life by Lea Berman and Jeremy Bernard.

I checked the displays and the gift books.

We have started working on the oversize books.

I am meeting with Peter Sherrill to discuss the Mount Vernon Public Library Author Fair in October 2018.

We discussed marketing, raising funds, and how we might do the Mount Vernon Public Library Local Author fair differently this year.  I think we will need to do more promotion and preparation.

I finished writing my monthly report for March 2018.

I checked out Words That Work It's Not What You Say It's What People Hear by Dr. Frank Lutz.

On the way home, I finished reading Dawn of the New Everything Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier.  I did not understand portions of the book, but they were still enjoyable to read.  A good example of this was when Jaron Lanier describes phenotropic computing.  There is an amazing quality to the writer where he can describe things that do not exist yet in the real world.  For example, Jaron Lanier described virtual reality before it was in the lab. 

The references to writers like Marvin Minsky and William Gibson were interesting.  There were many citations of books and magazines to read in this book.  At one point, Jaron Lanier was an editor for Wired magazine. 

The commentary on culture and technology focused on both the future and current issues are very agreeable to me.  I think his view that technology should help people and that machines are completely the work of people is wonderful.

I even had a comment while I was reading the book on the train to work by a commuter.  They had enjoyed hearing Jaron Lanier speak at University of Washington.  I have watched his speaking in Google and the World Brain and found it compelling.

The structure of the book reads a little like a tech magazine.  There are lots of little sections with expository statements backed by footnotes.  There is an index, appendix, and illustration credits.  The footnotes are in the text.  The footnotes list quite a few books that are computer science oriented.

Web Bits


New Rochelle Library Open To Area Residents for Heat, Recharging

LJ Study: Electronic Resources  Continue Steady Gains

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