
The Book Is a Time Machine - diodorus
http://www.publicbooks.org/the-book-is-a-time-machine/
======
pmoriarty
97 writers sent letters in 1971 to celebrate the opening of the new library in
Troy, MI., including Isaac Asimov, who had this to say: _" Congratulations on
the new library, because it isn't just a library. It is a space ship that will
take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will
take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than
any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you --- and most of
all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life."_

------
greymeister
Go through 5+ year old bookmarks to find all of them dead, this will show how
permanent books seem compared to digital publications. They truly are "time
machines" for how temporal information is today.

~~~
greglindahl
That's why you should also bookmark with the Wayback Machine, not only urls.

~~~
codemac
This is why you should bookmark by copying important information into your own
knowledge database.

~~~
jolmg
Would be great if we could download a webpage and guarantee it will always
work. These days, however, I imagine lots of pages require runtime fetching of
data via javascript. The alternative is whole-page screenshots but you lose
the accessibility of the text within. I kind of miss the days when the web was
just HTML.

~~~
marci
There's also the issue of plugins compatibility.

Back in the days when the web was just Flash, it wasn't as easy as Ctrl+S to
save content you wanted to keep. In a few years, you may need to spin a VM
with an older OS to launch a flash-able browser.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#End_of_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#End_of_life))

I wonder if it's easier with java applets.

~~~
romwell
It's not much easier with Java applets since Oracle tightened applet security
(requiring everything to be signed, which the old applets aren't), and
deprecating the plugin altogether.

I had to jump through hoops to get an applet I wrote only 10 years ago
running.

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jhbadger
As for the "time machine" aspect, I find old magazines to be even more
evocative. The Internet Archive has a bunch of old computer magazines
available and reading those I feel like I'm transported back to the 1980s.

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ninjakeyboard
"The Book" or The Book? [https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B005LALG9S/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_...](https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B005LALG9S/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

------
sbjs
"When we are not actually holding them, books are things over which we like to
wring our hands. They stand, in their very solidity, for what might be
precarious and endangered in our brave newish world."

Definitely an off topic question, but why is this kind of writing style so
common? This super academic style that uses the most complicated and unnatural
phrases, and likes to use esoteric definitions of otherwise normal words. It's
hard for me to read and it just gives off a vibe of show-off-y-ness.

~~~
davegauer
It's funny: I was actually prepared to _defend_ this article based on the
first line you quoted above. But the rest of it is much, much worse.

I have no objection at all to long, complex sentences. Not everything needs to
be (or can be) distilled into bullet points. But I'm struggling to find enough
substance in this book review to merit the epic academic writing.

I'm not saying there _isn't_ an interesting idea buried in there somewhere,
but:

> "Rather than seeing time as a scarce, homogeneous resource to be economized
> or optimized, Lupton invites us to follow her in seeing books as things that
> introduce difference, discontinuity, and even plasticity into time itself."

Statements to this effect are made several times as if merely repeating it in
different, increasingly obfuscated ways makes a stronger point. It does not.

And:

> "Lupton defines the literary, which is the category to which she remains
> professionally tethered, as a mode of thought characterized by refusing
> linear or instrumental time use."

Really?

~~~
GCA10
Agreed. The headline is much bolder and more engaging than the actual article.

I'll take a moment to sputter about the phrase "even plasticity." It sounds
stark and assertive. But then I check the dictionary and discover that
plasticity is really just a $10 word for the more mundane "malleable."

In that case, the sentence is wrongly constructed. If it's trying to take us
up a crescendo from small changes to big ones, it should read "introduce
plasticity, difference and even discontinuity into time itself."

I'm being cranky to make a larger point. A lot of academic writing isn't just
obscure. It's intellectually sloppy in the way that a badly constructed sermon
can be, too. Words are sloshed into place mostly because of the way they
sound, rather than careful consideration of their exact meaning.

~~~
jessaustin
What? No! One is a noun and the other is an adjective. Do you really want to
replace "plasticity" with "malleability"? Or maybe you prefer "malleableness"?

But yes I agree that the writing doesn't flow well. This required a great deal
of editing, which it didn't receive. In this particular sentence, the worst
offender is "itself". We know we're talking about time; it dominates the first
clause of the sentence.

