Clinton on Johnson is Really about Rhetoric

Stephen Johnson has a neat post today on Bill Clinton's reaction to The Invention of Air. I haven't had a chance to read this one yet, but I am looking forward to it this summer. Anyways, in his praise for Johnson's book, he makes an argument for the contemporary importance of books:

I spend all my time in the "how" business now. I predict to you that there will be a big demand in the future for books that deal not with how to become a millionaire in 36 days or two and a half hours. Not those. Serious "how" books. Books that answer the "how" question. How do you turn your good intentions into positive changes in other people's lives so that our common life is better for our children and grandchildren? The "how" question…

Unfortunately, the rest of Clinton's response falls into some fairly shallow and commonplace critiques of the web as a narcissistic cult of immediacy. The problem here is of treating internet users one monolithic entity--there's a diverse collection of social-intellectual practices developing around media technology, and not all of them are as opposed to extended thinking as Clinton implies (linear is another story, but I don't feel like getting into that right now).

I do think Clinton's "how" offers a nice contemporary description for the task of rhetoric: "how do you turn your good intentions into positive changes in other people's lives so that our common life is better for our children and grandchildren?" Notice the sentence doesn't rely on truth--I don't know concretely if my intentions are "true." Notice, too, that I do not necessarily have to "persuade" others of the validity of my intentions, nor do I have to persuade everyone. This, like Obama, is a localized rhetoric of small changes and social complexity.

Lessig's New Book

One of my heroes, Lawrence Lessig, has a new book out. While the website is up, the book isn't available for free yet (but I'm sure it will be soon). In the meantime, he recently gave an interview with Colbert.

I'll have to pick up Lessig's new book--I am interested in how this interview suggests a change in his argument. He seems to be completely rejecting copyright in this interview (vs. his more moderate position in earlier books). I am also a bit surprised about his "children" argument; I would think that pushing for the economic benefits of free-cultural exchange would be more persuasive to the Colbert audience. I guess its time I give Amazon more money...

Calling for Five Minutes of Your Time

I just read a disturbing story on how libraries are being pressured away from cooperating with open source project: a concise post, written by Aaron Swartz over at Raw Thought. If you don't have the time to read the article, please, please, sign the petition.

Here's what I wrote as my message, feel free to crib, borrow, or challenge:

As a professor of classical rhetoric and new media production, I stress to my peers and students the important of open source projects. The progression of our society depends upon the free, uninhibited flow of information; digital technologies magic stems from their ability to foster cooperation and harness human interest, effort, and work.

We cannot allow any group to attempt to usurp and monopolize information. Centralizing control of library catalogues is itself a bad idea; to attempt to capitalize on such control treads on the criminal. The information collected in libraries represents the work of thousands over hundreds of years. It is not a resource to be strip-mined for benefit of a few.

Update: A few people asked for a quick summation, so here goes. There's a library database group, the OCLC, that started grassroots. Essentially, they run a master database that catalogues every book in the US. Back in the day, every library employed somebody to do this, but now almost every library relies on the database.

Well, the grassroots company has been purchased by for-profit industrialists, and they realize that they have a potential monopoly on their hands--without them, no library could run an electronic catalogue. They have grown into a power, and now they are demanding that any library that uses their system refuses to share catalogue info with any other group.

Trip to the Library

I went to find three books. One of which, Alex Reid's The Two Virtuals, was lost. Of course, I walked out with a stack (listed in the order they appear on my shelf):

• Derrida, Politics of Friendship
• Derrida, Psyche / Inventions of the Other (one of the books I originally went to the lib for)
• Moore, The Internet Weather: Balancing Continuous Change and Constant Truth
• Mosco, The Digital Sublime
• Sconce, Haunted Media
• Poster, The Second Media Age
• Purves, The Web of Text and the Web of God
• O'Donnell, The Avatars of the Word
• Eriksen, The Tyranny of the Moment
• Keren, Blogosphere
• Levy, CyberCulture
• OCLC, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World
• Galloway and Thacker, The Exploit: a Theory of Networks (the other book I initially needed)

When I first arrived at USF, MZ told me about this "to your desk" service the library offers: essentially, fill out a web form and someone will bring the book to your office and place it on your desk. This seemed like a great idea. But stumbling through the stacks this morning, breezing through introductions, flipping through bibliographies, I remembered how much I love rummaging in the stacks.

I don't love carrying a pile of 13 books from the library to Cooper Hall, even if the building are right next to each other. Its Florida. Its hot. Its humid. And I will use that little service to help track down Reid's book.