March 7, 2007
Where next at ARC?
I just had a conversation with two guys from the Institute for the Future of the Book, a little project started by the Annenberg school. They have a number of extremely cool projects underway, including a multimedia authoring tool called Sophie that is gorgeous and absurdly easy to use. More interesting for ARC, however, are the web experiments in creating better commenting and collaborative writing tools. Check out, for instance, their version of the Iraq Study Group report. This is the kind of thing I imagine being useful for ARC as it seeks to explore the co-creation of concepts, and the challenge of getting beyond single-author call and response forms of co-labor…
This is pretty cool Chris. The possibilities both boggle and frighten. On frightening, the first comment I came across in the text was this one:
“In a more just world, using the phrase “critical to U.S. interests” would be prima facie evidence of “evil intent” and just cause for a session of water boarding at Guantanamo. Just sort of to wash that phrase out once and for all. All it really means is “Western capitalism would like if at all possible to have continued access to cheap oil and if it means a little shock and awe to maintain access to this oil, well, Okay.”
yes, well. Shall we just say that “the medium is the message” and move on?