"There is a pervasive assumption that ebooks are disposable literature. But to the voracious readers, this is not the case. Currently it's hard for many people to build up collections of books due to space constraints — nevertheless I know many SF fans (of the kind who read 50-150 books a year) who have turned their homes into libraries. They will be the tip of an iceberg once ebooks become mainstream; why discard an ebook when you can file it and come back to it in 10 years' time and it takes up no space?

For such people, filing and tagging their collections is a major issue. And so is portability. It's true that if they own an iPad they can have an iBooks app full of books purchased from Apple, and a Kindle app full of books from Amazon, and a Nook app full of books from B&N. But those apps are, thanks to DRM, data silos — you can't cross-check to see if you bought book 3 in a series from Apple and book 5 from Amazon without a lot of fiddling around."

"Last month Jane Bennett gave a talk at New York’s New School entitled “Powers of the Hoard: Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter”. She was interested in the question of whether or not compulsive hoarders have a particular affinity for matter, specifically, the matter of/in the things they so assiduously collect. The purpose of this post is to ask a similar question about trumpet players and their mouthpieces. Some have only a few, while others have hundreds."

"In 1903, Crayola had eight colors in its standard package. Today, there are 120, along with special packs like Gem Tones and Silver Swhirls. What happened? Above, from Weather Sealed, shows the growing color selection (and a few color retirements) in the standard package from 1903 to now."

"What this all takes is patience — more patience, sometimes, than I am good at. I am impatient to know things, and impatient for things to make sense more quickly; and the discipline (ah, that apt term) just doesn’t work that way. A colleague of mine told me that he’s been Only Collecting for over ten years, and can now knock out a 3000 word paper in under two days, simply because all his material is already at hand; it exists in the stuff he’s picked up in his intellectual infancy and adolescence, which at the time he didn’t know how to use, and perhaps didn’t even know was important."

Not quite refined enough to catch everything, and a bit over-general still. Need to clean up the categories a bit, maybe.

ummm... anybody remember the, ummm... Old Lighthouse? In Ann Arbor? Landlocked Ann Arbor?

µphilanthropy