TO SEE how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous “BILLY” bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome—anything, that is, except books that are actually read.

He made the book using MagCloud (HP Indigo press print-on-demand technology) to print the signatures, and then bound them by hand in a fairly straight forward binding, using inkjet canvas on the hardcover. It is a brilliant use of old and new technologies to self-publish. Bravo, Phil!

The Open Feedback Publishing System (OFPS) is an O'Reilly experiment that tries to bridge the gap between private manuscripts and public blogs. Following on the let-them-comment-on-everything model established by the Django Book, Real World Haskell, and Mercurial: The Definitive Guide (among others), OFPS allows readers to read in-progress O'Reilly manuscripts, communicate suggestions with the authors, follow others' comments, and directly participate in the development of new books.

Manuscripts developed with OFPS sites allow the authors to publish the in-progress work as whenever they think it's ready for public comment and then update the site with new versions as the text is improved. Authors note sections of the text that they'd like comments on (potentially down to an individual paragraph) and that allows readers on the site to comment on that particular section.

by the author of the good NYT article on japan.

Custom software recreates various Sol LeWitt drawings. The software also posts instructions on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Human workers execute the drawings online based on the instructions from the program. The workers are paid 5¢ for each drawing. The software then assembles the drawings in a grid. The computer generated drawings, and the grids filled in by anonymous workers are displayed side by side.

Like this mission statement:
"An idea can be bound between covers, bound by convention, or bound for the dustbin of history. The ideas of Cato Unbound, we hope, are none of these.

Cato Unbound is a state-of-the-art virtual trading floor in the intellectual marketplace, specializing in the exchange of big ideas. To be sure, there is no shortage these days of online forums for hashing out the issues of the day. All too often, however, the advantages of instant analysis and communication are compromised by obsession with the trivial and ephemeral. Here at Cato Unbound we try to step back, take a deep breath, and focus on the larger picture.

Each month, Cato Unbound will present an essay on a big-picture topic by one of the world’s leading thinkers. The ideas in that essay will then be tested by the comments and criticism of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom will respond to the month’s lead essay and then to one another. The idea is to create a hub for wide-ranging, open-ended conversation, where ideas will be advanced, challenged, and refined in public view.

But the discussion only begins at Cato Unbound. It ends, if it ends at all, with you. Cato Unbound readers are encouraged to take up our themes, and enter into the conversation on their own websites, blogs, and even in good old-fashioned bound publications. Trackbacks will be enabled. Cato Unbound will scour the web for the best commentary on our monthly topic, and, with permission, may publish it alongside our invited contributors. We also welcome your letters. (Send them to JKuznicki@cato.org.)

“Protection . . . against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough,” wrote John Stuart Mill; “there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.” Here at Cato Unbound, we aim to do our part.

Welcome. All you have to lose are your preconceptions!"

an exhibition of artists’ books and related material exploring the encyclopedic form at Printed Matter thru February.

The problem with writing a biography of Socrates, as Bettany Hughes merrily admits, is that he’s a “doughnut subject”: a rich and tasty topic with a big hole right in the middle where the main character should be. Despite his fame and his insistence on an examined life, Socrates never wrote anything, and our knowledge of him comes mainly from three contemporaries — his devoted pupils Plato and Xenophon, and the parodist Aristophanes — each of whom had his own agenda. He produced no great answers, only great questions, and the most enduring image we have of his life is his leaving of it, as the title of this book suggests.

RT @swissmiss: Eric Karjaluoto's 'Speak Human' is available online in its entirety as of today:

@rjs Still my favorite book on the subject. Examples are outdated, but the concepts and ideas are spot on:

Vacation reads: Instapaper queue (, Things Magazine back issue #20, and just bought @Khoi's "Ordering Disorder" on iBooks