In Delete, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget—the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Schönberger examines the technology that’s facilitating the end of forgetting—digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software—and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it’s outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won’t let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can’t help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution—expiration dates on information—that may.

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Hiking is the only form of exercise I actually enjoy. Luckily, I live a mile from the San Gabriel mountains with their tangle of steep trails. In the last year, as I’ve hiked, I have begun listening to stories and novels on my iPhone, and this has transformed an enjoyable pastime into a deep pleasure. Recently I described my new habit to another novelist, who recoiled, shaking her head. “I’m a firm believer in the imaginative space created by the printed page,” she said.

So what about the imaginative space created by the audible page?

~ Michelle Huneven @ The Millions

This study examines the emergence of place blogging as an online genre designed to foster a deeper sense of place and to share local knowledge. Focusing on a period between 2003 and 2006, it spotlights a transitional moment in web culture when the relationship between online life and offline life is undergoing an important shift. The bloggers highlighted in this study offer a ground-level view of how ordinary writers and readers participate in the transition to what Eric Gordon calls “network locality,” a condition in which the experience of place is increasingly mediated by networked technologies. Because networked life creates an information-saturated environment in which place must compete with everything else for an increasingly scarce resource—human attention—place bloggers redefine blogging as a way to more deliberately and regularly invest attention in place.

~ Tim Lindgren, “Place Blogging: Local Economies of Attention in the Network “

On the train, the woman to my left reads a book translated from paper to Kindle. On my right, another woman reads printouts of Powerpoint slides.

Walking the Berkshires is […] an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and conservation science with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities.

Thanks, Susan. Feel free to keep coming back and plugging your business. I have recently purchased eight insurance plans from the link provided. I am indestructible. I’m going to go 2 Fast 2 Furious on everyone’s ass. Look out, drivers of Monroe county and surrounding regions.

When life gives you comment spam, make lemonade a story out of it. Hilarious.

Floe, a virtual polar bear on National Grid’s Web site, can help National Grid customers analyze and measure the environmental effects of their routine daily activities, including eating, drinking, driving and making home heating energy choices. Floe can be found at the website, nationalgrid.com/floe. Visitors can interact with Floe or befriend another virtual polar bear and learn how positive environmental acts will help protect the environment.

Also, Venture Arctic, in which

players create and control ecosystems of Arctic animals. You can blow the scent of a beached bowhead whale to a hungry wolverine, melt snow to feed epic herds of caribou, or freeze over the ocean to protect schools of arctic cod from ravenous puffins and seals.

The game is based on the seasonal rhythms of the Arctic – in the summer animals fatten up on grasses, in the fall the oceans are choked with plankton, and in the winter animals must struggle to survive.

@ GreenMuze

The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure.

~ Publishing the Unpublishable

I don’t agree with restraining the digitizing of classrooms, which Bauerlein also calls for, but I do agree with ensuring there’s a mix of learning spaces available. I also think that teachers should have the imagination to sometimes teach outside of the classroom altogether…

Most of Bauerlain’s approach is the same-old same-old but I do think we must pay attention to the need for slow spaces both in teaching and in life. Slowness is certainly a vital element of transliteracy.

@ Transliteracy Research Blog

Sue Thomas is looking for help “collecting examples of nature metaphors used to describe cyberspace and the internet.”