You can read the whole thing here.

Wired/New York Public Library debate: The Battle Over Books, from 2005

Larry Lessig and representatives from Google, a publisher’s association, and an authors’ guild all debate the legality and necessity of Google Book Search. It’s worthwhile, if only because both sides get their ideas across pretty well. Lessig is very convincing, as usual.

A Discussion with danah boyd, from 2006

Danah was in the news yesterday for her piece on social class divisions between MySpace and Facebook. This video covers some similar ground: It’s a rambling talk/discussion about how people interact socially online, focusing mostly on MySpace and Friendster. She’s a good speaker.

Richard Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, from 1981

Everything from discussing what’s wrong with the way maths is taught, to getting toungue-tied trying to explain hadrons and quarks off-the-cuff without using any big words. The most interesting part, to me, is his extremely frank discussion of how he felt about his part in developing the first nuclear weapons.

The Dalai Lama, via Howard C. Cutler:

“For example, in the case of wanting more expensive possessions, if that is based on a mental attitude that just wants more and more, then eventually you’ll reach a limit of what you can get; you’ll come up against reality. … When it comes to dealing with greed, one thing that is quite characteristic is that although it arrives by the desire to obtain something, it is not satisfied by obtaining. … The true antidote of greed is contentment. If you have a strong sense of contentment, it doesn’t matter whether you obtain the object or not; either way, you are still content.”

OK, so does getting rid of all your possessions solve anything? Brad Warner’s What If We Gave It Away?:

“But the proverbial monk with nothing but a robe is largely a thing of the past. I’ve come across a few people who’ve tried to create modern day variations. But I’m largely unimpressed. One guy I saw followed the ancient Buddhist custom of never handling money. Only all this really meant was that he never picked up the check.”

So I think what these guys are saying is that it’s not a problem to have stuff, in the sense that in modern society it simplifies everything, for you and for those around you. If you want to brush your teeth, you are just going to be a pain for everyone unless you have your own toothbrush.

But there is another reason for owning something, and I think it boils down to this:

“It’s just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that’s it. That’s the last sofa I’m gonna need. Whatever else happens, I’ve got that sofa problem handled. I had it all. I had a stereo that was very decent, a wardrobe that was getting very respectable. I was close to being complete.”

(Fight Club.) i.e: to feel better about yourself – to turn yourself into the kind of person who would would have a particular thing.

“The face is a composite of two stars, and its torso on a singer.”

cf. William Gibson’s Idoru

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami is an incredible book. Please read it. And then please tell me what you think of it.

If you haven’t read The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye you’ll perhaps miss some of where the author is starting from, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. They’re both really short, if you want to read them. It’s OK, I’ll wait.

The book was originally published in two small volumes, a red one and a green one. Legend has it that when it came out, the Japanese teens who hang out in Tokyo commercial districts wearing weird outfits started wearing red or green themes to show which half of the book they liked. Alas, my copy is just one volume, with no indication of where the original division lay.

I don’t usually like reading book reviews, so I’ll attempt not to write one here. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that it’s one of those books I feel (as you can see) the need to tell people to read. Here’s a passage from the book – the place where it suddenly hit me that I was reading something special:

Amazon link, fan bibliography