Attention Economy - September 9, 2023

Poet Imtiaz Dharker

• Poetry Writing: Elements of Poetry
  [referring link to a blind flaneur: Imtiaz Dharker’s Blessing: “Voice Of A Kindly God”] “First, listen to Imtiaz Dharker herself read Blessing. She reads two poems in this video. You may choose to stop after listening to Blessing but you might find the second poem interesting as well. You may notice that the imagery in this poem involves sound as well as sight — and touch as well. After listening, read the poem Blessing yourself.”
• Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook, dies aged 64 | Books | guardian.co.uk
  Michael S. Hart on the 1971 origins of the ebook and Project Gutenberg: “Somehow I had envisioned the net in my mind very much as it would become 30 years later. I envisioned sending the Declaration of Independence to everyone on the net… all 100 of them… which would have crashed the whole thing, but luckily Fred Ranck stopped me, and we just posted a notice in what would later become comp.gen. I think about six out of the 100 users at the time downloaded it.”
• Michael S. Hart, e-book inventor and Project Gutenberg founder, dies at 64 — Engadget
  Michael S. Hart, the e-book inventor who founded Project Gutenberg, has died at the age of 64. []In 1971 he] founded Project Gutenberg — an online library that aims to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks” and to “break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.” By 1987, he’d already digitized a total of 313 books, including works from Homer, Shakespeare and the Bible, before recruiting more volunteers to help out. As of this June, Hart’s pioneering library housed about 36,000 works in its collection (most of which are in the public domain), with an average of 50 new books added each week. Described by Project Gutenberg as an “ardent technologist and futurist,” Hart leaves a literary legacy perhaps best summed up in his own words. “One thing about eBooks that most people haven’t thought much is that eBooks are the very first thing that we’re all able to have as much as we want other than air.”
• e-Book Founder Michael S. Hart Dies At 64 : NPR 090811
  In 1971, computer scientist Michael S. Hart typed the text of the Declaration of Independence and made it available on a computer network so others could read it as well. It was an electronic document, and he created what you might think of as the prototypical e-book. Before his death this week at the age of 64, Hart founded Project Gutenberg, which provides free digital literature, to spread literacy.
• Saving The Stories Of Loved Ones Lost On Sept. 11 : NPR 090811
  Each year, the oral history project StoryCorps has marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with the voices of those directly affected by the events: wives and husbands, grandparents and friends of those who died that day. But as StoryCorps founder Dave Isay tells Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep, the outpouring of stories about Sept. 11 initially came as something of a surprise. “When StoryCorps started, I expected to see a lot of people come to StoryCorps who were dealing with kind of end-of-life issues,” Isay says. “What I didn’t expect to see were people coming to memorialize loved ones who were lost. And we saw that from the first days after StoryCorps opened eight years ago.”
• Zoe Keating: A Symphony Unto Herself : NPR 090611
  It’s fitting to find [Zoe] Keating in the middle of all this natural noise. In her studio, she creates a similar symphony of sounds, except she does it with just one instrument: her cello. Her secret lies in the way she constructs her songs. Keating uses computer software to record sounds and musical phrases as she plays them. When she plays something she wants to keep, she taps on pedals at her feet, which tell the computer program to save and loop what she just played. That frees her up to play a new musical phrase along with what she just recorded. The process repeats until she’s created layers upon layers of sounds, all from her one cello.
• Remix Breakdown: Turning Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’ Into A Summer Jam | NPR 090511
  “When you’re in the remixing game you look for certain things in a song. Certain songs have a lot going on in them that are really hard to eliminate when all you want is the vocal sample or basic idea,” Dirlam says. “Every single DJ that has remixed ‘Rolling In The Deep’ owes Rick Rubin a huge kiss on the lips. Rubin strips down songs and exposes them for what they are. Here you have claps, guitars, bass, piano, her voice, and that’s it.”