The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy
November 11th, 2010
A sign of the times, as it were: three of the most popular stories on the New York Times site this morning are about cooking. OK, we’re all planning our Thanksgiving feasts to be held two weeks from today. But isn’t there anything more important? Oh, yeah, there’s a story about the rapper Shyne, “the…
November 10th, 2010
In Vancouver the public transit is operated by Translink. There are lots of good things to say about Translink. The buses are clean and fairly punctual and the drivers are generally friendly and helpful, sometimes exceptionally so. The routes are well-planned and the service frequent. The SkyTrains are a marvel of efficiency and comfort. The…
November 5th, 2010
They’re $50 million lottery prize winners in a country where the prizes are tax-free. Claude and Kurt Blanchette-Ebert are a month away from celebrating their 30-year anniversary, though they’ve never could afford a vacation to celebrate any of the other 29. They recently lost their house. Claude worked as a furniture upholsterer; Kurt is a…
October 22nd, 2010
Daddy: Please don’t burn the books. Then there won’t be any books in the house and I kind of like them. Some folks dined recently with Ross Dawson. Dawson apparently wrote his future-of-publishing-themed blog entry while dining. Here’s a snippet: A critical issue is the physical space that books take. Some have tried to get rid of…
October 17th, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot about libraries. To think about the library of the future you must start with an appreciation of libraries today. That appreciation must be derived from being an active customer of libraries — you don’t qualify if you don’t regularly borrow books and other physical (analog) materials. You also don’t qualify…