immediate gratification

In the Times a couple days ago, there was a column by David Carr on "The media equation." He started with his visit to the Times Square Virgin Megastore where the old people were looking at CDs and the younger people were at the listening posts. And only three people were in the book section "including the old guy with the long coat and beard who seems to be in every bookstore." (He saw me?) Carr talks about the ease and customization of downloading a music file and how folks said MP3 files would be rejected because they weren't very high fidelity. Well, it turned out that "good enough was good enough." And there are the same thoughts about books. Carr doesn't mention it but I drifted off to thoughts of using Power Point to put together your art history lecture. It's so easy and the pictures aren't going to be like the originals anyway so why pretend?

Carr quotes Clay Shirky quite a bit because Shirky just brought out a new book entitled Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations. Of course there's something ironic about a thinker like Shirky publishing a tangible book-length print resource. By the way, Strand had three review copies last week ... though only two by the time I left the store. My little bit of "I want it now" even though I'm reading Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson at the moment. At last night's lecture by John Harris on "The destruction of the country house," he mentioned Fiske Kimball's purchase of rooms for the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1920s, some of which were later discovered to be composite fabrications.

Carr = https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/business/media/31carr.html

Shirky's Everybody = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody