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I’m old enough to remember when Google Books was a big thing. It looked like something that was going to change the world. But like most things, the reality turned out to be something different. It got caught up in lawsuits and negotiations and eventually, kind of disappeared…at least it seemed that way.

But it hasn’t gone away entirely. Today, I just happened to come across a really good article by Scott Rosenberg, which was published in the BackChannel blog in Wired back in 2017.

I’m pointing to it here because it turns out it’s still an interesting story and Rosenberg does a good job of filling in a lot of details. If you’re a bit of a book nerd, or just dream of being one, this story will appeal to you.

How Google Book Search Got Lost
Google’s first “moonshot” project ended up way more mundane than anyone expected. (4/11/17)

As a political reporter in the 1980’s, I spent a lot of time learning about and navigating the bureaucracy that every government creates. It’s a fascinating creation, crucial to the effective operation of a government and yet frustratingly inefficient in so many ways. It’s also ripe for caricature and lampooning.

In 1979, Canadian director Donald Brittain captured the importance and the absurdity of a government bureaucracy in a classic documentary for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the CBC. It’s great fun to watch what the world was like and meet the bureaucrats who kept the place running – or didn’t, depending on your point of view. Comparisons with the current attitudes towards government are inevitable, of course.

I recommend this film. Thanks to the visionaries (probably many bureaucrats were involved) Canada has the NFB and the CBC, both government institutions, that keep a watch on the Canadian way of life and present it for us. They are a rich history and available with a click of your mouse on your home computer – through the NFB and CBC archives. What a treasure.

Go ahead and watch Paperland below.

Paperland: The Bureaucrat Observed, Donald Brittain, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

Jason Kottke has been blogging for a long time – over 20 years, in fact. And you can count on one hand (almost) the number of people who can say that. I’m a relative newbie, having not begun until 2004!

Of course, those of you that are paying attention will note that there is a mysterious three year gap between this post and the previous one. I’m not going to talk about that here, but I might have something to say before too long…

Jason Kottke

Back to Jason. This interview with Nieman Journalism Lab is a real gem. Kottke.org represents a lot of what we were all excited about when blogging was new. It was vibrant, it felt personal, and we were talking to our friends and reading what they had to say. Then it all kind of started changing, as the Internet evolved. It’s a (mostly) sad story – but with lots of good parts too.

I recommend you go ahead and read the article for yourself. My favourite part is how Jason has weathered the ups and downs of this business. And I really like his view on what’s good about the Web:

I think that it’s been really hard, the last couple of years, to cover anything — I don’t know how to say this in a way that isn’t going to get all weirdly interpreted — it’s been hard to cover anything but things that are serious. Because, you know, a lot of people — I think very rightly — feel that if you’re someone who thinks the world is coming down around all of us, that you should be on a mission to try to fix that. And I think that there are plenty of sites and plenty of media outlets and plenty of people who are oriented in that direction and moving in that direction.

But I don’t think kottke.org is one of those things. I think that the site is much more about things that are a little bit more — I don’t want to say hopeful, but a lot of it is, like, look at this cool thing. Look at what humans can do when they have enough time and energy and whatnot to do them! When you called, I was had just been watching the SpaceX thing. Seeing those two booster rockets land at the same time blew my mind. I was just sitting here, yelling, like, oh my god!

There has to be room in our culture for that type of stuff — that stuff that is inspirational and aspirational — because it provides some sort of hope that we can actually have more of that in our lives, rather than less.

It’s like that quote from John Adams. I have it pulled up here. “I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

That’s a really interesting way to think about progress. Not everyone is going to be on that continuum at the same time, but I think the goal should be to get more people moving toward it.

Last blog standing, “last guy dancing”: How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20

In recent days, we’ve been hearing a lot about the TPP, and it’s potential for problems for democracy. But I hadn’t realized just how far-ranging and frightening the full impact of these “trade” deals really are. I had only the barest understanding that the TPP was part of a three-pronged effort by the US to break free of the World Trade Organization structure.

If you want to start to learn more, this video from WikiLeaks (which has brought us much of the secret negotiations of the TPP) is informative.

For those of us who still have a love affair with old books (even if most of the ones I buy now are via my Kindle) this is a wonderful video. I don’t know anything about it’s origins, but it’s available via a Facebook page version, without any music. And it was posted to YouTube, with some music added. Take your pick.

I’ve got a lot of those old, leather-covered books in my collection, but I never really thought about what goes into putting them together. It’s fascinating to watch a craftsman put it all together.

Update: In the original post, I included a link to the original Facebook post here, but that is no longer available. You can still see the YouTube version below (to which someone has also added some music.)

When a story starts like this, you just know you’re going to like it:

Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis.

The New Yorker’s Roger Angell weaves a wonderful tale about reaching 93 years old. Poignant, insightful and hilarious.

Read it for yourself. 

I was in the audience when Kathryn performed at TEDx Victoria last fall.  She has a great story to tell and is a talented musician. She’s also a good friend of Victoria Hospice. Listen to her story and enjoy the music. And watch for the movie coming about her mother’s struggle with ALS.

In case you are ever trying to download a YouTube clip for a presentation or something like that, you might want to keep this bit of advice around. This used to be a lot easier with older versions of Safari. But I just did it for a presentation and this method worked for me.