CompPile: Share and Comment

[can also set a number of options]

Or they are terrified to have their work available in public — fear of being exposed. I’ve never understood that, but I’ve heard it many times from people.

Needing a break from writing last night, I explored the web using the search term “read book online.” Nineteen million, three hundred thousand links are listed in Google for this search term! Out of pure curiosity, I opened the first link to find a site with no “About Us” or “Who We Are” (URL: http://www.readbookonline.net).
The absence of any authoring information (in a cursory search) made it hard to vet the site, but there were 1,000 books, short stories, poems, essays, plays — a real variety, mostly titles well within the timeframe of works that would likely be “public domain.”

There are flash ads in the left-most column of the page (indicating someone is supporting the site through ad revenues) and the .net extension would seem to support the site author as someone with some commercial venture, if not outright profiteering, in the site.

A quick search of the net for “.net extension” wound up leading me to a site in the top ten of those hits (URL: http://www.codeplex.com/urlrewriter)
This was a software company site where the coders offer free use of the software to anyone, but a quick glance at the bottom of the page leads me to a copyright line: 2006-2008 Microsoft. I decided to link to their “Privacy Statement” and once again confronted the monolith of all software companies in its most chilling form.

All I had set out to do was to access a book online for 15 minutes-worth of thesis-escape reading. This quick foray reminds me of the Dylan-esque “the times they are a-changin’.”

No measure of “deliberate control and limiting of access” will stave off the amazing proliferation of access to textual productions, from ancient times to modern. Librarians will do what they do. But the average computer-literate Josies (moi) will circumnavigate the constraints of archival searches in the physical setting, and archives/archivists will remain in the dust without intitiatives to digitize their artifacts. Which is a whole other line of conversation…how does technology mediate our understanding of physical texts/artifacts, and affect our epistemological efforts? et al.

By the way, I also found this cool site with a digital bibliography to sites that will hook you up with online literature….

kathi,

The “Blalock” statement is the proposal. I’ve now fixed that confuzzlement, and I’ve uploaded the entire original proposal.

I’ll post my “other” statement later today. Thanks for pointing to the mis-labeling.

gb

Very cool, you all! Is there a way to includes a description of the panel overall? That way one could also comment on the *idea* of the panel as well as on individua contributions?

kathi yancey

This document’s original format is two-columns, with the two opening quotes side-by-side and then each “affirmative” and “negative” side-by-side. That format wouldn’t work for this venue. To see a copy of the original two-column format, go to http://comppile.org/archives/WPA_Rich_Haswell.htm (opens a new browser window).