New look, same great taste!

You may have noticed that things look a little different here at D&R. After four-and-a-half years under the old blue, orange, and gray regime, I thought it was about time for a change.

The old template I was using started to seem, well, a little dated and generic, plus the star graphic that appeared in the upper left-hand corner began to smack of Texaco to me.

The new look makes D&R more visually consistent with the suite of sites that I maintain: The Differences & Repetitions Wiki; The Late Age of Print blog; and Bookworm, my academic website hosted at Indiana University. It's not just about preserving a consistent red, white, gray, and black color scheme, though. I'm also a fan of the Twitter feed that now appears prominently in the header.

So there you have it, the newly-designed D&R. I hope you like it! I may regret opening up this can of worms, but your comments on the new look are welcome. Gulp...

A belated fourth birthday

I'm feeling a little like a deadbeat dad these days, given my neglect of D&R. I've been having a blast over on my book blog, The Late Age of Print, but unfortunately that's taken up a bit too much of my attention. Case in point: Monday, September 14th was the fourth anniversary of the launch of this blog. I've been pretty good about marking the occasion in the past, but this year I'm ringing in the new year belatedly. As any deadbeat dad worthy of the name would say, "Hey, at least I remembered." Sigh.

Anyway, it's nice to have an occasion in which to reflect a little here. I've missed D&R, honestly. Late Age is wonderful in that it gives me ample opportunity to explore issues relating to books, publishing, and reading. Nevertheless, I miss the eclecticism that has come to characterize D&R over the last four years. I wouldn't say that anything has been fair game for me to address here, but as the tag cloud appearing below and at right shows, this little blog of mine does indeed have quite a range. Sometimes I just prefer broadcasting over narrowcasting.

I've been puzzling over something of substance that would be interesting for me to share on this, the belated fourth birthday of D&R. Mostly I have half-formed thoughts about monism and dualism, inspired in part by my reading of Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination, which I reviewed here this past summer.

Much of my philosophical training in graduate school was spent reading, studying, and discussing the work of Gilles Deleuze. In this I learned to abhor the negative ontology characteristic of dialectical philosophies and to celebrate monism, whose principles of singularity, affirmation, and holism at the time resonated strongly with me. They still do.

Yet, as I myself grow older, and as I grow older with this blog (whose name I cherry-picked from Deleuze's masterwork, Difference and Repetition), I find myself becoming less patient with monism. I am beginning to see its cracks. Mostly I am concerned with its penchant for disengagement, for its tendency toward monologue, for its unwillingness to let itself be shaken to the core by some other. I see in monism a profound insularity or desire to turn inward (what Deleuze would call "involution"), whereas in dualism I increasingly perceive a desire to experience the world outside of oneself. Could it be that monism is a kind of philosophical agoraphobia?

Again, as I said, these are only half-formed thoughts--significantly a result of my not having given D&R its due this year. Hopefully I'll be able to get back on course in the coming weeks or months. For now, thanks to everyone for your contributions here over the last year. Your comments and questions challenge me, your readership inspires me.

Introducing The Late Age of Print blog

I'm pleased to announce that my new blog, The Late Age of Print, is now up and active. It's a companion to my book of the same name, which will be published by Columbia University Press in the next month or so. (You can learn more about the book by clicking on the link on the D&R sidebar at right.) This isn't the new site's grand opening, which I've planned to coincide with the release of the book. I'm still adding pages, links, and features, so it's best to describe this as the site's "soft opening."

The Late Age of Print blog will certainly have some thematic and conceptual overlap with D&R, but the former has a much more specific focus on the past, present, and future of books and book culture than does the latter. The new blog's tagline is “Beyond the Book,” which is something of a pun in that it both extends the arguments I introduce in Late Age and provides a forum for reflecting on the purpose, meaning, and value of books at a time when, according to some, the medium has had its heyday.

So where does the new blog leave D&R? My intention is to continue posting here, albeit a bit less regularly. I'll try to keep cross-posting to a minimum, although from time to time I imagine there will be appropriate material for me to do so. I may also try to solicit more guest posts for D&R, which in the past have generated some impressive response.

In any case, I do hope you enjoy The Late Age of Print blog. Please spread the word about it, link to it, comment on it, etc. And thank you for your continued readership of D&R.

Happy holidays

I'd like to wish all of my readers happy holidays and to thank everyone for your many contributions in 2008. This will be my last post until the new year, so I'll see you again in January. Until then (and after), peace.

Goodbye, Sivacracy

Not sure if you're aware of this, but one of the best blogs out there (and not only because I contribute to it) is shutting down as of today. A bunch of us have been posting our goodbyes over at Sivacracy, and Siva Vaidhyanathan, our fearless leader, should be posting his farewell there sometime this evening. So check it out, leave some parting comments, and help give the site the send-off it deserves.

Even though Sivacracy's shutting down, rest assured that I'll still be here on Differences & Repetitions. We're three years strong now, and I can't see any reason to call it quits.

Rate this post!

Sorry to keep obsessing over new blogging features, but I have another exciting one to share with you. Now, along with comments and sharing, you can weigh in on the quality of my blog posts using the "ratings" attribute, which appears a few lines under each entry. What's nice is that you needn't be logged into Blogger or any other service to do this. Simply scroll over the stars and give the post as many (or, ahem, as few) as you want.

I should add that something about this feature vaguely reminds me of the American Idol version of "democracy," but I suppose that's a post for another time....

Good housekeeping

You may have noticed that D&R looks a little, well, different than it used to. Yesterday, I made a few changes that I hope will result in a more readerly site.

The first thing I did was get rid of the "DIGG" tags that used to float to the upper right of each blog post. I liked them, but unfortunately, they caused D&R to load much too slowly for my tastes. You can still DIGG my posts, though; in fact, you can do a lot more now. I added a new feature to the site, which you can find just below each blog entry. Simply roll over the little gray box, and you can share any post instantly on Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Furl, Google, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Yahoo, and many other popular social networking/bookmarking sites. Please, try it out!

Hopefully these changes not only will make D&R move a little faster, but also will help the site to become more interactive. I do it all for you, dear readers, always. ; )

And...we're back!

After trolling through a bunch of Blogger discussion groups, at long last, I've finally discovered how to fix the strange header error that had been plaguing me here at D&R. That's the same error that compelled me to change the design of this blog for the last week or so. Anyway, I'm glad to be back to the look I've come to know and love for D&R, and I hope you are, too.

While I'm pretty sure everything's fixed now, I'm not all that confident in my html abilities. So if perchance you find that certain aspects of D&R aren't displaying properly in your web browser, please drop me a line.

One last thing: I still find it disconcerting that I have no idea how, exactly, my template spontaneously(?) changed. What's the saying? Deus ex machina...

Spaghetti/regret/updates

I recently left a comment on Sivacracy responding to a post about Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book, The Tipping Point. My remark was pretty snarky, admittedly. I said this: "Isn't The Tipping Point a readerly, if watered-down, version of Everett Rogers' The Diffusion of Innovations--a book that's been out for decades?" I still stand behind the spirit of comment, at least, insofar as I believe Rogers said essentially what Gladwell is now often credited with saying (and Gabriel Tarde before Rogers....You can see where this is going.). By the same token, I regret having too quickly dismissed Gladwell's work and contributions.

Perhaps what impresses me most about Gladwell's writing is his ability to make the history of the idea of communication engaging to popular audiences. Take his piece on "The Spin Myth," for instance, in which he tells fascinating stories about the role the late public relations doyen, Edward L. Bernays, played in shaping perceptions about media influence. Then there's the video I've embedded above, in which Gladwell shares a series of parables about the food industry's discovery of diversity-in-taste (spaghetti sauce is the operative example). This is no small matter. What Glaldwell is addressing are the epistemological assumptions individuals and groups bring to bear when making judgments about right and wrong, good and bad, tasty and displeasing, and more. He is also offering some intriguing commentary on personal influence and group dynamics, two longstanding issues in communication theory.

All that to say, having taught about the intellectual history of communication, I can appreciate the work that must go in to making his stories and lectures as captivating as they are. And while I wish his work were more critically inclined, I can't really hold that against him. After all, who am I to criticize an apple for being an apple, and not an orange?

* * *

In other news, after weighing the decision, I've decided not to join Facebook after all. I still may sign up one day, but as I said earlier, it's hard enough for me to keep the lights on here at D&R. Another online commitment (to whatever extent Facebook is a commitment) would just be too much right now. I'm not sure if anyone had designs on friending me, but if you were, sorry to let you down.

Also, in case you're wondering, I'm going to leave the design of D&R as it is for the foreseeable future. Ron tells me it's a bit busy, and I agree. But until I can get the issue with my old design template resolved, I don't want to change the site again. I worry that folks might come looking for D&R and think they've stumbled on some other blog.

A new look for D&R...for the moment

Just a quick note to let y'all know that I've changed the look of D&R--temporarily, for now. There seems to be some sort of issue with the template I've been using. You may have noticed that the header wasn't displaying properly, which made it difficult to read the title and description. Until I can figure out what's wrong, I'm going to stick with the new look. And because I'm not opposed to change, I'd be curious to hear which you like better--the old template (pictured above-left), or the new one.

Happy holidays from D&R

I just wanted to wish all of my readers a happy and healthy holiday season. This probably will be my last post until the new year, so here's a link and another one to some holiday inspired classic D&R to tide you over. Peace.

I'm joining Sivacracy!

My good friend Siva Vaidhyanathan recently asked me to become a contributor to his main blog, Sivacracy. D&R readers will know that I've admired the writing and insightful commentary there for many years, and so needless to say, I accepted his kind invitation. I'm delighted to be joining the Sivacracy team as of today. You can read my first post, which is basically introductory, by clicking here.

I'm still working out what to post where, or if I should just cross-post everything I write. In any case, rest assured that D&R won't be shutting down. And to that end, I thank all of you, dear readers, for your continuing support.

Second birthday, and some changes

I'm not sure whether to call these things birthdays or anniversaries, but in any case, D&R is celebrating one on Friday, September 14th. With more than 100 posts and a host of lively comments from all of you, I'm pleased to report things are still going strong after two years.

To celebrate the big event, I've made some changes here at D&R. They're mostly cosmetic, though some are designed to make the site more participatory and interactive for all you readers. The changes were facilitated by my switching over at long last to the new Blogger template system, which I should have done a year ago. (I was frightened off by the prospect of losing all of my existing template modifications.) The switch allowed me to introduce a more user-friendly archiving system, display an index of tags for simpler cross-referencing, and update my site syndication link to one that's more encompassing. On the downside, the formatting on some of my older posts has been rendered somewhat haphazardly, though everything, thankfully, is still entirely readable.

The biggest change, though, are the "DIGG IT" tags you'll see next to each of my posts. (And I owe a shout-out here to Lawrence Lessig, on whose blog I first discovered how cool it is to digg.) If you like what I've written, feel free not only to comment, but also to "DIGG IT." Clicking the tag will redirect you to digg.com. This in turn will give you an opportunity to share my post with the larger, Digg community, allow the good folks there to vote on its worth, and potentially introduce a broader readership to something you found on D&R. And don't worry--it may sound complicated, but it's all really simple.

Thanks, everyone, for celebrating two years of my musings and for contributing your thoughts and perspectives to D&R. Here's to you!

Happy birthday, D&R!

Maybe it's cliched to say this, but how quickly a year goes by! On September 14th, 2005, I launched Differences and Repetitions. To tell you the truth, I didn't have any idea at the time what I was doing or if I'd even sustain my interest in blogging. One year later and I'm happy to report a solid, engaged readership, and as of this writing 62 posts. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

As I said, it took me some time to figure out what D&R would be about--almost a month, really. In October 2005 I wrote what amounts to the D&R manifesto (people don't write enough manifestos anymore), which, if you're new to the site (or you simply don't remember what I think I'm up to), you can access by clicking here. No doubt, in the next year, D&R will continue to evolve in unexpected ways, and perhaps I'll have to write a new manifesto. If nothing else, the last year has brought a mix of political, intellectual, and more light-hearted posts. I imagined this blog to be pretty serious, and indeed it often is, but I'm glad my readership has helped me to loosen up a bit.

Speaking of readers, THANK YOU! Without your reading and commentary, there wouldn't be much point to my doing what I'm doing here. I'm especially grateful to those of you who've pushed me on some of my opinions and insights, which, admittedly, are perhaps somewhat raw when I put them out here. I really imagine D&R as a public forum in which to think out loud--something I find fewer and fewer people in the academy seem to do these days, at the risk of seeming intellectually unpolished. Thank you, all of you, for indulging me.

Please continue to spread the word about D&R, and please keep reading, responding, and cajoling. It's been a great year, and I look forward to many more with all of you.