i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

We've talked a lot about Moby Dick as an example of a narrative document, but Chapter 32 of Moby Dick deserves a place slightly farther to the right in the document type spectrum. Chapter 32 is all about cetology, the study of whales and dolphins.

 In Search Of India's Red-Tape Factory  (It's worth listening to the audio of this story for the ambient sound alone. )

Today when Bob was talking about PIM and the game of catch metaphor, I was reminded of FutureMe.org.  You can write yourself an e-mail on the site, and it will be delivered to 'future you' at some future date. You can choose a year up until 2060. I wonder if it is less likely that I'll be alive in 2060 or that FurtureMe.org will still exist. Maybe we won't even have e-mail anymore. 

First and foremost, watch the video before reading my blog. It's only three minutes long, and I think it's really lovely. Also, the way you watch it changes if you're not watching it naively. 

If you have the time, the entire hour-long "Words" episode, is really interesting and relevant to some things we've been talking about in class.

From The New York Times Magazine
New Vocabulary for Parents
by Lisa Belkin