Reviewed Everything is Miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder by David Weinberger, 2007. The author discusses the seeming anarchy resulting from the reflection of current information paradigms on conventional practices. He distinguishes the effects that remain from others that are fleeting. An initial ordering of topics is presented. Some of these are described in a sort of artistic form, e.g. outline, relief, shadow & such, so that the reader can make their own inferences. The title also suggests a review of the contents in various permutations. The way people form relationships around the ordering is significant.
Official site.
Reviewed Plato and a platypus walk into a bar: understanding philosophy through jokes, by Cathcart and Klein. 2007. This is an entertaining introduction to the historical movements and characters of philosophy. If it were in the form of a wiki, practicing philosphers might add their own preferred jokes or additional concepts & luminaries. Interesting referral to applied ethics in bioethics, feminism, treatment of animals, & professions along with identification of the notion of ethical dilemmas whose solution characterize the given individuals or societies. Brief, but good discussion of existentialism from Hegelian dialectic, Kierkegaard response, Sartre “experience precedes existence”, “Curiously Camus looked a lot like Humphrey Bogart” (p 118), and Heidegger’s existence as “being-toward-death”.
Official site.
