links for 2008-10-24

• Prelinger Library Blog
  An appropriation-friendly, image-rich, experimental research library. Independent and open to the public.
  (tags: library future books copyright information blog)
• The Shifted Librarian » Thinkering Spaces in Libraries
  (tags: tinkering library library2.0 environment collaboration architecture design)
• Thinkering Spaces - a set on Flickr
  "A prototype for a portable collaborative space in libraries built by the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design."
  (tags: photographs library tinkering collaboration)
• Brian Eno, "The Revenge of the Intuitive," Wired 7.01 (1999)
  In 1999, Brian Eno revisited his 1979 essay on the studio as a compositional space. "I was thrilled at how people were using studios to make music that otherwise simply could not exist. Studios opened up possibilities. But now I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. This transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse. Musicians enjoy drawing on that finesse (and audiences respond to its exercise), so when muscular activity is rendered useless, the creative process is frustrated."
  (tags: music creativity software workspace endofcyberspace)
• Brian Eno, "The Studio As Compositional Tool" (1979)
  The studio is a space for composition, an instrument. "[Y]ou no longer come to the studio with a conception of the finished piece. Instead, you come with actually rather a bare skeleton of the piece, or perhaps with nothing at all. I often start working with no starting point. Once you become familiar with studio facilities, or even if you're not, actually, you can begin to compose in relation to those facilities. You can begin to think in terms of putting something on, putting something else on, trying this on top of it, and so on, then taking some of the original things off, or taking a mixture of things off, and seeing what you're left with - actually constructing a piece in the studio."
  (tags: recording studio music workspace creativity collaboration cyborg endofcyberspace)
• How Info-Overload Experts Unwind
  "Ah, that constant stream of information from the PDA, the wireless laptop connection, cable TV. Sure, you can work from wherever, whenever, be entertained around the clock. But how to manage it? How to pull back and gain time for personal pursuits, reflection and sanity?"
  (tags: attention contemplation psychology technology)
• I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really. - New York Times
  "Thus began my “secular Sabbath” — a term I found floating around on blogs — a day a week where I would be free of screens, bells and beeps. An old-fashioned day not only of rest but of relief."
  (tags: technology attention psychology mobility computer)
• Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
  (tags: attention academia philosophy contemplation)