Ben Vershbow

13 October 2008, 2:50 pm

nine curiosities from the beeman cookbook collection

This Sophie book showcases several interesting, rare, or otherwise odd cookbooks from the collection of Kimberly Beeman. You can download it here (.zip, 60Mb). Make sure that you have Sophie or Sophie...

9 October 2008, 2:15 pm

the five drafts of the gettysburg address: a sophie book

Contrary to popular lore, Lincoln did not write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. Though given short notice that he was to speak at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, ...

6 October 2008, 7:31 pm

meanwhile . . . .

My colleagues at the Institute and i are busy making some interesting things with Sophie 1.0. We're going to start posting them on a new institute website devoted to Sophie 1.0. [They will also be av...

6 October 2008, 6:40 pm

and the first document is . . . .

An Experiment in Visualization: Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speeches from Truman through Obama and McCain. In addition to the wordle.net visualizations in which the size of the word is proporti...

6 October 2008, 6:25 am

Mellon announces a $1.25 million grant for Sophie 2.0

Last week the Mellon Foundation announced a $1.25 million grant to the University of Southern California for a java-based version of Sophie, which will be known as Sophie 2.0. In addition to improvin...

2 October 2008, 10:25 pm

How do you want to read?

(Photo of Tom Stoppard's book case, made by T. Anthony, via The New York Times.) For the sake of travel and convenience, sure, even a Kindle is better than toting a book shelf with you on an airplan...

30 September 2008, 7:52 pm

The Golden Notebook Project - Readers Announced

Beginning November 10th, seven women will begin a public conversation in the margins of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. The text of the novel and the readers' conversation will be in a nifty new ...

29 September 2008, 2:37 pm

Putting the "book" back in Facebook

With October just around the corner, American universities and high schools are gearing up for homecoming celebrations, those unabashed nostalgia fests. There’s just one problem: the yearbook, one o...

26 September 2008, 3:41 pm

looking for lit in all the wrong places

Just came upon a Guardian piece looking at the underwhelming quality of 'e-lit'. In my comment on the discussion I found myself reviewing a number of themes that have recurred in my if:book research o...

25 September 2008, 9:31 pm

this is a world of imagination & digitisation

On Thursday October 9th, National Poetry Day in the UK, 2008 if:book london is launching an exciting experiment in reading and writing, supported by Arts Council England. Over the next six months I wi...

25 September 2008, 5:14 pm

Sarah Palin, Crowdsourced

Views of Wikipedia are decidedly mixed in academia, though perhaps trending slowly from mostly negative to grudgingly positive. But regardless of your view of Wikipedia—or your political persuasion�...

23 September 2008, 9:41 pm

Synthesizing art, literature, and Halloween costumes

Natura Morta, Giorgio Morandi, 1956 (via The Met) There is little or nothing new in the world. What matters is the new and different position in which an artist finds himself seeing and considering ...

19 September 2008, 1:05 am

wordia - new definitions of literacy?

This morning, I went to Samuel Johnson's house (now a museum dedicated to 18th-century London) in the old City of London. Today is (or would have been) Samuel Johnson's birthday; the occasion was the ...

18 September 2008, 11:18 pm

History is written by the readers

Pardon me for plagiarizing Churchill, but the victors aren't the only ones writing history these days. At the Institute, we're re-imagining the American History Project's "Who Built America?", hoping ...

18 September 2008, 4:39 pm

Unearthing a Multimedia Time Capsule

Microsoft Multimedia Schubert was published fifteen years ago, in 1993. Developed by the Voyager Company, the program was one of many in an early “Microsoft Multimedia Catalog.” It allows users to...