Jia Lin’s Weblog

June 15, 2006

guess it’s not too late to jump in

Filed under: general — lmeimei @ 8:10 am

I will not write anything about Da Vinci code if I had not read an old issue of business Week about how popular the book and movie are in France today and how Paris’ tourism are boosted by the book; and I would not written anything if I had not seen a whole two shelves of Da Vinci Code interpretation at Philosophy session when I looked for “Fear and Trembling” at Barns & Noble. I would not have read it if there had not been 6 people at the boarding gate reading it when my connecting flight at Newark from Amsterdam to Seattle was 4 hours delayed by a storm. Coming back from Rome and Florence, I thought I might find something in it to relate to my trip…Well, it’s a page turner, for sure, interesting story, something like Popular Science plus Reader’s Digest plus Agatha Christie (sorry, that’s the most recent detective book author I’ve read). Interesting read, but the bigger question popped into my mind afterwards is “why is it so hot?”, not only among 40 million readers, but also all the critics, historians and philosophers, and now the French and Louvre curator! I bet they ponder on the same question as me but everyone is happy to be part of this big phenomenon. It looks like the book provides a rare platform/stage for all the high-brows to get in touch with the audience of pop culture, and that’s the where its value is at. Let’s just all jump onto the bandwagon and make catholic church even a bigger issue.

I have no doubt that Mr. Brown is a very smart and knowledgeable historian, but I am not sure he is the best writer. I hardly get any esthetic pleasure from the writing/language, and the plots and scenes are too predictable for me. Speaking of that, I realize I can’t comment too much on contemporary/pop fictions. The last time I read a fiction written by a living writer was 5 years ago and the book was “bag of bones” by Steven King- he can write though, at least for the first 1/3 of the book. I wish I could read more fictions now since I finally finished school. However, I am still at the 68^th page of Brother Karamazov, and there are another 100 years or so of writers to catch up after Dostoyevsky before I can officially move to read living writers (kidding).

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June 12, 2006

hyperlinked and unlinked

Filed under: research, travel — lmeimei @ 7:35 am

I was in Philadelphia yesterday for Hyperlinked-Society conference organized by Annenberg Policy Center at UPenn. It’s a very interesting gathering, with a lot of big names in media, academia and industry. The meeting is not literarily about “hyperlinks”, though there is one panel showing fancy network graphs, most of which I’ve seen in several other conferences. With six panels from 8am to 5pm, the conference was overwhelmingly packed with broad range of web2.0 topics. There is vivid account from Jay Rosen of making oneself known and ones’ voice heard without getting through press; there is a dramatic encounter of Wikipedia and NYT (via David Weinberger who is also in the conference), defining the structure of professional and amateur media on line. There is interesting discussion on how to help internet users find information they need (I never thought this would be such a big issue). Alex presented our research on blog mapping (which makes me feel very proud). There is a shocking statement-“diversity means lower quality” from Microsoft’s Mark Smith that silence the congregation two second followed by some heated arguments (I thought he had some point though it sounds not very politically correct)

There are a lot of big ideas floating on the air, a strong contrast to the AAAI Symposia I attended three months ago, which was full of the most trivial technical details. I think there is a lot of bridging work to do for this these two worlds-the idea and the technology. Regardless of the sharp difference, each conference can hardly go without attacking (or praising, in some rare occasion) Google.

On Thursday night, I met lovely Yunan, who took me to a Korean restaurant for her second dinner within an hour.

Took wrong train on the way to airport, and found myself standing at a bridge in a town called Fernwood-lots of huge stone houses but no white or yellow face. I felt so lost and for a second could not remember how I was left alone in this strange place, totally un-linked.