weekly round-up [10/02/09]: China, Gift Economies, and Zombies
I’ve been having a my strangely under-productive week, which I blame the sudden cold for, so this post will be relatively short. But hopefully, this amazing photo makes up for it:
- The above image comes from Boston.com‘s photo essay China Celebrates 60 Years, documenting the 60th Anniversary celebrations of communist rule in China. I’ll spare everyone the diasporic musings, and say only that this collection of images was a source of immense, and conflicted, wonder. And also that one of my own childhood photos features me in a tutu, toting a toy machine gun. Just sayin’.
- A couple of pieces from the Chronicle of Higher Education, first a study indicating that free electronic copies don’t hurt print sales of (crazily overpriced) textbooks, and another piece that breaks down the war between libraries and the ubiquity of online search.
- Apparently I’m all about numbers and figures this week, so also an article from the New York Times about slowing rates of decline in global ad sales, which breaks it down by type and geographical region. Not earth-shattering, but notable.
- My MIT C3 Colleague Grant McCracken has an interesting post on the gift economy, about his recent experience at one of Pip Coburn’s lunches, comparing exchange in the good exchanges (as in goods, not exchanges that are good) to those in gift exchanges and the kinds of values and expectations they bring.
- In Media Res this week is all about Zombies! Braaaaaaaaains.
