Buck The Algorithm!
How Weird Old Books and the Wayback Machine can help us escape digital determinism.
A couple of weeks ago, a reader sent me a very interesting link: a book-finding app built by writer Clive Thompson. Before you object that such technology already exists and is known by the name, “Amazon,” get this: Clive’s app will only find you random scans of books written before 1925. As it turns out, Weird Old Books are fascinating cultural artifa…