education

Public Spaces–Disappearing or Transforming?
Sunday February 28, 3:30pm to 5:30pm

The Book House in Dinkytown
429 14th Avenue SE
Minneapolis, MN  55414
(612) 331-1430
(Located near the East Bank of the University of Minnesota)

Featuring:
Michelle Filkins, Associate Professor, Library and Information Services, Metropolitan State University
David Unowsky, Founder of The Hungry Mind Bookstore
Jay Walljasper,  Senior Fellow at Project for Public Spaces and editor of OnTheCommons.org

Moderated by:
Monte Bute, Associate Professor, Sociology, Metropolitan State University

“Was McLuhan Right? Gutenberg’s Galaxy and the Future of the Book”

Sunday, December 6, 2009, 4:00 pm at The Book House in Dinkytown

If you are in the Twin Cities area, put Sunday, December 6, 4:00 pm on your calendar. I would like to invite you to an event that should be lively and entertaining. I am flattered to be on a panel of folks far more distinguished than myself. I anticipate a provocative discussion. The forum is designed to maximize audience participation.

The Book House in Dinkytown is sponsoring a public conversation on the future of the book entitled “Was McLuhan Right? Gutenberg’s Galaxy and the Future of the Book.” How do new technologies, like Kindle and e-Books, change the experience and culture of reading?  Will the physical book become obsolete?  What ramifications will this have for the publishing industry, libraries, bookstores and authors?

Just to add to the sponsor’s blurb, this discussion is not just about books versus alternative forms of reading. The larger question is whether we are at the end of a 500-year epoch that Gutenberg’s printing press and mass literacy helped shape and define. This is the essence of McLuhan’s assertion—are we moving from a print to an oral galaxy? It should be an interesting conversation.

Featured Speakers:

* Monte Bute, Associate Professor, Sociology, Metropolitan State University
* Don Lepper, founder of Book Mobile and Stanton Publication Services
* Eric Lorberer, Editor, Rain Taxi
* David Noble, Emeritus Professor, American Studies, University of Minnesota

Last fall, the University of St. Thomas provoked global condemnation when the Catholic institution banned South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu from speaking on its St. Paul campus. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate soon found another host. Tutu will deliver the Metropolitan State University President’s Lecture on Friday, April 11, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Tickets for the 7 p.m. event are still available to the public (call 877-772-5425). Reduced price tickets are available to students, faculty, staff, and alumni (651-793-1816).

The news media so sensationalized the story of “where” Tutu would or would not speak that they missed the more important journalistic question—“why” was he coming to Minnesota? The Archbishop and his daughter Naomi Tutu will also be involved in the nonprofit youthrive’s PeaceJam conference for youth on April 12 and 13 at Metropolitan State.

Last November at the PeaceJam Slam in St. Paul, I gave the keynote address, “New Tricks from an Old Dog.” Click here to read “New Tricks from an Old Dog.”