Ray Bradbury: “I Am Not Afraid of Robots. I Am Afraid of People” (1974)

in Letters, Literature, Sci Fi, Technology | August 4th, 2014

BradburyRobotLetter

Any­one remem­ber Michael Crichton’s West­world (or the Simp­sons par­o­dy)? In this dystopi­an 1973 sci-fi, tourists vis­it a tri­umvi­rate of fan­ta­sy theme parks staffed by robot­ic his­tor­i­cal re-enac­tors: Roman World, Medieval World, and the tit­u­lar West World, with its “law­less vio­lence on the Amer­i­can Fron­tier.” When a virus infects the parks’ androids, James Brolin must fight a ruth­less robot gunslinger—played by a stone-faced Yul Brenner—to the death. The film may look laugh­ably dat­ed, but the fears it taps into are any­thing but: 2001, Ter­mi­na­tor, Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, I, Robot, and even a West­world remake in the works—the peren­ni­al theme of man vs. machine, as old in film at least as Fritz Lang’s silent Metrop­o­lis, becomes ever more rel­e­vant in our drone-haunt­ed world.

But are evil—or at least dan­ger­ous­ly malfunctioning—robots some­thing we should legit­i­mate­ly fear? Not accord­ing to vision­ary sci-fi author and Dis­ney enthu­si­ast Ray Brad­bury in a let­ter to Eng­lish writer Bri­an Sib­ley, penned in 1974, one year after the release of theme-park hor­ror West­world. The main body of Bradbury’s let­ter con­sists of a vig­or­ous defense of Walt Dis­ney and Dis­ney­land, against whom “most of the oth­er archi­tects of the mod­ern world were ass­es and fools.” Sib­ley recalls that his ini­tial let­ter “expressed doubts about Disney’s use of Audio-Ani­ma­tron­ic cre­ations in Dis­ney­land.” “At the time,” he explains, “I… had prob­a­bly read too many sci-fi sto­ries about the dan­ger of robots tak­ing over our human world—including, of course, some by Ray—and so saw it as a sin­is­ter rather than benign exper­i­ment.”

After his praise of Dis­ney, Brad­bury writes two agi­tat­ed post­scripts explod­ing what Sib­ley calls “ill-informed and prej­u­diced views” on robots.  He class­es auto­mat­ed enti­ties with benign “exten­sions of peo­ple” like books, film pro­jec­tors, cars, and pre­sum­ably all oth­er forms of tech­nol­o­gy. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that books can­not actu­al­ly wield weapons and kill peo­ple, Brad­bury makes an inter­est­ing argu­ment about fears of robots as akin to those that lead to cen­sor­ship and enforced igno­rance. But Bradbury’s coun­ter­claim sounds a mis­an­throp­ic note that nonethe­less rings true giv­en the salient exam­ples he offers: “I am not afraid of robots,” he states, emphat­i­cal­ly, “I am afraid of peo­ple, peo­ple, peo­ple.” He goes on to list just a few of the con­flicts in which humans kill humans, reli­gious, racial, nation­al­ist, etc.: “Catholics killing Protes­tants… whites killing blacks… Eng­lish killing Irish.…” It’s a short sam­pling that could go on indef­i­nite­ly. Brad­bury strong­ly implies that the fears we project onto robot­ic bogey­men are in real­i­ty well-ground­ed fears of each oth­er. Peo­ple, he sug­gests, can be mon­strous when they don’t “remain human,” and technology—including robots—only assists with the nec­es­sary task of “human­iz­ing” us. “Robots?” Brad­bury writes, “God, I love them. And I will use them humane­ly to teach all of the above.” 

Read a tran­script of the let­ter below, cour­tesy of Let­ters of Note, and be sure to check out that site’s new book-length col­lec­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal cor­re­spon­dence.

June 10, 1974

Dear Bri­an Sib­ley:

This will have to be short. Sor­ry. But I am deep into my screen­play on SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES and have no sec­re­tary, nev­er have had one..so must write all my own letters..200 a weekl!!!

Dis­ney was a dream­er and a doer..while the rest of us were talk­ing ab out the future, he built it. The things he taught us at Dis­ney­land about street plan­ning, crowd move­ment, com­fort, human­i­ty, etc, will influ­ence builders archi­tects, urban plan­ners for the next cen­tu­ry. Because of him we will human­ize our cities, plan small towns again where we can get in touch with one anoth­er again and make democ­ra­cy work cre­ative­ly because we will KNOW the peo­ple we vote for. He was so far ahead of his time it will take is the next 50 years to catch up. You MUST come to Dis­ney­land and eat your words, swal­low your doubts. Most of the oth­er archi­tects of the mod­ern world were ass­es and fools who talked against Big Broth­er and then built pris­ons to put us all up in..our mod­ern envi­ron­ments which sti­fle and destroy us. Dis­ney the so-called con­ser­v­a­tive turns out to be Dis­ney the great man of fore­sight and con­struc­tion.

Enough. Come here soon. I’ll toss you in the Jun­gle Ride Riv­er and ride you on the train into tomor­row, yes­ter­day, and beyond.

Good luck, and stop judg­ing at such a great dis­tance. You are sim­ply not qual­i­fied. Dis­ney was full of errors, para­dox­es, mis­takes. He was also full of life, beau­ty, insight. Which speaks for all of us, eh? We are all mys­ter­ies of light and dark. There are no true con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als, etc, in the world. Only peo­ple.

Best,

(Signed, ‘Ray B.’)

P.S. I can’t find that issue of THE NATION, of the NEW REPUBLIC, which ever it was, with my let­ter in it on Dis­ney. Main­ly I said that if Dis­ney­land was good enough for Cap­tain Bligh it was good enough for me. Charles Laughton and his wife took me to Dis­ney­land for my very first vis­it and our first ride was the Jun­gle Boat Ride, which Laughton imme­di­ate­ly com­man­deered, jeer­ing at cus­tomers going by in oth­er boats! A fan­tas­tic romp for me and a hilar­i­ous day. What a way to start my asso­ci­a­tion with Dis­ney­land! R.B.

P.S. Can’t resist com­ment­ing on you fears of the Dis­ney robots. Why aren’t you afraid of books, then? The fact is, of course, that peo­ple have been afraid of books, down through his­to­ry. They are exten­sions of peo­ple, not peo­ple them­selves. Any machine, any robot, is the sum total of the ways we use it. Why not knock down all robot cam­era devices and the means for repro­duc­ing the stuff that goes into such devices, things called pro­jec­tors in the­atres? A motion pic­ture pro­jec­tor is a non-humanoid robot which repeats truths which we inject into it. Is it inhu­man? Yes. Does it project human truths to human­ize us more often than not? Yes.

The excuse could be made that we should burn all books because some books are dread­ful.

We should mash all cars because some cars get in acci­dents because of the peo­ple dri­ving them.

We should burn down all the the­atres in the world because some films are trash, dri­v­el.

So it is final­ly with the robots you say you fear. Why fear some­thing? Why not cre­ate with it? Why not build robot teach­ers to help out in schools where teach­ing cer­tain sub­jects is a bore for EVERYONE? Why not have Pla­to sit­ting in your Greek Class answer­ing jol­ly ques­tions about his Repub­lic? I would love to exper­i­ment with that. I am not afraid of robots. I am afraid of peo­ple, peo­ple, peo­ple. I want them to remain human. I can help keep them human with the wise and love­ly use of books, films, robots, and my own mind, hands, and heart.

I am afraid of Catholics killing Protes­tants and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of whites killing blacks and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of Eng­lish killing Irish and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of young killing old and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of Com­mu­nists killing Cap­i­tal­ists and vice ver­sa.

But…robots? God, I love them. I will use them humane­ly to teach all of the above. My voice will speak out of them, and it will be a damned nice voice.

Best, R.B.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

The Secret of Life and Love, Accord­ing to Ray Brad­bury (1968)

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Drone’s Eye View of Los Angeles, New York, London, Bangkok & Mexico City

in Technology, Travel | August 2nd, 2014

Unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles, more col­lo­qui­al­ly known as drones, have drawn bad press in recent years: as the intru­sive tools of the com­ing sur­veil­lance state, as deliv­er­ers of death from above in a host of war zones, as the pur­chase-deliv­er­ing har­bin­gers of world dom­i­na­tion by Amazon.com. But as with any tech­nol­o­gy, you can also use drones for the good, or at least for the inter­est­ing. A num­ber of urban pho­tog­ra­phers have attract­ed a great deal of atten­tion in the past few months doing just that, buy­ing or build­ing cam­era-equipped drones of their own, tak­ing to the skies above their cities, and cap­tur­ing views of them we’d nev­er see oth­er­wise. I live in Los Ange­les and like to think I explore its ever-more-revi­tal­ized down­town (from which I type this post) on a reg­u­lar basis, but near­ly every shot Ian Wood got in the ear­ly morn­ing with his drone in the video above shows off an aes­thet­ic ele­ment of the neigh­bor­hood I had­n’t noticed before.

Above, Randy Scott Slavin pro­vides us an equal­ly dream­like drone’s eye view of Amer­i­ca’s oth­er metrop­o­lis, New York City, and below that you can also get a sweep­ing view of Lon­don, its archi­tec­tur­al icons on full dis­play, from sure-hand­ed drone pilot/cameraman Evan Skuthor­pe.

Then we have a flight around the mon­u­ments of Mex­i­co City, in my expe­ri­ence an end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing place from any alti­tude and at any angle, by A&H Aer­i­al Pro­duc­tions.

Those of you who know Bangkok might feel star­tled to get the high­ly unusu­al view of it, near­ly free of peo­ple pro­vid­ed by Coconuts TV, who took a cam­era drone out on a day when pro­test­ers shut down sev­en of the city’s most vital inter­sec­tions. (It reminds me of a few favorite moments by that most cel­e­brat­ed Thai “auteur of lan­guor,” Apichat­pong Weerasethakul.) But you may have noticed that all the videos here focus on depop­u­lat­ed places, due most like­ly to the tricky host of applic­a­ble laws to do with pri­va­cy and aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. So if you decide to film a drone fly­through of your own city, per­haps have a chat with your lawyer first.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? A Cre­ative Use of Google Street View

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Take a Road Trip with Cyberspace Visionary William Gibson, Watch No Maps for These Territories (2000)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | July 31st, 2014


“I prob­a­bly wor­ry less about the real future than the aver­age per­son,” says William Gib­son, the man who coined the term “cyber­space” and wrote books like Neu­ro­mancer, Idoru, and Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion. These have become clas­sics of a sci­ence-fic­tion sub­genre brand­ed as “cyber­punk,” a label that seems to pain Gib­son him­self. “A snap­py label and a man­i­festo would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list,” he says to David Wal­lace-Wells in a 2011 Paris Review inter­view. Yet the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the con­cept of cyberspace — and, to a great extent, its hav­ing become a real­i­ty — still aston­ish­es him. “I saw it go from the yel­low legal pad to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, but cyber­space is every­where now, hav­ing evert­ed and col­o­nized the world. It starts to sound kind of ridicu­lous to speak of cyber­space as being some­where else.” A dozen years ear­li­er, in Mark Neale’s bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries, the author tells of how he first con­ceived it as “an effec­tive buzz­word,” “evoca­tive and essen­tial­ly mean­ing­less,” and observes that, today, the pre­fix “cyber-” has very near­ly gone the way of “elec­tro-”: just as we’ve long since tak­en elec­tri­fi­ca­tion for grant­ed, so we now take con­nect­ed com­put­er­i­za­tion for grant­ed.

“Now,” of course, means the year 1999, when Neale shot the movie’s footage. He did it almost entire­ly in the back of a lim­ou­sine, tricked out for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and media pro­duc­tion, that car­ried Gib­son on a road trip across North Amer­i­ca. The long ride gives us an extend­ed look into Gib­son’s curi­ous, far-reach­ing mind as he explores issues of the inevitabil­i­ty with which we find our­selves “pen­e­trat­ed and co-opt­ed” by our tech­nol­o­gy; grow­ing up in a time when “the future with a cap­i­tal F was very much a going con­cern in North Amer­i­ca”; the loss of “the non-medi­at­ed world,” a coun­try to which we now “can­not find our way back”; the mod­ern real­i­ty’s com­bi­na­tion of “a per­va­sive sense of loss” and a Christ­mas morn­ing-like “excite­ment about what we could be gain­ing”; his ear­ly go-nowhere pas­tich­es of J.G. Bal­lard and how he then wrote Neu­ro­mancer as an approach to the “viable but essen­tial­ly derelict form” of sci­ence fic­tion; his fas­ci­na­tion with the sheer improb­a­bil­i­ty of those machines known as cities; and his mis­sion not to explain our moment, but to “make it acces­si­ble,” find­ing the vast, near-incom­pre­hen­si­ble struc­ture under­ly­ing the pound­ing waves of thought, trend, and tech­nol­o­gy through which we all move. Watch­ing No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries here in cyber­space, I kept for­get­ting that Gib­son said these things a tech-time eter­ni­ty ago, so per­ti­nent do they sound to this moment. And hap­pi­ness, as he puts it in one aside, “is being in the moment.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond Life

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Experience James Joyce’s Ulysses in Virtual Reality, Using the Oculus Rift Headset

in Literature, Technology | July 29th, 2014

If, like Vir­ginia Woolf, you could nev­er read James Joyce’s Ulysses from start to fin­ish, then here’s anoth­er way to expe­ri­ence the mod­ernist clas­sic. Vir­tu­al­ly rather than tex­tu­al­ly. Accord­ing to The Cre­ator’s Project, “an Irish film­mak­er named Eoghan Kid­ney is design­ing a vir­tu­al real­i­ty video game that uses an Ocu­lus Rift head­set to put the play­er in the shoes of Stephen Dedalus as he mean­ders through Dublin on June 16th, 1904.”  On his Fun­dit page and in the video above, Mr. Kid­ney (not to be con­fused with Leopold Bloom’s burnt kid­ney break­fast) gives us an exam­ple of how the “In Ulysses” project will work:

My “In Ulysses” project is anoth­er way of expe­ri­enc­ing the book — this time, using the vir­tu­al for­mat. It will be a vir­tu­al real­i­ty videogame that will allow a user to inhab­it the char­ac­ters of Ulysses and expe­ri­ence the den­si­ty of Joyce’s lan­guage in a fun and acces­si­ble way.…

As a user of “In Ulysses” walks along a vir­tu­al Sandy­mount Strand, the book will be read to them — they will hear Stephen’s thoughts as they are writ­ten — but these thoughts will then be illus­trat­ed around the user in real-time using tex­tu­al anno­ta­tions, images and links. A user can stop walk­ing (there­fore stop­ping Stephen walk­ing) and explore these illus­tra­tions, gain­ing insight into the book and adding to the enjoy­ment of it.

“In Ulysses” has already raised €4000, enough to fund its pro­to­type. No tar­get date for its release has been announced. And, from what I can tell, the con­sumer ver­sion of the Ocu­lus Rift won’t be released until next year. So, like any good read­er of Ulysses, you’ll need to have a lit­tle patience.

H/T Eric O.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Ulysses in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Record­ings (1924/1929)

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Great Opening Lines of Fiction on Old School IBM Punch Cards

in Literature, Technology | July 17th, 2014

Call me Ishmael 2Look­ing to kill some time dur­ing the dog days of sum­mer? Here’s one option that John Ptak came up with. On his intrigu­ing blog, The His­to­ry of Ideas, he writes: “Isn’t this great?  I bumped into a won­der­ful site called kloth.net that pro­vides a free-to-all and unre­strict­ed use of their punch card emu­la­tor. It was found while look­ing for dat­ing ideas for an IBM 5081 card that I have that has pro­gram­ming infor­ma­tion for the BINAC com­put­er (ca. late 1940’s), and kloth.net had info on the his­to­ry of IBM cards as well as the emulator–plus oth­er stuff. Com­plete­ly dis­tract­ed from the BINAC quest, I cre­at­ed some cards using some great first lines of lit­er­a­ture.  You can play too!”  I cre­at­ed two of my own, using The Amer­i­can Book Review’s list of 100 great open­ing lines.

I am an invisible man 2

What exact­ly is a punch card, our younger read­ers might right­ly ask? An IBM web site tells us:

Per­haps the ear­li­est icon of the Infor­ma­tion Age was a sim­ple punched card pro­duced by IBM, com­mon­ly known as the “IBM card.” Mea­sur­ing just 7- 3/8 inch­es by 3- 1/4 inch­es, the piece of smooth stock paper was unas­sum­ing, to be sure. But tak­en col­lec­tive­ly, the IBM card [like the flop­py disks that came lat­er] held near­ly all of the world’s known infor­ma­tion for just under half a century—an impres­sive feat even by today’s mea­sures. It rose to pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the Great Depres­sion and quick­ly became a ubiq­ui­tous install­ment in the worlds of data pro­cess­ing and pop­u­lar cul­ture. What’s more, the punched card [see exam­ples from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty here] pro­vid­ed such a sig­nif­i­cant prof­it stream that it was instru­men­tal to IBM’s rapid growth in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Now punch away.…

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

The First Piz­za Ordered by Com­put­er, 1974

Great Moments in Com­put­er His­to­ry: Dou­glas Engel­bart Presents “The Moth­er of All Demos” (1968)

A Short His­to­ry of Roman­ian Com­put­ing: From 1961 to 1989

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

 

 

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A Threat to Internet Freedom: Filmmaker Brian Knappenberger Explains Why Net Neutrality Matters

in Technology | July 10th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks back, we men­tioned that Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er had released his new doc­u­men­tary about Aaron Swartz, The Internet’s Own Boy, under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, mak­ing it free to watch online. He now returns with a short op-doc for The New York Times. It’s called A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom, and it explains why pre­serv­ing Net neu­tral­i­ty remains “crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant for the future of Inter­net free­dom and access.” It you’re get­ting up to speed on the whole net neu­tral­i­ty ques­tion, you’ll per­haps want to pair this video with Michael Good­win’s new illus­trat­ed primer, Vi Hart’s doo­dle-filled intro­duc­tion or John Oliv­er’s comedic but not less sub­stan­tive take on the mat­ter.

via Boing­Bo­ing

 

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Percussionist Marlon Brando Patented His Invention for Tuning Conga Drums

in Music, Technology, Television | July 10th, 2014

Maybe you knew about Mar­cel Ducham­p’s pas­sion for chess. But did you know about Mar­lon Bran­do’s pas­sion for con­ga drums? Long­time fans may have first picked up on it in 1955, when the actor gave a microwave-link tele­vi­sion tour of his Hol­ly­wood Hills home to Edward R. Mur­row on Per­son to Per­son. Halfway through the seg­ment (above), Bran­do gets into his his­to­ry with the instru­ment, and even offers to “run down­stairs and give you a lick or two” — and the always high­ly-pre­pared pro­gram had cam­eras in the con­ga room ready to cap­ture this “impromp­tu” per­for­mance. While the inter­ests actors keep on the side may tend to wane, Bran­do’s seems to have waxed, and lat­er in life he even, writes Movieline’s Jen Yam­a­to, “enlist­ed the help of Latin jazz per­cus­sion­ist Pon­cho Sanchez while devel­op­ing a new tun­ing sys­tem for con­ga drums.” We can behold the extent and seri­ous­ness of Bran­do’s pur­suit of con­ga per­fec­tion with a look at one of those patents, filed in 2002, for an auto­mat­ic “drum­head ten­sion­ing device and method.”

BrandoCongaDesign

As The Atlantic’s Rebec­ca Green­field explains in a post on “Patents of the Rich and Famous,” “tight­en­ing a drum takes a lot of effort. Once the drum head los­es its ten­sion, there are typ­i­cal­ly six sep­a­rate rods that need tight­en­ing. Far too many rods for Mar­lon. Bran­do explains that oth­ers have tried to devel­op mech­a­nisms that would improve the drum tight­en­ing expe­ri­ence but none of them pro­vid­ed a sim­ple or afford­able solu­tion.” Hence his motor­ized “sim­ple and inex­pen­sive drum tun­ing device that is also accu­rate and reli­able and not sub­ject to inad­ver­tent adjust­ments.” And if you have no need for an auto­mat­ic con­ga drum tuner, per­haps we can inter­est you in anoth­er of Bran­do’s achieve­ments? “He had these shoes that you can wear in the pool, that would increase fric­tion as you walk on the bot­tom of the pool to give you a bet­ter work­out,” says patent attor­ney Kevin Costan­za in an NPR sto­ry on Bran­do’s inven­tions. Or maybe you’d pre­fer to sim­ply watch The God­fa­ther again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­lon Bran­do Screen Tests for Rebel With­out A Cause (1947)

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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130 Free Microsoft eBooks & Guides

in e-books, Technology | July 9th, 2014

msft

Quick fyi: Eric Lig­man, a Microsoft Sales Excel­lence Man­ag­er, has gath­ered togeth­er a big list of free Microsoft ebooks and resource guides that will help you nav­i­gate through var­i­ous Microsoft issues. Some of the texts are geared toward con­sumers; oth­ers toward IT pro­fes­sion­als work­ing with Microsoft prod­ucts. A few handy titles include:

Most titles are made avail­able as in epub, pdf, and mobi for­mats.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Free Text­books: Com­put­er Sci­ence

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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