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What Hacker News says
- First, I'll say that I find this characterization of Weltman to be relevant to understanding his intended point.
Second, I'll say that Weltman seriously misunderstands children's literature. The point has been made by many famous children's writers that kids love comic gruesomeness. When J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan, Britain had just ended the Victorian era, when children's literature was serious, morally upright, and deadly dull. Peter Pan upended that and became a smash hit, possibly even bigger than Harry Potter has been.
- Well, "fiction" is an incredibly broad category (if it can even be called that). And "must read" is highly subjective ;-)
If you're just looking for some light entertainment, go for sci-fi or fantasy (Lord of the Rings, anyone?). But if you don't mind some slightly "heavier" reading, have a look at the classics. In some cases they can be a little tricky to understand, but they are called "classics" for a reason...
Specific suggestions (incomplete and in no particular order): Shakespeare's plays, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Harper Lee's "To kill a mockingbird", JM Barrie's "Peter Pan", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories...
- This points in the direction of a "what book should I read next?" tool.
Inspired me to chase down rabbit holes about J.M Barrie (Peter Pan) and Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
- The approach I've been favouring for a while has been to have a data store, I call it the "stacks", based off physical library nomenclature, and then a virtual filesystem which effectively uses searches along various attributes to surface individual items.
Those searches might be based on title, author/creator/contributor, publication/creation dates, assigned identifiers, full-text search, relations between documents, subjects or topics, document type / format, or other aspects.
How that is specified precisely ... I haven't settled on entirely, though short mnemonics, two- or three-letter where possible (ti -> title, au -> author, date, isbn, oclc, doi, etc.) might work.
If the filesystem lives under /docfs, then, say, /docfs/au:barrie/ti:peter+pan would turn up J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Specific document identifiers such as ISBNs, OCLCs, DOIs, or LCCSs could pinpoint specific documents, looser searches such as for Peter Pan might generate a list rather than a unitary response but those individual documents would be further distinguished by other properties.
The filesystem would be virtual rather than static-on-disk. You're effectively exploring the namespace. Creating this as a filesystem rather than, say, as a database query or application-specific data store means that standard filesystem tools would be available to interact with the contents, though modifications of works might require some additional work.
The system could also provide access to works not directly in the stacks, including remote resources (e.g., accessed via URIs and network calls), or applications (through some API). The underlying data store could be in any of several formats, and again the filesystem-based access could abstract between several independent stores.
Now all I need to do is build it ...
- > The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which was invented only six years ago.
Fun fact: J M Barrie who wrote Peter Pan donated the copyright of both the book and play in perpetuity to Ormond Street children's hospital. It's been a significant source of funding for them over the years.
- I'm not sure if GOSH can actually legally block derivative works, the relevant clauses are more about claiming a royalty, not a continuation of copyright, ie:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/VII/crossh...
"Provisions for the benefit of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
The provisions of Schedule 6 have effect for conferring on Children's Charity for the benefit of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children a right to a royalty in respect of the public performance, commercial publication communication to the public of the play “Peter Pan” by Sir James Matthew Barrie, or of any adaptation of that work, notwithstanding that copyright in the work expired on 31st December 1987."
GOSH can of course maintain a moral right as intended inheritor of the rights to approve disprove or derivative works, but as the copyright has expired I'm not sure if they have many legal rights.
(Not a Lawyer, etc. etc.)
