oddly, he’s in Cairo and I’m not

Usually I’m writing to Ian Bogost from Cairo, but now he’s the one in Cairo judging the Microsoft competition, while I’m in London. (Terrible travel day… 2 hours on the tarmac in Cairo before takeoff, and 2 more hours on the tarmac in London after landing because the gates were all occupied. I guess that makes 9 hours on the plane for what should be a 5-hour trip.)

Anyway, IAN SAYS MANY THINGS I AGREE WITH HERE about how contact works in the digital age.

As Ian says, I first contacted him, and it was before I had a copy of his book.

He mentions that he never heard how I found out about his book. The reason is just as he says… From time to time, authors plug their own name into Amazon. There are two reasons for this. One is to check sales figures now and then. The other is that if you are mentioned in someone else’s searchable book, it will turn up in the search as well. That’s how I found Ian’s book and several others that mentioned Tool-Being.