Status-Q

Blackwell’s in London have installed their first Espresso Book Machine. From the Guardian article:

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Which does make me wonder whether, before long, we won’t have coffee shops in bookstores. We’ll have bookstores in coffee shops…

Hap sent me a link to a couple of beautifully-staged performance ‘scenes’. This is my favourite, in an Antwerp train station:

Closer to home, this is in Picadilly Circus:

These were both corporate-sponsored, but it doesn’t stop them from being great.

They’re reminiscent of those staged by Improv Everywhere. I think the ‘Frozen Grand Central’ was my favourite of theirs so far: