of the net, I suppose we're talking 1995 or so, Microsoft started an online magazine called Mungo Park. The proof of this is that entering www.mungopark.com in your browser takes you Expedia. At the time, the idea of using the Internet to book a flight was considered novel, and the feeling was the novice public had to be eased into this new experience through the back door.
The real Mungo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_Park_(explorer) was a Scot who drowned on the Niger River. The magazine nonetheless pitched Adventure Travel, and I wrote a few pieces during my free time. Microsoft paid well, and the work was really quite easy because you couldn't write very long at all. In fact what I most remember from the experience was sparring with the editor, by phone at her desk in Redmond, about the future of words on the web.
Part of it was that pages loaded much m-u-c-h slower then. But the main thing was that the copy was just hard to read after more than a few minutes. My tagline, the few words of bio at the bottom of the story, ended with: "He bets you printed this out."
Ten years later I almost never read a newspaper on anything but the Web (in no small part because eight of those years have been spent overseas, where it's hard to get home delivery). But fatigue is still a big factor, at least for me.
I'm old, though.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
Future of the Book addition
One of our colleagues, Andrew Altschul, points us to this article about the Google book scan project in the New York Times.
The dream is an old one: to have in one place all knowledge, past and present. All books, all documents, all conceptual works, in all languages. It is a familiar hope, in part because long ago we briefly built such a library. The great library at Alexandria, constructed around 300 B.C., was designed to hold all the scrolls circulating in the known world. At one time or another, the library held about half a million scrolls, estimated to have been between 30 and 70 percent of all books in existence then. But even before this great library was lost, the moment when all knowledge could be housed in a single building had passed. Since then, the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it. For 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has been a mythical dream that kept receding further into the infinite future.
Future of the Book addition
One of our colleagues, Andrew Altschul, points us to this article about the Google book scan project in the New York Times.
The dream is an old one: to have in one place all knowledge, past and present. All books, all documents, all conceptual works, in all languages. It is a familiar hope, in part because long ago we briefly built such a library. The great library at Alexandria, constructed around 300 B.C., was designed to hold all the scrolls circulating in the known world. At one time or another, the library held about half a million scrolls, estimated to have been between 30 and 70 percent of all books in existence then. But even before this great library was lost, the moment when all knowledge could be housed in a single building had passed. Since then, the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it. For 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has been a mythical dream that kept receding further into the infinite future.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Everything good for you is not all online
Re: books, the future of the book, etc. …
** My wife and I recently examined an e-book, made by SONY. If this is what technology offers as competition, the book has little to fear. Not many lines of text, not many words per line. Turning the “page” is not intuitive, although a reader could get used to it. Folks who didn’t know the comfort of holding and reading an actual book might find the SONY suitable, even a delight. But for those like me who cherish and are even obsessive about books, it will never do. … On the other hand, it has advantages – you can store lots of reading material in a single e-book, and it makes very low power demands. … And we know, down the line, the technology will improve.
** I love the smell of old paperbacks. I have books that have been with me for decades. Their pages smell of slow decay, but I’m happy with that. The memory of reading them remains, vivid enough that I can recall where I was when I read them. But this is subjective and personal and will not save the book unless something like it is felt widely. The only ones who feel like this are book lovers, a minority.
** About 4 or 5 years ago, the National Endowment for the Humanities (or an org like it) issued a study, saying people over the last few decades had come to read less. Seemed like a definitive study. I tried but couldn’t find it, or I'd link to it here. ... This seems to be contradicted by what Cory Doctorow says (in the Forbes article), that people’s reading habits are actually robust, thanks to the Web. I have my doubts about that but nothing to back those doubts up. … I’d like to see an in-depth study that examines the following:
a) the types of books people are reading, the genres. Yeah, they’re reading tech manuals, but what else? … In the bookstores the front-of-the-store shelves & tables seem full of current events, history, politics, self-help and celebrity bios. Do people read fiction and poetry and philosophy (which, to be honest, I read little of myself these days)? The NEH said less & less of that stuff.
b) whether people read cover to cover or read a chapter or two and then let it drop (I’ve done that too often recently). I’d like to know how many people read entire books, and how many books in a year, say.
c) the link between reading habits online and off. Does your book reading rise as you read more online, or what?
Does anyone know of such a study?
** Maybe online publishing is the way to go. But what kind of readership can you expect? It’s a niche world after all. … I have a friend who’s written four highly unformulaic novels and can’t get any published (most of the publishing houses are nothing if not conventional). I’m going to suggest he think about online publishing. Hope he remains my friend.
** Have you ever read a book while walking? Obviously it has to be an easy kind of strolling, in a safe place, and there can’t be lots of people around or you crash into them. I’ve tried this and like it a lot. My mind is more engaged if my body is also working.
Re: New Media Writing
** While searching for that NEH study on reading, I found A Conversation with Steven Johnson. He's the author of EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU, "a defense of today's computer culture,” according to the site. The interview is fairly long, but it’s spot-on with regard to new media and with something Adam said the other night in class (I’m paraphrasing), that he wants to see the Web become a more “meditative” space, with postings as personal as, say, a good novel. ... Steven Johnson says: “I remember joining Echo [in about 1991] … and posting my thoughts and listening to what other people were saying, having this conversation among strangers at an incredible level of sophistication. One of the most amazing things about this forum is that you get into a level of depth and intricacy, and intimacy sometimes.”
** My adventures so far with this blog and the wiki, etc., have been a long slog. The curve for me is steep, and I’m trusting to see a reward at the end. The moments are many where I am frustrated with the degree of technical sophistication that’s required, and with my own distractions, as I follow one link after another. I’m amazed at the amount of time this is taking.
** How do issues of libel, plagiarism, copyright infringement and first-amendment values figure in all of this? As a newspaper reporter – my last occupation – I had a corporation behind me (the Anchorage Daily News and its crack first amendment lawyer) in the event I should get into trouble, accused of libel, for instance. As a freelance Web cowboy word manufacturer, who’s going to protect me, support me, in a libel lawsuit? In the Wild West of the Web, people are saying anything they want to, and sooner or later, the proverbial poop is going to hit the fan.
** As a newspaper reporter, I had editors vetting every thing I wrote. They made sure I was on point and didn’t blab to the moon, as I’m doing now, when no one is watching my back. If you’ve read this far, well, guess I’m lucky. … By the way, have you noticed that most blog entries out there in the wider blogosphere elicit few comments? I know a man, one of the smartest people on the planet, who’s blogging regularly about the future of newspapers and more importantly of journalism and the heart of its enterprise, and few people are commenting on his posts, which are meaty with ideas and inspiration. Is it possible – oh perish the thought – that the multitudes who are writing online, who are strutting as on a stage, an electronic world stage, are performing for the illusion of an audience?
** The new media world needs editors badly. The writing is not just sloppy, with typos and misspellings and all the rest. It’s often lame and self-indulgent (no surprise there). Often the stuff is the quality of a first draft. I once played guitar in a band. Before I got the guitar, when I was hungering for one but didn’t know how to get it and what kind to get, a friend who also wanted one said to me that I should not even go near an electric guitar, for an electric guitar would only “amplify your mistakes.” (I bought electric, just as he did.) ... The web amplifies our mistakes.
** My wife and I recently examined an e-book, made by SONY. If this is what technology offers as competition, the book has little to fear. Not many lines of text, not many words per line. Turning the “page” is not intuitive, although a reader could get used to it. Folks who didn’t know the comfort of holding and reading an actual book might find the SONY suitable, even a delight. But for those like me who cherish and are even obsessive about books, it will never do. … On the other hand, it has advantages – you can store lots of reading material in a single e-book, and it makes very low power demands. … And we know, down the line, the technology will improve.
** I love the smell of old paperbacks. I have books that have been with me for decades. Their pages smell of slow decay, but I’m happy with that. The memory of reading them remains, vivid enough that I can recall where I was when I read them. But this is subjective and personal and will not save the book unless something like it is felt widely. The only ones who feel like this are book lovers, a minority.
** About 4 or 5 years ago, the National Endowment for the Humanities (or an org like it) issued a study, saying people over the last few decades had come to read less. Seemed like a definitive study. I tried but couldn’t find it, or I'd link to it here. ... This seems to be contradicted by what Cory Doctorow says (in the Forbes article), that people’s reading habits are actually robust, thanks to the Web. I have my doubts about that but nothing to back those doubts up. … I’d like to see an in-depth study that examines the following:
a) the types of books people are reading, the genres. Yeah, they’re reading tech manuals, but what else? … In the bookstores the front-of-the-store shelves & tables seem full of current events, history, politics, self-help and celebrity bios. Do people read fiction and poetry and philosophy (which, to be honest, I read little of myself these days)? The NEH said less & less of that stuff.
b) whether people read cover to cover or read a chapter or two and then let it drop (I’ve done that too often recently). I’d like to know how many people read entire books, and how many books in a year, say.
c) the link between reading habits online and off. Does your book reading rise as you read more online, or what?
Does anyone know of such a study?
** Maybe online publishing is the way to go. But what kind of readership can you expect? It’s a niche world after all. … I have a friend who’s written four highly unformulaic novels and can’t get any published (most of the publishing houses are nothing if not conventional). I’m going to suggest he think about online publishing. Hope he remains my friend.
** Have you ever read a book while walking? Obviously it has to be an easy kind of strolling, in a safe place, and there can’t be lots of people around or you crash into them. I’ve tried this and like it a lot. My mind is more engaged if my body is also working.
Re: New Media Writing
** While searching for that NEH study on reading, I found A Conversation with Steven Johnson. He's the author of EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU, "a defense of today's computer culture,” according to the site. The interview is fairly long, but it’s spot-on with regard to new media and with something Adam said the other night in class (I’m paraphrasing), that he wants to see the Web become a more “meditative” space, with postings as personal as, say, a good novel. ... Steven Johnson says: “I remember joining Echo [in about 1991] … and posting my thoughts and listening to what other people were saying, having this conversation among strangers at an incredible level of sophistication. One of the most amazing things about this forum is that you get into a level of depth and intricacy, and intimacy sometimes.”
** My adventures so far with this blog and the wiki, etc., have been a long slog. The curve for me is steep, and I’m trusting to see a reward at the end. The moments are many where I am frustrated with the degree of technical sophistication that’s required, and with my own distractions, as I follow one link after another. I’m amazed at the amount of time this is taking.
** How do issues of libel, plagiarism, copyright infringement and first-amendment values figure in all of this? As a newspaper reporter – my last occupation – I had a corporation behind me (the Anchorage Daily News and its crack first amendment lawyer) in the event I should get into trouble, accused of libel, for instance. As a freelance Web cowboy word manufacturer, who’s going to protect me, support me, in a libel lawsuit? In the Wild West of the Web, people are saying anything they want to, and sooner or later, the proverbial poop is going to hit the fan.
** As a newspaper reporter, I had editors vetting every thing I wrote. They made sure I was on point and didn’t blab to the moon, as I’m doing now, when no one is watching my back. If you’ve read this far, well, guess I’m lucky. … By the way, have you noticed that most blog entries out there in the wider blogosphere elicit few comments? I know a man, one of the smartest people on the planet, who’s blogging regularly about the future of newspapers and more importantly of journalism and the heart of its enterprise, and few people are commenting on his posts, which are meaty with ideas and inspiration. Is it possible – oh perish the thought – that the multitudes who are writing online, who are strutting as on a stage, an electronic world stage, are performing for the illusion of an audience?
** The new media world needs editors badly. The writing is not just sloppy, with typos and misspellings and all the rest. It’s often lame and self-indulgent (no surprise there). Often the stuff is the quality of a first draft. I once played guitar in a band. Before I got the guitar, when I was hungering for one but didn’t know how to get it and what kind to get, a friend who also wanted one said to me that I should not even go near an electric guitar, for an electric guitar would only “amplify your mistakes.” (I bought electric, just as he did.) ... The web amplifies our mistakes.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Dreams in Digital
As other people have discussed, I think the book is pretty safe right now as an institution. While single songs can be listened to in relative ease on the computer, books are a different matter. I personally don't see myself curling up with a laptop to read a book, and I think people reading books online while at the beach or in the bathtub will lead to accidents.
But right now we live in strange times. For every innovation there is an equally strong feeling that we are losing something important. I think that a great deal of the soul, what makes a book a book- is lost because of digital translation. A book becomes a coded series of letters and numbers instead of a physical thing. While the success of Cory Doctorow is fantastic, I see it in the same pattern as Youtube making Ok Go’s career or Chuck Norris becoming a hit with 20 somethings. I see it indicative of people coming together to exchange ideas; I’m not entirely convinced that had he just published the book in physical form, several avid fans online could not have given him the same popularity. I’m reminded of the The Tipping Point here: the avid minority that spreads an idea like wildfire.
With the rise of websites like facebook.com, myspace.com, match.com, etc. a great deal of our culture has been transferred to the internet. Some people welcome the change. People spend their lives on World of Warcraft; you could at one point buy items for the game with real money via Ebay. I’ve heard people have killed each other in real life over fake deaths in Counterstrike.
On the other hand, as Darren pointed out, a lot of the digital experience is unsatisfactory. You are the god of your own utopia. Facebook enables instant contact with everyone. Chat rooms replace phone conversations and online versions of the Sims replace the real relationships. When things become convenient and easy, they become less mysterious and appealing. I’m not saying the same will happen with books, but I worry that with convenience certain aspects of their appeal will be lost. Perhaps I’m cynical; by making books searchable, I think you’ll get a lot more websites like pinkmonkey.com and less true readers. Also, I believe that intangible feeling that you get when you open a new book- well, no amount of technology will replace that.
But right now we live in strange times. For every innovation there is an equally strong feeling that we are losing something important. I think that a great deal of the soul, what makes a book a book- is lost because of digital translation. A book becomes a coded series of letters and numbers instead of a physical thing. While the success of Cory Doctorow is fantastic, I see it in the same pattern as Youtube making Ok Go’s career or Chuck Norris becoming a hit with 20 somethings. I see it indicative of people coming together to exchange ideas; I’m not entirely convinced that had he just published the book in physical form, several avid fans online could not have given him the same popularity. I’m reminded of the The Tipping Point here: the avid minority that spreads an idea like wildfire.
With the rise of websites like facebook.com, myspace.com, match.com, etc. a great deal of our culture has been transferred to the internet. Some people welcome the change. People spend their lives on World of Warcraft; you could at one point buy items for the game with real money via Ebay. I’ve heard people have killed each other in real life over fake deaths in Counterstrike.
On the other hand, as Darren pointed out, a lot of the digital experience is unsatisfactory. You are the god of your own utopia. Facebook enables instant contact with everyone. Chat rooms replace phone conversations and online versions of the Sims replace the real relationships. When things become convenient and easy, they become less mysterious and appealing. I’m not saying the same will happen with books, but I worry that with convenience certain aspects of their appeal will be lost. Perhaps I’m cynical; by making books searchable, I think you’ll get a lot more websites like pinkmonkey.com and less true readers. Also, I believe that intangible feeling that you get when you open a new book- well, no amount of technology will replace that.
SparkNotes: Reading made Easy
SparkNotes was founded by a couple Harvard students in 1998, under the name The Spark, and initially functioned as a date website. After observing that the overwhelming majority of users were high school and college kids, the team wracked their brains for other products they could provide to crank up hits. They wrote and presented five study guides on their website and received a flood of requests for more. SparkNotes is now owned by Barnes and Noble, has over 7 million registered users, and the guides are available free online, in PDF, and in print.
The literature guides provide themes, motifs, character analysis, analysis of major quotes and scenes, and many other tools that enable students to tackle difficult texts. For some students it offers an enriching interaction with literature and helps many seek out meaning in subtle or difficult texts. SparkNotes also provides chapter-by-chapter synopses of thousands of novels and access to reviews and essays, offering students the ability to write passable essays without picking up a novel.
No Fear Shakespeare is one of the most successful links on the site, and provides Shakespeare translated into modern prose, so students can write essays or rant away in a classroom about a play they have never even read. Essays are available on the message board that students could easily print out and hand in. Many teachers hate SparkNotes and it is considered cheating to reference it in a lot schools across the country.
Though, type in any novel onto the message board search and you will find detailed conversations between students from across the globe. There are specific references to pages and scenes, ideas are thrown around, and essay theses are born every minute. SparkNotes has a growing reading base and gives kids an opportunity to talk about literature with peers and people who are muddling through difficult stuff just like them. SparkNotes can be accessed through text messaging so kids without internet can ask questions about literature, philosophy, or history, and receive information within minutes (though I’m not sure how many kids without internet have cell phones).
As far as the downfall of the book is concerned, I would say that SparkNotes has hurt print a lot as more and more kids realize they can scrape by without picking up a book. But it helps kids chat – ah, what a crazy, bittersweet thing it is. They are all loaded, though, so I’m not sure if it matters to them.
The literature guides provide themes, motifs, character analysis, analysis of major quotes and scenes, and many other tools that enable students to tackle difficult texts. For some students it offers an enriching interaction with literature and helps many seek out meaning in subtle or difficult texts. SparkNotes also provides chapter-by-chapter synopses of thousands of novels and access to reviews and essays, offering students the ability to write passable essays without picking up a novel.
No Fear Shakespeare is one of the most successful links on the site, and provides Shakespeare translated into modern prose, so students can write essays or rant away in a classroom about a play they have never even read. Essays are available on the message board that students could easily print out and hand in. Many teachers hate SparkNotes and it is considered cheating to reference it in a lot schools across the country.
Though, type in any novel onto the message board search and you will find detailed conversations between students from across the globe. There are specific references to pages and scenes, ideas are thrown around, and essay theses are born every minute. SparkNotes has a growing reading base and gives kids an opportunity to talk about literature with peers and people who are muddling through difficult stuff just like them. SparkNotes can be accessed through text messaging so kids without internet can ask questions about literature, philosophy, or history, and receive information within minutes (though I’m not sure how many kids without internet have cell phones).
As far as the downfall of the book is concerned, I would say that SparkNotes has hurt print a lot as more and more kids realize they can scrape by without picking up a book. But it helps kids chat – ah, what a crazy, bittersweet thing it is. They are all loaded, though, so I’m not sure if it matters to them.
Don't tell anyone,
but I played World of Warcraft. The subscriber count recently passed 8 million, which at $15/month in the US produces some pretty staggering numbers. But the main reason I bring this up is to point out that the group I was a part of isn't exactly, like, small. The game itself is a sort of interactive narrative, but Darren's post reminded me that the most memorable parts of the game occur when the fabric of the game-narrative is blurred with events in the real world. This post is a confession of misused hours and an commentary on fused narratives. How many hours? I'd rather not think about it. Interacting narratives? Well:
I'll pick three. I was online during the 2004 tsunami. I used to read Google News compulsively while I played, so I found out immediately. But so as I read these traumatizing headlines the gameworld continued to function normally, with players blithely killing boars and such. After a little while the disconnect was getting to be too much to stand, so I said something in the game. I believe what I wrote was something along the lines of, "holy shit, there was a tsunami in Asia." I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that nobody believed me. The game is full of hoaxes, some of them pretty bizzare. "Chuck Norris is dead" is, for some reason, one of the most common. So but when challenged about the tsunami, I recommended that everyone check Google, and there was soon a state of sort of online collective shock. The chat channels, which are usually filled with self-congratulatory stuff like "I pwned that n00b" or "ice mage ftw" were suddenly somber and introspective. Guys with character names like Gandor confessed that "I don't know how to deal with this" and more than one person wondered, for example, about the sea level of Los Angeles. In terms of the news spreading, the game was a microcosm of the real world. In the game's major cities, that's all anyone was talking about. But for literally days, players would enter cities from some of the game's more obscure areas and have no idea what all the fuss was about. They were confused and mystified, and quickly pilloried, abused, and enlightened by other players. Basically the game became a real-time forum for the dissemination of news, and of and discussion and commentary on a much larger scope permitted by, say, the delivery of a newspaper into a family residence.
The second was this. I was in a group with a player who must have been about fourteen. You learn to pick up age pretty quickly from the language. While killing boars, or whatever he was doing, he told me that his grandfather was going into surgery, major surgery. "I don't know what to do if he doesn't make it." And then, verbatim, "but he will, I know he will." The kid could have been twelve. I was torn. On the one hand, this was an excruciatingly awkward position. Unlike real life, the game world can be pretty conducive to this type of confession to a total stranger. But believe me, it's just as awkward to be on the receiving end online. Because what do you say? On the other hand, my heart cracked for this kid. Because how could it not? I talked him through whatever he felt like talking about. It painfully clear that he didn't have anyone else to talk to. His grandfather died shortly after the surgery. He reacted by spending twelve hours a day playing the game. He said it distracted him.
The third story is that I may have played with Jordan Farmar on the eve of the NBA draft. Or at least, he claimed to be Jordan Farmar, he talked plausibly about UCLA, and he knew as much about Jordan Farmar to answer any questions. All he could talk about was how nervous he was about the draft. About which teams he was hoping for, and which he was dreading. Apparently, for Jordan Farmar, World of Warcraft is stress relief. I talked to my friends at UCLA and got them to ask around. Apparently, Jordan Farmar really does play World of Warcraft. Was it him? It's not likely. But it does raise the point that a game like World of Warcraft provides a universally accessible, universally readable platform for the small-scale construction and distribution of really elaborate fictions.
I'll pick three. I was online during the 2004 tsunami. I used to read Google News compulsively while I played, so I found out immediately. But so as I read these traumatizing headlines the gameworld continued to function normally, with players blithely killing boars and such. After a little while the disconnect was getting to be too much to stand, so I said something in the game. I believe what I wrote was something along the lines of, "holy shit, there was a tsunami in Asia." I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that nobody believed me. The game is full of hoaxes, some of them pretty bizzare. "Chuck Norris is dead" is, for some reason, one of the most common. So but when challenged about the tsunami, I recommended that everyone check Google, and there was soon a state of sort of online collective shock. The chat channels, which are usually filled with self-congratulatory stuff like "I pwned that n00b" or "ice mage ftw" were suddenly somber and introspective. Guys with character names like Gandor confessed that "I don't know how to deal with this" and more than one person wondered, for example, about the sea level of Los Angeles. In terms of the news spreading, the game was a microcosm of the real world. In the game's major cities, that's all anyone was talking about. But for literally days, players would enter cities from some of the game's more obscure areas and have no idea what all the fuss was about. They were confused and mystified, and quickly pilloried, abused, and enlightened by other players. Basically the game became a real-time forum for the dissemination of news, and of and discussion and commentary on a much larger scope permitted by, say, the delivery of a newspaper into a family residence.
The second was this. I was in a group with a player who must have been about fourteen. You learn to pick up age pretty quickly from the language. While killing boars, or whatever he was doing, he told me that his grandfather was going into surgery, major surgery. "I don't know what to do if he doesn't make it." And then, verbatim, "but he will, I know he will." The kid could have been twelve. I was torn. On the one hand, this was an excruciatingly awkward position. Unlike real life, the game world can be pretty conducive to this type of confession to a total stranger. But believe me, it's just as awkward to be on the receiving end online. Because what do you say? On the other hand, my heart cracked for this kid. Because how could it not? I talked him through whatever he felt like talking about. It painfully clear that he didn't have anyone else to talk to. His grandfather died shortly after the surgery. He reacted by spending twelve hours a day playing the game. He said it distracted him.
The third story is that I may have played with Jordan Farmar on the eve of the NBA draft. Or at least, he claimed to be Jordan Farmar, he talked plausibly about UCLA, and he knew as much about Jordan Farmar to answer any questions. All he could talk about was how nervous he was about the draft. About which teams he was hoping for, and which he was dreading. Apparently, for Jordan Farmar, World of Warcraft is stress relief. I talked to my friends at UCLA and got them to ask around. Apparently, Jordan Farmar really does play World of Warcraft. Was it him? It's not likely. But it does raise the point that a game like World of Warcraft provides a universally accessible, universally readable platform for the small-scale construction and distribution of really elaborate fictions.
Scary Potter
So, when I looked at the Forbes articles, the title "Harry Potter and the Ministry of Fire" inevitably caught my eye. I mean, I once attended a midnight book release party at Barnes and Noble for HP and the Half Blood Prince. Anyway, seeing how the Turners burned Harry Potter books without even reading them got me to thinking about authority. Namely, the authority that books carry just by being books, and how that innate authority of a book is lost in New Media writing like wikis and blogs. Of course, the Harry Potter series has a great deal of additional authority because of its extreme popularity. But it seems to me that just by being bound and printed, the importance of an author's words become heightened. As the blurb user who printed his business proposal pointed out, "we are averse to throwing out books."
For one thing, a book obviously goes through a lot of hands before it ends up in the "New Fiction" section at Borders. Tons of editors read through it and fix it until it probably doesn't hold too much resemblance to its first draft. But wikis and blogs and stuff like that are fairly uncensored in comparison. Take this post, for example: nobody is here to tell me, "this sucks, you had better cut that part out." (Isn't that scary?) Anyway, the thing is, there's more to a book's authority than that. Even in comparison with an ebook that has gone through the same process, there's just something about the materiality of a book that makes it seem important. Somebody cared enough to put money and paper and ink into this thing, and that makes it real. Real enough to make two Michigan pastors so scared of the power of a work of fiction that they publicly burned it.
That's a big reason why I think books aren't an endangered species. I would never substitute an ebook for a paperback. An ebook just doesn't hold the same tangible importance. Remember James Frey's A Million Little Pieces? This might not be a great example, but I'm going to go with it anyway because I was personally really moved by the book. He published it as non-fiction, and it's a really gritty story of drug addiction. It's really well done, (I cried throughout the whole thing, and I was on an airplane so it was extra embarassing.) And it touched a lot of people, including Oprah, who launched it to bestseller-dom and then debunked it publicly when she found out that portions had been fabricated. That book held a lot of authority! For its short-lived glory period, it was considered to be one of the most important and personal accounts of drug addiction and recovery. I don't think that his story could have been told in the same way in another forum. If he had written the exact same thing in a blog or even a respected website, it never would have achieved the same reactions it did. Oprah was insulted and embarassed to find that she had praised his slightly fictional work so highly. Why? Because a book has authority, and Oprah bought into it. Would she have reacted the same way if she had discovered that an online story had been fabricated? I don't think so. I know, there are a lot of outside forces at work here, and perhaps this is all hearsay, but give me a little slack. It's my first-ever blogging experience, and I can't say it doesn't make me a bit uneasy.
PS, since I think we are supposed to add a link in here, check out this totally un-printworthy blog: What Would Tyler Durden Do? It's hard to say whether anything on there is true, but it's certainly amusing. Okay, that link is kind of gratuitous, but whatever.
For one thing, a book obviously goes through a lot of hands before it ends up in the "New Fiction" section at Borders. Tons of editors read through it and fix it until it probably doesn't hold too much resemblance to its first draft. But wikis and blogs and stuff like that are fairly uncensored in comparison. Take this post, for example: nobody is here to tell me, "this sucks, you had better cut that part out." (Isn't that scary?) Anyway, the thing is, there's more to a book's authority than that. Even in comparison with an ebook that has gone through the same process, there's just something about the materiality of a book that makes it seem important. Somebody cared enough to put money and paper and ink into this thing, and that makes it real. Real enough to make two Michigan pastors so scared of the power of a work of fiction that they publicly burned it.
That's a big reason why I think books aren't an endangered species. I would never substitute an ebook for a paperback. An ebook just doesn't hold the same tangible importance. Remember James Frey's A Million Little Pieces? This might not be a great example, but I'm going to go with it anyway because I was personally really moved by the book. He published it as non-fiction, and it's a really gritty story of drug addiction. It's really well done, (I cried throughout the whole thing, and I was on an airplane so it was extra embarassing.) And it touched a lot of people, including Oprah, who launched it to bestseller-dom and then debunked it publicly when she found out that portions had been fabricated. That book held a lot of authority! For its short-lived glory period, it was considered to be one of the most important and personal accounts of drug addiction and recovery. I don't think that his story could have been told in the same way in another forum. If he had written the exact same thing in a blog or even a respected website, it never would have achieved the same reactions it did. Oprah was insulted and embarassed to find that she had praised his slightly fictional work so highly. Why? Because a book has authority, and Oprah bought into it. Would she have reacted the same way if she had discovered that an online story had been fabricated? I don't think so. I know, there are a lot of outside forces at work here, and perhaps this is all hearsay, but give me a little slack. It's my first-ever blogging experience, and I can't say it doesn't make me a bit uneasy.
PS, since I think we are supposed to add a link in here, check out this totally un-printworthy blog: What Would Tyler Durden Do? It's hard to say whether anything on there is true, but it's certainly amusing. Okay, that link is kind of gratuitous, but whatever.
Webpage to Publication
This post on the popularity self-publication reminded me of yet another argument towards the survival of the book that didn't seem to have been brought up in any of the Forbes articles: namely, that having a physical published book out in the 'real world' still seems to be the holy grail as far as writing goes, even for those who have gained mass followings from putting their works online. Example: Movies in Fifteen Minutes, a set of parodies that were initially put up by the author on her livejournal for the sake of simple entertainment. Eventually she was contacted by a publisher, and has now published a book - the text of which is, interestingly, not available online. The author still posts free parodies, but only for movies that she's fairly sure she won't be including in future books.
There are a couple other 'rags to riches' stories of unknown writers garnering book deals through their online fanbase. What I find interesting is that these authors hardly ever join the trend of posting the text of their published works online except in the typical form of snippets for advertising purposes.
Obviously, this bodes well for the survival of the book - it seems clear that the dream of seeing your name on the spine of a hardback in the bookstore remains the same. On the other hand, if the future really does lie in the interaction between html and the printed page, one would think that those who got their start from the web would be the most eager to embrace that change instead of buying right back to the same system.
Then again, I know that if anything I wrote and posted online ever attracted a publisher's attention, I'd dive happily into the traditional system, copyright deals and all, headfirst - so obviously I'm not in any position to judge.
There are a couple other 'rags to riches' stories of unknown writers garnering book deals through their online fanbase. What I find interesting is that these authors hardly ever join the trend of posting the text of their published works online except in the typical form of snippets for advertising purposes.
Obviously, this bodes well for the survival of the book - it seems clear that the dream of seeing your name on the spine of a hardback in the bookstore remains the same. On the other hand, if the future really does lie in the interaction between html and the printed page, one would think that those who got their start from the web would be the most eager to embrace that change instead of buying right back to the same system.
Then again, I know that if anything I wrote and posted online ever attracted a publisher's attention, I'd dive happily into the traditional system, copyright deals and all, headfirst - so obviously I'm not in any position to judge.
Musings on Video Games
That psychotic Gamer Theory (I'm sorry, G4m3r 7H30ry) site sparked a shadow memory from the deeper reaches of my subconsciousness. Back in junior year of high school, I bought "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with that particular masterwork, it's a game designed in what's known as a "Sandbox" model - that is, unlike early video games, which functioned in "level" format, "Vice City" places you in a digital environment (in this case, a city modeled after "Scarface"-era Miami) and lets you run around. There are missions, and the more you play the more things you get, but the "space" of the game is essentially complete in itself from the moment you start playing.
Anyways, the article really hit on something that was at the back of my mind the whole time I played Vice City - how the gameplay in Vice City is considerably less important than the environment. At some strange core, most of the pleasure in the game comes from just BEING (as in, existing) in Vice City. There is something wonderfully close to heaven about the game - you don't really have to be anywhere, you can steal a car and nobody cares, you can't ever die, you can fire a gatling gun at a police helicopter or drive a motorcyle off a building. Even after I completed all of the "missions," I found myself playing the game for hours and hours - not accomplishing anything but mindless exploration of zones of digital environment I'd already passed through several dozen times.
There is no real "story" in Vice City - there are several cutscenes in between missions, but they are presented in cinematic terms and feel divorced from the pseudo-reality of the game proper. But I think that the aesthetic of the game speaks volumes about the nature of storytelling on the Internet. Whereas the classical mode of storytelling (inciting incident, rising action, climax, denouement) progresses forwards, we have become used to stories that progress inwards, discovering new worlds within worlds. This is the whole hypertext tradition: reading about Theodore Roosevelt on Wikipedia, you click on a link to William McKinley, to the Gilded Age, to Tammany Hall, to New York City, to New Amsterdam, to Dutch Colonies, and further and further down the rabbit hole. It's similar to the lunatic tangent aesthetic that's much beloved of hysterical realist authors like Thomas Pynchon (who will occasionally veer away from the narrative for 30 pages to present the entire history of a character who was just introduced and who promptly disappears back into the ether).
"Vice City" is ultimately a somewhat unsatisfying experience, because it is a single-player game. By the time you're finished with it, you have essentially become the God of Vice City, but you're the God of nothingness - faceless automatons who keep on jumping in front of your car. It's interesting to compare to some of the Massive online games, like "World of Warcraft," which is all about interaction (sometimes violent) with other people. There's a fascinating video that started some controversy a few months ago. Basically, a girl who played lots of "World of Warcraft" died in the real world. Apparently she was very well known inside the realm of Warcraft, so her team decided to hold a funeral for her - inside of the game, nearby a beautiful icy Lake. Several "people" showed up - you can see them in the video, all lined up. The whole affair was apparently quite somber - people from all across the world honoring the passing of a friend they probably hadn't ever actually met, except when they were fighting orcs. And then, out of nowhere, another team attacked the funeral and killed everyone there, then made a video of it and posted it on youtube. On one hand, this is very disturbing; on the other, I think it shows the fascinating depth of possibility that lurks within a digital realm when you insert the variable of other people - I mean, an attack on a funeral? That's positively Shakespearean.
This was a long and rambling post. I had a point, I swear.
Anyways, the article really hit on something that was at the back of my mind the whole time I played Vice City - how the gameplay in Vice City is considerably less important than the environment. At some strange core, most of the pleasure in the game comes from just BEING (as in, existing) in Vice City. There is something wonderfully close to heaven about the game - you don't really have to be anywhere, you can steal a car and nobody cares, you can't ever die, you can fire a gatling gun at a police helicopter or drive a motorcyle off a building. Even after I completed all of the "missions," I found myself playing the game for hours and hours - not accomplishing anything but mindless exploration of zones of digital environment I'd already passed through several dozen times.
There is no real "story" in Vice City - there are several cutscenes in between missions, but they are presented in cinematic terms and feel divorced from the pseudo-reality of the game proper. But I think that the aesthetic of the game speaks volumes about the nature of storytelling on the Internet. Whereas the classical mode of storytelling (inciting incident, rising action, climax, denouement) progresses forwards, we have become used to stories that progress inwards, discovering new worlds within worlds. This is the whole hypertext tradition: reading about Theodore Roosevelt on Wikipedia, you click on a link to William McKinley, to the Gilded Age, to Tammany Hall, to New York City, to New Amsterdam, to Dutch Colonies, and further and further down the rabbit hole. It's similar to the lunatic tangent aesthetic that's much beloved of hysterical realist authors like Thomas Pynchon (who will occasionally veer away from the narrative for 30 pages to present the entire history of a character who was just introduced and who promptly disappears back into the ether).
"Vice City" is ultimately a somewhat unsatisfying experience, because it is a single-player game. By the time you're finished with it, you have essentially become the God of Vice City, but you're the God of nothingness - faceless automatons who keep on jumping in front of your car. It's interesting to compare to some of the Massive online games, like "World of Warcraft," which is all about interaction (sometimes violent) with other people. There's a fascinating video that started some controversy a few months ago. Basically, a girl who played lots of "World of Warcraft" died in the real world. Apparently she was very well known inside the realm of Warcraft, so her team decided to hold a funeral for her - inside of the game, nearby a beautiful icy Lake. Several "people" showed up - you can see them in the video, all lined up. The whole affair was apparently quite somber - people from all across the world honoring the passing of a friend they probably hadn't ever actually met, except when they were fighting orcs. And then, out of nowhere, another team attacked the funeral and killed everyone there, then made a video of it and posted it on youtube. On one hand, this is very disturbing; on the other, I think it shows the fascinating depth of possibility that lurks within a digital realm when you insert the variable of other people - I mean, an attack on a funeral? That's positively Shakespearean.
This was a long and rambling post. I had a point, I swear.
Speed Reader
I'm going to go ahead and post about the reading tool at http://www.spreeder.com . The name didn't make sense to me until I realized it was two syllables and not ESS PEE READER. Go ahead and load the rest of this post into it, if you like.
Or ff you're too lazy to check it out, just know that it basically flashes text in a fixed location on your screen at a default but adjustable speed of 300 WPM. Ostensibly this allows you to read faster, holding you to a grueling pace.
It's weird that even with all this new media, writing occupies space on a flat surface. This sort of changes writing to move temporally as opposed to line by line, page by page. I guess audiobooks and any oral story are sort of the same thing, but at the same time, you know, they're sound. So this is different, and a little eerie, at least to me.
It's pretty unsettling to read this way for me. Maybe it's something you can get used to, though. But I can't help but feel like my eyes should be forced open Clockwork Orange-style while that really frantic double-time part of "In The Hall of the Mountain King" plays. Sometimes I find myself simply missing words. This gets in my head and the relentless progress of this word avalanche is soon overwhelming. Also, I'm a very auditory reader; there's definitely a voice in my head that ekes out the proper prosody. spreeder really rattles this voice.
A spate of options are available to customize your spreeding experience. I think it could be made much more inviting and organic, but that would be a mammoth project. I think you'd need to assign time values to each and every word. It doesn't take all day to read "to," but maybe you want more than a sixteenth-note to take in "lantern-jawed," for example. Additionally, punctuation could warrant other consideration. I've noticed that parentheses, dashes and other exotic punctuation are very hard to keep track of on spreeder. I might, in the case of parentheticals, keep a floating parentheses open parentheses to the left of each word contained and then some kind of way to close the parentheses emphatically.
I don't know, I thought it was interesting.
Or ff you're too lazy to check it out, just know that it basically flashes text in a fixed location on your screen at a default but adjustable speed of 300 WPM. Ostensibly this allows you to read faster, holding you to a grueling pace.
It's weird that even with all this new media, writing occupies space on a flat surface. This sort of changes writing to move temporally as opposed to line by line, page by page. I guess audiobooks and any oral story are sort of the same thing, but at the same time, you know, they're sound. So this is different, and a little eerie, at least to me.
It's pretty unsettling to read this way for me. Maybe it's something you can get used to, though. But I can't help but feel like my eyes should be forced open Clockwork Orange-style while that really frantic double-time part of "In The Hall of the Mountain King" plays. Sometimes I find myself simply missing words. This gets in my head and the relentless progress of this word avalanche is soon overwhelming. Also, I'm a very auditory reader; there's definitely a voice in my head that ekes out the proper prosody. spreeder really rattles this voice.
A spate of options are available to customize your spreeding experience. I think it could be made much more inviting and organic, but that would be a mammoth project. I think you'd need to assign time values to each and every word. It doesn't take all day to read "to," but maybe you want more than a sixteenth-note to take in "lantern-jawed," for example. Additionally, punctuation could warrant other consideration. I've noticed that parentheses, dashes and other exotic punctuation are very hard to keep track of on spreeder. I might, in the case of parentheticals, keep a floating parentheses open parentheses to the left of each word contained and then some kind of way to close the parentheses emphatically.
I don't know, I thought it was interesting.
E-Books
On the New Media Writing wiki, I posted about e-books because I think that it is important to realize the benefit that they have. As I mention in the wiki, people believe that making books available on the Internet will destroy books, especially after what has happened in the music industry. This thought/fear makes sense and is, in my opinion, completely justified. If books are readily available on the Internet, why would people bother leaving the comfort of their homes to go to a store, spend money, and buy the book? I know that was the first question that popped into my head. But then I thought about the situation a bit more and realized that maybe e-books would increase the popularity of books, rather than eliminate them. I thought about the concept of laying out in the sun on a hot summer day, ready to read a good book...on my laptop...and I appreciated the absurdity of my concern that e-books would bring an end to books.
Yes, I believe that some people will try to save money and will read books on the Internet that they would have otherwise purchased, had they not been available digitally. And yes, I think that there are people who will try to sell copies or abuse e-books in other ways. But I think it is important to recognize that the positive consequences will likely outweigh the negative. E-books will enable blind people to listen to books (through programs that read selected text), will expose individuals to books that they may not have known about, and will allow potential consumers to flip through a few pages of a book on their computer before deciding to purchase a book from Amazon, for example.
In this day and age, with so many daily activities being completed with the help of computers and the Internet, from checking bank statements to ordering groceries and meeting a potential husband/wife, it makes sense to make books accessible online as well. I have faith that readers will continue to buy books because, as I mentioned above, one just cannot reach the same feeling when he reads on a computer. It is not as comfortable or as satisfying (for example, you lose the effect of wondering what is on the next page when you have to scroll down instead of turning a page); people will probably realize this before they even finish the first e-book they start to read and will soon return to their old way of doing things and will just buy the book.
Yes, I believe that some people will try to save money and will read books on the Internet that they would have otherwise purchased, had they not been available digitally. And yes, I think that there are people who will try to sell copies or abuse e-books in other ways. But I think it is important to recognize that the positive consequences will likely outweigh the negative. E-books will enable blind people to listen to books (through programs that read selected text), will expose individuals to books that they may not have known about, and will allow potential consumers to flip through a few pages of a book on their computer before deciding to purchase a book from Amazon, for example.
In this day and age, with so many daily activities being completed with the help of computers and the Internet, from checking bank statements to ordering groceries and meeting a potential husband/wife, it makes sense to make books accessible online as well. I have faith that readers will continue to buy books because, as I mentioned above, one just cannot reach the same feeling when he reads on a computer. It is not as comfortable or as satisfying (for example, you lose the effect of wondering what is on the next page when you have to scroll down instead of turning a page); people will probably realize this before they even finish the first e-book they start to read and will soon return to their old way of doing things and will just buy the book.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Downloadable Audio Books
My post on the Wiki blog was about audio books and I found it interesting that not only is this new media taking over, but it is evolving in itself. Books are going digital in a number of ways, and people are getting too lazy or too spoiled to read. People today need visual stimulation, which is why so many books are written after the movies are made. These Audio Books picked up because they are easy to use. They began by helping with learning disabilities but now are being abused by a society who is too "busy" to read.
The thing that amazes me is that people are no longer going to stores and buying these Audio Books. Now you can go online and download all genres of books and short stories. iTunes even has an Audio Book section. It makes me think if this move to digital from books will really contribute not only to the death of books but a more unlearned society. People are not getting the same understanding of the structure of books and the delicate choices authors make while writing. Not having the text in front of you can take away from the whole experience of the novel and the short story. If poetry moves to Audio collections an even greater deal may be lost.
Are we too obsessed with being in a fast-paced society that does not stop to appreciate fine literature? Will future generations barely read because other forms are more accessible? It concerns me that so many people (like shown in Jeff Jarvis' article on stats) do not read another book after they graduate high school or college. Although the Audio Book was intended for good, it may end up doing more damage than we could have imagined.
The thing that amazes me is that people are no longer going to stores and buying these Audio Books. Now you can go online and download all genres of books and short stories. iTunes even has an Audio Book section. It makes me think if this move to digital from books will really contribute not only to the death of books but a more unlearned society. People are not getting the same understanding of the structure of books and the delicate choices authors make while writing. Not having the text in front of you can take away from the whole experience of the novel and the short story. If poetry moves to Audio collections an even greater deal may be lost.
Are we too obsessed with being in a fast-paced society that does not stop to appreciate fine literature? Will future generations barely read because other forms are more accessible? It concerns me that so many people (like shown in Jeff Jarvis' article on stats) do not read another book after they graduate high school or college. Although the Audio Book was intended for good, it may end up doing more damage than we could have imagined.
link?
Here is a link to the webcomic Whispered Apologies: LINK!
I did my assigned wiki entry about webcomics, and Whispered Apologies is a pretty interesting webcomic in terms of new media writing, because it involves collaboration that would be much more difficult (though technically possible) without the Internet. Storytelling by any means possible! It is on (permanent?) hiatus now, and the archives aren't terribly large, if you want to click around for a while.
The deal is that different artists and writers from different webcomics collaborate to make a single strip. The artist draws, and the writer fills in the text. You don't have to be a successful webcomic artist to contribute. You don't have to be a webcomic artist at all, really. You don't have to have worked on a comic at all before in your life. The Internet has an interesting effect on this endeavor in that if you are a total comic amateur or even just a sort of unsuccessful comic dude or lady, Whispered Apologies provides you with a place to collaborate with artists you admire, or just a place to be involved with comics at all. Technology also definitely makes it easier to send comics and add text and things of that nature. I think it's a pretty killer deal. You get all sorts of perspectives from all sorts of people, and you can even get in on the action if you want. If there were no Internet, I would never have even heard of any of the artists I admire, and those artists probably wouldn't have heard of each other. But the blessed series of tubes lets these artists springboard off each other's creativity and inspire each other, and it lets anyone with Internet access witness all this, and possibly even participate (unless maybe you are in China or another place where your Internet is censored).
Whispered Apologies is one of the many brainchildren of Ryan North. He is the guy who does Dinosaur Comics, and he also came up with RSSpect, Oh No Robot, and Project Wonderful, which are all crazy innovative tools to help out the webcomic industry.
He also did this, which, besides being full of hilarity, addresses the issue of Wikipedia vandalism, a New Media issue if ever there was one.
I would like to point out that I have no idea if I am doing this right. In fact, originally I posted this as a comment instead of a post. Good job, me. Anyway, I just sort of picked a topic at random for the wiki/this link. Are they supposed to have something more to do with the readings? Are the link and wiki entry supposed to be significantly different from each other? I feel like this turned out like an informal expansion of my wiki entry. I think I may have failed. I am worried about this. =/ =/ =/
I did my assigned wiki entry about webcomics, and Whispered Apologies is a pretty interesting webcomic in terms of new media writing, because it involves collaboration that would be much more difficult (though technically possible) without the Internet. Storytelling by any means possible! It is on (permanent?) hiatus now, and the archives aren't terribly large, if you want to click around for a while.
The deal is that different artists and writers from different webcomics collaborate to make a single strip. The artist draws, and the writer fills in the text. You don't have to be a successful webcomic artist to contribute. You don't have to be a webcomic artist at all, really. You don't have to have worked on a comic at all before in your life. The Internet has an interesting effect on this endeavor in that if you are a total comic amateur or even just a sort of unsuccessful comic dude or lady, Whispered Apologies provides you with a place to collaborate with artists you admire, or just a place to be involved with comics at all. Technology also definitely makes it easier to send comics and add text and things of that nature. I think it's a pretty killer deal. You get all sorts of perspectives from all sorts of people, and you can even get in on the action if you want. If there were no Internet, I would never have even heard of any of the artists I admire, and those artists probably wouldn't have heard of each other. But the blessed series of tubes lets these artists springboard off each other's creativity and inspire each other, and it lets anyone with Internet access witness all this, and possibly even participate (unless maybe you are in China or another place where your Internet is censored).
Whispered Apologies is one of the many brainchildren of Ryan North. He is the guy who does Dinosaur Comics, and he also came up with RSSpect, Oh No Robot, and Project Wonderful, which are all crazy innovative tools to help out the webcomic industry.
He also did this, which, besides being full of hilarity, addresses the issue of Wikipedia vandalism, a New Media issue if ever there was one.
I would like to point out that I have no idea if I am doing this right. In fact, originally I posted this as a comment instead of a post. Good job, me. Anyway, I just sort of picked a topic at random for the wiki/this link. Are they supposed to have something more to do with the readings? Are the link and wiki entry supposed to be significantly different from each other? I feel like this turned out like an informal expansion of my wiki entry. I think I may have failed. I am worried about this. =/ =/ =/
New Media and the Manuscript
I'm off for my dorm's ski trip tomorrow so I'm posting this now and we'll see if this is approximately what we are supposed to do.
But what happens to these with digital books? Say we stop using printed copies and instead rely entirely on “e-books,” where are the first editions? I guess authors might print out their work to edit it, but sparingly so. Instead of manuscripts or first editions, there are infinitely replicable copies of bits that, if even saved as a separate file in the first place, represent an author's first revision. If you have an earlier revision others may find it interesting, but it is not unique and can be replicated with the press of the button. Will the collector then die with the book?
Personally, I can’t imagine not being able to flip through the pages of a book and the feeling of the literal weight of the words in my hands. I like being able to look over and see what someone else is reading from the cover. I don’t think the physical book will die out just because another form of representing them exists. People didn’t stop representing concepts through speech because this nifty ability to write came along. We now represent differently, but paper has it’s purpose. The bulk of material may exist solely in digital form because anyone can put information out there without real cost. Books for things like schedules are becoming rarer but I can’t see the printed word dying out. Besides, collectors wouldn’t let it.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Questions This Week Post
Hey dudes, if you have questions or comments for discussion this week, leave them in the comments section here. That way we can answer each other's questions and help each other out.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
The Future of the Book? Assigned Readings
In preparation for our discussion about the Future of the Book, please read the following articles:
The Forbes.com special report on the future of book. (About twelve short articles here).
Surf around the Institute for the Future of the Book, especially the blog, if: book.
Play around at GAM3R 7H30RY. Spend twenty minutes there. What the heck is this?
And three articles at Jeff Jarvis's Buzz Machine:
When Big Enough is Too Big, Book Stats, and Everybody's an Author (and be sure to visit Blurb and Lulu from this article).
What's New Media Wiki
We'll be posting our definitions and research to Matthew Green's Whats New Media? a Wiki. Surf over and check it out.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
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