Posts tagged 'technology'

MWF opens with Whedon

Whedon under tsunami, image courtesy Wolf Cocklin

The Melbourne Writers Festival kicked off with Friday night’s dual keynotes and the announcement of the Age Book of the Year. The big gong went to Alex Miller’s Lovesong, but if you were to believe the geeks on the web the night belonged to a man with thinning strawberry blond hair.

From the outset questions acknowledged sci-fi writer and director Joss Whedon as god though the man himself dodged the question with “I don’t believe in me, which is actually awkward.” His crowd loved every moment of it. Over at the Book Show blog, Foz Meadows thought he spoke “like a man for whom everyday conversation is just a different sort of script; the kind of thing you can work at in your spare time, so that it comes out as effortlessly in real life as it does on screen.”

Hoist – where art and poems meet laundry

Thuy Linh Nguyen agreed that Whedon’s speech is unique because he’s “one of those comedic personalities with full-formed quips flying out of their mouths” and enjoyed the way he answered questions about if he’d ever thought about making a Sundance-style arthouse movie by saying “‘I’m a Star Wars guy.”

For Martin Pedler, Whedon’s interest in superheroes was more intriguing. Whedon “wasn’t convinced you could do a true superhero film – but also that Hollywood’s now jumped far too quickly to films like Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and Dark Knight. He wanted to enjoy more examples of ‘straight’ superhero movies before we started deconstructing them, and tearing their poor heroes apart.”

But for Gizmodo the quote of the night came from the discussion about how the internet had been so helpful developing an audience for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They report his response as “[Adopts mock-cool voice] I just took it in my stride: you know, they invented the Internet for me. Now they use it for other stuff too.”

Andrew Wylie Retreats on E-books

The great digital rights siege of 2010 seems to be over as uber-agent Andrew Wylie has brokered a peace with Random House and is “in discussion” with Penguin Books.

After breaking ranks with traditional publishing because of disputes over paying his authors for electronic rights, Wylie founded his own online publishing company. But if you want to buy from Odyssey Editions for your Kindle, you’d better be quick because the list has shrunk from the original 20 titles to 7. Of the remaining books, 2 are Penguin titles (Saul Bellow’s Adventures of Augie March and William Burroughs' Junky) so the list may be reduced even further.

And the price paid for getting Wylie’s authors back inside Random House? According to Publisher’s Weekly’s source at Random House, royalties on digital editions are “built around a sliding schedule that can approach 40%”. Wylie hasn’t made any comment on dismantling Odyssey Editions, as it could still prove a useful weapon in Wylie’s war.

Snowy Mountain Scheme for the 21st Century by Leigh Ewbank

Recently Australia celebrated the 60th anniversary of the momentous Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Power Act – the first step in a 25-year journey to modernise our nation. Unrivalled in its ambition, the Snowy Mountains Scheme would meet the dual objectives of providing reliable electricity for our cities and towns, and water supplies to sustain food production along the Murray River.

Australia’s largest-ever engineering project would spur social and economic development and benefit the cities and rural communities of Australia’s southeast for generations. Without fanfare or media attention, Australia forgot to acknowledge a significant moment in our nation’s history.

Today Australia faces new challenges: our climate is changing. And we must quickly transition to a clean energy economy to avoid the worst-case scenarios predicted by climate scientists. Alongside this comes the continued global economic change that is putting increased pressure on established industries. Our parliament must act to encourage the expansion of new industries and secure jobs for the future.

A new nation-building project on the scale of the Snowy Mountains Scheme is needed.

The backbone of a scheme for the 21st century will rewire the nation, laying the foundations for a clean energy revolution. Australia needs new transmission lines to connect population centres to our abundant renewable energy resources. Currently, our windy southern coast; our vast deserts; and our rich geothermal resources, are untapped. A renewable electricity grid can open up new regions to development, unleash private investment in renewable energy production, and allow for these new energy markets to flourish. It’s needless to say that this comes with new jobs, prosperity, and the important benefit of mitigating climate change.

Importantly, such a scheme will overcome the deficiencies of the Rudd Government’s so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Emissions trading will not build new electricity grids, particularly to remote places rich with renewable resources. High capital costs and the lack of short-term profitability of building this type of infrastructure is beyond the capacity of the private sector. Furthermore, building new grid infrastructure does not directly reduce emissions and will therefore not benefit from emissions offset markets. Our government must step in to provide the public investment and long-term vision required to carry out such a scheme.

While carbon reductions targets and “market-based” policies might captivate bureaucrats and policy wonks, they have failed to win the hearts and minds of Australian citizens. These policy tools say nothing about Australia’s collective aspirations and abilities, and miss the opportunity to generate the public support necessary to build a clean energy economy. Because emissions trading is not directly linked to specific projects it is unable to capture the public’s imagination the way that monumental, government-backed projects have in the past. The best examples of which include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Snowy Mountains Scheme.

I’m not the first Australian to call for a massive nation-building project. In 2006, Professor Tim Flannery attempted to capture public imagination by evoking the spirit of the Snowy Scheme. He proposed the construction of a sustainable city in the heart of Australia called “Geothermia”. The city would harness geothermal and solar energy to process mineral resources. New rail lines would connect key mines to the mineral-processing hub, and then to the port of Darwin for export. This was a big vision.

So why didn’t Flannery’s initiative gain traction? And would a similar proposal work now? Well, apart from Flannery’s poor choice of name, I think there are two good reasons that explain the lack of interest, and the context has changed enough for a visionary project to succeed. First, the neo-liberal consensus was still strong in 2006. John Howard was the PM and the prevailing economic orthodoxy prohibited large-scale public investment. The financial crisis of 2008-9 has since undermined the neo-liberal consensus and governments around the world are now implementing massive public investment programs.

Second, climate change and environmental advocates did not support the plan. For too long climate change advocates have focused on technocratic and uninspiring policy proposals – a 20 per cent carbon reduction target by 2020 and the implementation of carbon trading. With several environmental groups now opposing the Rudd Government’s CPRS and proposing a “Plan B”, there is now a window of opportunity for these advocates to adopt a new campaign that focuses on building the enabling infrastructure of a clean energy economy.

I suspect environmental advocates are reluctant to employ a powerful myth because of the Snowy Scheme’s environmental impacts. It’s true that the scheme harmed the Snowy River, but this should not disqualify the use of Australia’s myths and nation-building projects for responses to climate change. Environmental advocates must also overcome the false perception that “strong” reduction targets guarantee emissions reductions. On the contrary, because an effective response to climate change requires building the infrastructure for a clean energy economy, the Snowy Scheme is a better model than one that emphasises targets and trading.

Is Australia ready for a massive nation-building project to deal with the twin challenges of climate and global economic change? Yes it is. As the Parliament demonstrated 60 years ago, our political leaders must act in Australia’s long-term interest to ensure that such a project becomes a reality.

Cross posted from the Real Ewbank, the blog of Leigh Ewbank.

Cory Doctrow on Curated Computing

(Image courtesy of Joi Ito)

Meanland guest Cory Doctrow believes that ‘the personal and the handmade’ are the future of content, according to his latest Guardian column.

He argues that while pulling together information in curated websites or iPhone apps is the future there are still two things that defy curation: the personal and the tailored. The personal is obvious (Doctrow reckons it is “pictures of my family, videos of my daughter, notes from my wife, stories I wrote in my adolescence”), but tailoring content is where things get difficult.

According to Doctrow when content is tailored for readers, it becomes possible to create monopolies deciding what is available to readers. He calls it “coercive curation”. And Doctrow, who believes information deserves to be free, has no time for that. He closes the piece “The only real reason to adopt coercive curation is to attain a monopoly over a platform – to be able to shut out competitors, extract high rents on publishers whose materials are sold in your store, and sell a pipe dream of safety and beauty that you can’t deliver, at the cost of homely, handmade, personal media that define us and fill us with delight

Waiting for Godin to Publish

Bestselling author Seth Godin dropped a bombshell on publishing when he told Galleycat that he was no longer going to publish books in a traditional way. After publishing a dozen print books, Godin slammed traditional publishing “12 for 12 and I’m done. I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread…”

Unsurprisingly not everyone cheered Godin’s declaration of independence for physical books. Novelist Colson Whitehead tweeted back “Is he going to publish his books….WITH HIS MIND????”

Godin gave only a little more detail on his blog where he said “As the methods for spreading ideas and engaging with people keep changing, I can’t think of a good reason to be on the defensive.” Godin’s move is one of several authors who are reviewing their relationship with publishing houses.

Freeplay Games Festival Awards

This weekend the Freeplay independent games festival kicks off with programmers, gamers and artists converging on the State Library.

As well as talks and workshops from local and international games developers, this year’s festival includes awards for games creation including one devoted specifically to games writing. Festival co-director Paul Callaghan sees it as a recognition of writing in games. “Writing is one of the often overlooked aspects of games development though we see it as a discipline on the same level as programming, art and design,” says Callaghan.

The award has attracted some interesting nominees. Alex Bruce wrote the curious Hazard, which works in the first person perspective popular in shoot-em-ups but, according to the games' trailer, “it’s an exploration of knowledge not of space”. For Jarrad Woods, better known by the handle Farbs, games are all about comedy as seen in his nominated game Captain Forever and the ROM Check Fail Factory. Rounding out the nominees is Steve Bull from Perth-based PVI Collective, who were commissioned by Sydney Biennale to create transumer, a game that uses mobile phones to make real-life players “consume the city as a ‘constantly moving happiness machine’”. Definitely not for couch potatoes.

Freeplay concludes with an announcement of all their awards on Sunday 15th of August.

Max Barry: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Author Max Barry

I’ve written more bad fiction than you’ve read. I’m serious. I’ve done a hundred or so drafts of nine or ten manuscripts, and let’s not even start on the shorter stuff. Read one of my books? Think it could have been better? Well that’s what they published. That was polished.

After a decade of wrangling paragraphs for a living, I have decided: it’s always the book’s fault. When your scene won’t quite come together, your novel idea won’t stay interesting, your main character refuses to fill out: it’s not because you lack talent. It’s because your idea is stupid. You’re trying to push shit uphill. And you may be a good shit-pusher, with a range of clever and effective shit-pushing techniques, but still: it’s going to be hard, frustrating, and ultimately you’ll discover you still don’t have your shit together.

I used to believe that an author needed an iron will. Discipline, to forge through the bitter dark and emerge clutching a tattered, tear-stained first draft. Now I think that’s a good way to lose nine months on a bad idea. Because if you have any skill as a word-slinger, you can make a bad idea sound okay. Not brilliant. But mildly interesting, at least for a while. Keep pushing that shit, though, and depression sets in. That’s when you think: I’m not good enough. Or: If I were more disciplined I’d finish this. Or: I can’t write.

Sure you can. You just can’t write this and stay interested, because it’s a stupid idea. It’s predictable. It’s been done. It had one intriguing aspect and you tapped that out within the first three pages. You don’t want to write this because your body is bone-bored of it.

A good idea excites you. It makes each day of writing a little joy. A good idea, when you peel it, has more good ideas inside. It makes you feel clever. It doesn’t need to be articulated. It might sound silly when you try to explain it. (Don’t try to explain it.) But you know there’s something there. It pulls you to the keyboard. It spills words from your fingertips. Some days, you lose your grip; you wander from the path and lose sight of where you were. But a good idea calls out to you.

A while ago I had The Block. The way I got out of it was to write a page of something new every day. The first week, I flushed out a lot of ideas that had been humming around the back of my brain, promising me they were brilliant. They weren’t. I captured them one page at a time and set them aside. The second week I wrote two things that were kind of interesting. Not very interesting. But not abominations, either. It was possible to imagine that in some alternate universe of very low standards, they could become novels. Not popular novels. But still.

The third week, I wrote something interesting. And I discovered I could write. That the reason I’d been stuck wasn’t because I’d forgotten where the keys were. It was because the story I was trying to make work sucked.

So that’s my advice to anyone mired in a story. Don’t blame yourself. You’re great. It’s just that stupid idea.

This is a cross post from Max Barry’s blog, where he’s written his online novel, Machine Man.

Cordite Gets Creative and Common

Cordite editor David Prater

Why do Creative Commons? Why now?

Well, we were initially inspired by the Remix My Lit project which was carried out by Creative Commons Australia last year. They invited people to remix prose stories; we thought we could do the same for poetry. And thus Cordite 33: Creative Commons was born.

Can you explain the download and remix idea behind this issue?

Just as a remix of a song takes elements of the song and rearranges them, so too with this issue we’re asking people to play with the lines of poems. You can download a document from our website containing all of the poems in the issue, and then all you have to do is start playing with the poems, cutting and pasting, shifting, rearranging – heck, even run them through a machine translator a few times, just to see how it turns out. We’re also asking people to send us their remixes, and we’ll publish a selection of these on the Cordite site later this year.

Remixing is an idea borrowed from music – how do you see music differing from text?

Well unlike music, words need to be activated in some way. You can’t put a book “on” in the corner of a room to set the mood for a romantic evening. Unless it’s a talking book but that’s cheating.

Cordite has long been at the vanguard of writing online – is it a contradiction to long be at the vanguard?

The truth is, we’ve been guarding the van for so long that we’ve given up hope that the original owner will ever come back and claim it. In that sense there’s no contradiction in your statement. Thank you for making it.

What does it mean to be an online journal? How is it better than print?

I don’t think it’s either/or in terms of online versus print. Website owners can point the finger at print publishers and criticise them for chopping down trees to print books; but on the other hand, print publishers can throw the example of the US military at Internet-glorifying website owners any time they like. After all, the Internet was initially designed with a military purpose in mind, and the amounts of waste generated by the communications and computing industries are indeed vast. It’s easier for a poetry magazine like Cordite to reach a worldwide audience, that’s for sure – but that audience is still incredibly small. The one good thing about editing an online magazine is that when you make a mistake, or a typo, you can fix it immediately. You can afford to be more relaxed, in that sense. Then again, I seem to be fixing typos and coding problems every minute of the day. But enough about me. I’m just glad to have an opportunity to show off Australian poets to the world. Code is poetry.

Finding the Right Price in Amazon

If you’re thinking of making millions with your upcoming e-book, over at eBooknewsr they’ve got a preferred pricetag of US$1.99.

In their survey of new authors, eBooknewsr found that many found new audiences by pricing their books low. That was the plan for Boyd Morrison, who told eBooknewsr: “I chose the $1.99 price point because it seemed like it was cheap enough to get a reader to take a chance on an unknown author like me.”

Other authors started out with higher prices but became more realistic to get more buyers. Jeff Rivera, author of Forever My Lady, said “I asked them to lower the price because $1.99 is a non-intrusive way to introduce eBook readers to new books. They’re willing to take a risk on $1.99 whereas $9.99 is a major investment.”

Most new books in Amazon’s store cluster around the US$9.99 mark though many public domain books including The Scarlet Letter and Frankenstein are free.

At the other end of the scale, Amazon is pricey for specialised niche publications like Selected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems for a hefty US$6,433.20 (including wireless delivery). It’s a bargain in contrast to the hardcover edition which retails for US$8,038.99. Perhaps authors should switch to penning scientific manuals.

ABA Conference Tweets

Wondering what’s on your local bookseller’s mind? The 86th annual Australian Booksellers Association Conference has just finished in Brisbane this week and much of the talk was online.

Angela Myer found herself on a panel about social media looking at how bookshops can use these tools. Myer thought it answered crucial questions around Twitter, Facebook and blogging including “"who in the store might do it (or even a customer); why shouldn’t people use these tools and what shouldn’t you do if you do use them”.

Kate Eltham, CEO of Queensland Writers Centre, was one of several who used the hashtag #ABAConf10 and concluded “Those booksellers sure know how to put on a shindig. Tip of the hat to you!”

Great coverage of individual events came from Bookseller + Publisher’s tweets – including quotes from Richard Nash’s session including “Reading is solitary but talking about books is social” and “The word ‘book’ appears on Twitter 3 times a second”.

The next event will be held in Melbourne on the 24th-26th July.

Huff Post on Social networking books

The Huffington Post asked this week if Twitter sells books and got several emphatic yeses.

Michael Taeckens, Publicity Director of Algonquin Books, offers three simple rules for interacting on Twitter ranging from “engage in conversations” and the old chestnut “display your sense of personality”. For publishers still wondering if they should tweet, Taeckens sees it as an essential branding tool as it offers “the opportunity to convey your personal, unique sense of identity in real time.”

While the the article is slightly skewed because it talks to two publishers already doing well on Twitter including Algonquin Books profiled in their previous article about the top publishers on Twitter, it follows its own advice by allowing you to interact through a poll on the best social network for book promotion.

For aspiring authors on Twitter, a good post was recently written on 40 Twitter Hashtags for Writers, including popular tags such as #amwriting, which some writers use to tell the world how many words they wrote today. Personally we prefer the ever popular #writersblock, a hashtag that’s part therapy session but more procrastination.

Jackal says e-books on hold

Star literary agent Andrew Wylie has said that he’s prepared to take the licensing rights for his client’s e-books outside of print publishing and thinks the days of chain bookstores are numbered.

Wylie told Harvard Magazine: “‘We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple.”

And Wylie’s clients – including Martin Amis, Dave Eggers and Elmore Leonard not to mention deceased authors such as Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov – have the authorial mass to shift publishing in a new direction.

His opinions on big bookstores are characteristically cutthroat: “a combination of online booksellers like Amazon.com and independent bookstores will be the future of bookselling. The chains will go out of business – their model doesn’t work.”

Wylie’s ruthlessness as an agent earned him the nickname the Jackal when he lured Martin Amis away from his agent in the 1990s. He credits his skill as an agent to a heightened empathy. “My ability to transmit the writer’s qualities, to persuasively describe them with admiration, is strong because I have this sort of hollow core: I take on the author’s identity.”

Some may speculate that Wylie’s ‘taking my clients and going elsewhere’ approach is a just canny manoeuvre to negotiate better rates for digital rights. But the profile piece has a title that suggests Wylie’s agenting is almost godlike: “Fifteen Percent of Immortality”.

Wikipedia Open to All

Yesterday the world’s largest online encyclopedia revised its editing policy according to the BBC.

In the past controversial articles – such as the profile of George W Bush – were locked to prevent vandalism but under the new editing rules there are fewer blocks. It’s now possible to update vandal-prone entries which will then be labelled “pending changes”. These entries will be signed-off on by a wikipedian – one of the millions of volunteers around the world who watch entries on the encyclopedia to proof against vandalism and inaccuracy.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales announced the changes as a real improvement in the online reference site by opening up controversial entries to anyone. “These have had to be semi-protected for years just because they are too tempting for naughty people to try something funny,” Wales said.

Controversial entries includes Wales own entry which according to a New Yorker article the Wikipedia founder had “been caught airbrushing… eighteen times in the past year” to remove references to his history with “adult content”. Apparently Jimbo, as he prefers to be known, is okay with this being called “erotic photography” but if you disagree you can always submit an edit to his entry to see just how long it will be “pending changes”

New Matilda to stop publishing

New Matilda announced today it will stop publishing after 25th of June. The online magazine has been creating content since 2004 and has built the careers of writers including satirist Ben Pobje and national affairs correspondent, Ben Eltham, but failed to turn a profit.

Editor Marni Cordell attributes the decision to ongoing financial problems. “It probably won’t surprise you to learn that newmatilda.com has never operated on a profit. However, we had projected that the site would break even by 2010.”

Despite securing big advertisers including banks and Apple, New Matilda is one of a number of online publications struggling to make a business case for online journalism. When founder Stephen Mayne sold Crikey in 2005, ABC Online called the website “financially unstable”.

At the time Mayne commented “Despite the impressive growth of Crikey, financially it has always been a struggle and to this day we still have Crikey-related liabilities of almost $50,000.” In the five years since, online journalism remains anything but a get rich quick scheme.

Australian publisher gets gritty with iPad

Australian publisher Allen & Unwin has launched its first iPad app – just in time for the Australian arrival of Apple’s latest game changer.

Underbelly: The Golden Mile has been launched with a free “lite” version as well as a complete version selling for just under $15. The success of books on the iPad depends on how well they can use the new medium. The showy Alice for the iPad, for example, highlighted the iPad’s ability not just to make text visual but also interactive – including making Lewis Carroll’s jump, fall or balance teacups for the Mad Hatter.

So far iTunes reviews of Underbelly: The Golden Mile have been positive based on the strength of the TV tie-in. “So much better than the TV show… perfect for the train,” enthused Addictive in the iTunes store. Another praised the app’s ability to deliver short sharp stories.

Addictive seems to have been so enthusiastic that they needed to write another iTunes review for the lite version: “I started reading these on the bus this morning – totally addictive.” We’d suspect Addictive might be from the publisher, except that Addictive concludes “Glad I didn’t bother buying the books!!!”

Social networking examined

The New York Review of Books on Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal and Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin, two books that look at how social networking websites have evolved.

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich: Random House

The digital future of books

The New York Review of Books on Google's plan to digitalise millions of books, presages the Wheeler Centre's debate on the same subject.

Reading in a Time of Change

At Meanland: Reading in a Time of Change, Meanjin's Sophie Cunningham will chair a discussion focussing on how technology might alter the way we read and write in the future.