The digital revolution is counter-intuitive to copyright. Technological change is moving too fast for adequate laws to be implemented – and for affected industries to keep pace.The bottom is…
In the midst of the e-revolution, where we’re as likely to download as to leaf through a book, the idea of the book as an object of beauty is being lost. Or is it?To celebrate the launch of Rare…
How do you maintain live music in a culture that does not value it? Jon Rose, acclaimed improvising violinist and instrument-maker, examines Australia’s history of improvised music and musicians and …
India is booming: everyone says so. The economy is growing to match its massive population, and new industries like IT are creating a thriving middle class. Yet millions of Indians, especially…
Presented by the Melbourne International Comedy FestivalWebsites, blogs, social media, YouTube, iTunes, live streaming and podcasts…The worldwide web has put a worldwide audience directly into the…
Privacy in the digital age is a hot-button issue, from WikiLeaks to who owns your Facebook photos. With Liberty Victoria, we present a hypothetical discussion encompassing the church, child abuse…
We share five of our favourite links and articles from around the internet this week.Why your passwords don’t protect youWired senior writer Mat Horan was famously targeted by cyberhackers earlier…
The ‘I’ word was once taboo in journalism – but these days, the ‘I’s seem to well and truly have it. The online age has heralded the rise of the celebrity journalist: ‘personalities’ with…
The online age has heralded the rise of the celebrity journalist: ‘personalities’ with headshots, Twitter accounts and guest spots on Q&A. How does this impact on the quality of our journalism? What …
In today’s wired-up world, we can be with anyone, anywhere at any time. We have hundreds of ‘friends’, habitually ‘follow’ strangers and work from virtual offices. What does all this mean for…
In today’s wired-up world, we can be with anyone, anywhere at any time. We have hundreds of ‘friends’, habitually ‘follow’ strangers and work from virtual offices. What does all this mean for…
Five years ago, the tone of discussion about the book industry shifted from ‘confidence’ to ‘crisis’, as online shopping and the emergence of e-books shook up the established ways of doing business.I…
Hiroshi Ishiguro is one of the top 100 geniuses alive in the world today – and the creator of some of the most life-like robots ever made.Ishiguro’s shockingly human androids (including his own…
Hiroshi Ishiguro is one of the top 100 geniuses alive in the world today – and the creator of some of the most life-like robots ever made. Ishiguro’s shockingly human androids (including his own…
Robots that look like people, programmed to have their own emotions and facial expressions and to react to human interaction?It sounds like science fiction, but within the past decade, it’s also…
The Fifth Estate is the Wheeler Centre’s new series of fortnightly forums: a more measured approach to news and current affairs. Provocative and studied, authoritative and unhurried, this is real…
What is the future for media in Australia? How can newspapers adapt and survive in the digital age? And what is the role of the national broadcaster in a rapidly changing media landscape? As Gina…
‘Only connect,’ said E M Forster. Could Mr Forster have envisaged a world in which one person connected with another, thousands of miles away, through free video and voice calls, instant messages…
“Only Connect” said E M Forster. Could Mr Forster have envisaged a world in which one person connected with another, thousands of miles away, through free video and voice calls, instant messages…
Too close for comfort? Apple’s iPhone 3G.
If you’re reading this article on a smartphone, check that you’re holding it at least 15mm away from your body. That’s the…
We began our Monday morning at the Wheeler Centre with a bit of a giggle, after stumbling on a very funny website that brings literary characters to (startlingly) real life.The creator of The…
Today, lazy music writers and smartphone-toting trivia cheats can commiserate over a common problem: Wikipedia has blackened the English-language version of its encyclopaedia for 24 hours.The action …
Earlier this week, anti-porn activist Melinda Tankard Reist sought legal advice from a defamation lawyer after a blogger labelled her a “fundamentalist Christian”, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. …
As 2011 ends and 2012 begins, we’ve invited our resident organisations to consider the year gone by and to share their plans for the year to come.In 2011 the Emerging Writers' Festival enjoyed our…
While citizens took to the streets to protest around the world, there were other upheavals in 2011: not least in the world of publishing. As digital publishing consolidated its grip on the…
As 2011 ends and 2012 begins, we’ve invited our resident organisations to consider the year gone by and to share their plans for the year to come.Australian Poetry has had an exciting inaugural…
A leading Australian book retailer is getting into the publishing business with the launch of an online self-publishing service. Dymocks is the first major Australian book retailer to have entered…
The literary world has always been riddled with controversy. There’s a couple of controversies doing the rounds that we found of interest for what they say about about a new anthology of American…
It’s the 48th anniversary of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The New York Times has published a short film by noted documentarian Errol Morris called The Umbrella Man, in w…
Through century upon century, societies have located much of their moral panic and hysteria around a victimised view of youth. Whether it’s generational or technological change, the shock of the new …
A new UK publishing venture is bringing crowdfunding to the book world. Unbound lets authors pitch their novels-in-progress to readers, who then decide whether or not they want to contribute to the f…
A Columbia Journalism Review feature called ‘Confidence Game’ has taken up the case for newspapers. Dean Starkman argues that a group of intellectuals he calls the ‘Future of News’ group, or “FON…
In the online world, science fiction and fantasy, thrillers and romance rule supreme. Much-maligned genre fiction is seemingly better placed to survive in the new world order than prestigious…
In the online world, science fiction and fantasy, thrillers and romance rule supreme. Much-maligned genre fiction is seemingly better placed to survive in the new world order than prestigious…
Its title is now a stock-standard phrase of the English language. It’s sold some 30 million copies since it was first published some 75 years ago. It single-handedly invented a new kind of book, one …
An Australian writer is seeking to become a pioneer of digital publishing with a venture that’s making the most of new publishing technologies. Nathan Farrugia has an ambitious project in mind – in f…
A two-day conference being held tomorrow and Saturday as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival is taking a look at the impact of digital technologies and culture on the business and practice of…
The 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary has been hauled into the 20th century, with a number of first-time additions to the dictionary reflecting the rise and rise of online…
Pioneering publications are giving us a glimpse of what the book of the future might look like – and that future can best be summarised as augmentation.1. The Hybrid BookIn the US, the New York…
The first tablet was the iPad, right? Wrong. Developed in 1968, the first tablet was the Dynabook, and in some ways it was superior to the iPad. This is an excerpt from a piece by John Weldon on…
This blog excerpt is a cross-post of a piece by writer and RMIT Publishing marketing assistant Amy Han on the Informit Literature and Culture collection. The full blog can be read at the SPUNC…
The annual Wikipedia conference has just been completed in Haifa, Israel. Wikimania 2011 was marked by a plea from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for more women to become editors of the site. The
Social media is an essential of the journalist’s new toolkit, argued Julie Posetti in a Lunchbox/Soapbox presentation she recently delivered, which we’ve uploaded to watch and hear today. In an…
For as long as we can collectively remember, humans have struggled with the problem of memory. Its unreliability was compounded by the dishonesty and disingenuousness of the mind, in both its…
The web, we are endlessly told, offers unparalleled opportunity for a democratic voice. But is the voice of the people necessarily offered for free? Why is it so hard to earn a buck through a blog?In…
While we’ve covered the epublishing revolution many times, it feels ironic that Australia’s tyranny of distance nowadays seems to apply mainly to technologies that are designed to make the world…
This is an extract of a forthcoming essay by Gillian Terzis to be published in issue six of Kill Your Darlings, available in July.Recently Anonymous, a decentralised collective of hackers and…
The LulzSec Twitter avatar
They’ve been described as “a loose, decentralised group of like-minded computer users, who are almost impossible to track down”, a vigilante…
An image posted on the Facebook page ‘Free Amina Abdalla’
In his 2010 book Reality Hunger, US writer David Shields argued against traditional realist fiction in favour of a…
Image of vintage Smith-Premier typewriter via WikiCommons
Typewriter art has been around since at least 1867, with the oldest surviving example dating back to 1898…
(Click to watch video.)
In his recent Lunchbox/Soapbox address, Bruce Guthrie, former editor of The Sunday Age, The Age, Who Weekly, the Weekend Australian…
Federal Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry predicted this morning that online shopping will wipe out bookstores within the next five years. Senator Sherry made the comments at the launch of a…
In this video, Mandy Brett takes to Lunchbox/Soapbox to consider the future for those whom we notice least when they’re most effective: editors.Holding a Kindle, an iPad and a smartphone, Brett…
If the internet was cut off tomorrow, would you be happy? Dave Graney would be.Appearing onstage at Lunchbox/Soapbox, and in his characteristically meandering style, the flamboyant stalwart of…
Image of Smith-Premier typewriter via WikiCommons
There’s a revival going on – our favourite type of revival, the type that appeals to old-fashioned types like us. Just as …
Could we have just witnessed the birth of virtual reality tourism? Television channel 13th Street Universal, which specialises in thriller and crime content, has produced an augmented reality film…
A Federal Court judge in New York has rejected an agreement between Google, publishers and a group of about 40 libraries. Google has been digitising books in these libraries – which include Stanford …
On 1 March, EU inspectors conducted raids in the offices of publishers across Europe. The EU explained the raids were motivated by concerns that ebook publishers “violate EU anti-trust rules that…
Many devoted readers are, for various reasons, holding out against the urge to buy a tablet such as a Kindle or an iPad for e-reading purposes. Many of who don’t own a tablet do own a smartphone…
Wheeler Centre resident organisation Australian Poetry has launched its own iPhone app. The app aims to be a one-stop shop for Australian poetry: “We would like to list all leading Australian poets, …
The Social Network may not have won the best picture Oscar, but social networking has been given a far greater honour – in Egypt. Parents of an Egyptian girl born during the events that recently led …
One of our biggest themes here at Wheeler Centre Dailies in recent times has been the future of the book. JE Fishman at The Nervous Breakdown has given readers his take on the topic – and Fishman’s f…
Two articles recently posted on the web on related topics have questioned the future of e-books, e-reading and even the internet more broadly. Tech industry executive and academic Don Norman asks if …
Our theme this week in the Dailies has been the rapidly changing landscape of the publishing industry (here and here). Today we present a sample of the content pinging around the dubya-dubya-dubya…
Image via WikiCommons
Digital publishing is the biggest thing to happen to books and writing in half a millennium, and there’s a torrent of information on the topic out…
The twitosphere is abuzz about the sale of the Huffington Post news website to America Online, or AOL. AOL was of course one of the world’s biggest companies when it bought Time Warner at inflated…
Detail of the British Library, via WikiCommons
Hundreds of thousands of Britons braved the February cold on Saturday to protest the closure of some 450 local lending…
If bookings for our WikiLeaks event on February 18 are any indication (it booked out faster than a royal wedding), we just can’t read enough about Julian Assange and his controversial website. Guy…
There’s hardly a writer who isn’t familiar with the horrors of completing funding applications. Sometimes it feels like they are specifically designed to filter out all but the most doggedly souls…
For more than a generation writers, readers and publishers have eyed bestseller lists with a sense of triumph or trepidation. The rise of the e-book means that someone has to figure out how to keep t…
Not one to be daunted by predictions of a publishing e-apocalypse, author Sean Cummings figures he’s found the way to save the book. The writer is using new media to try to save old media: he’s set u…
Ever wondered why an e-book costs as much as it does? After all, its just a file isn’t it? Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and…
Margaret Atwood tweeted this weekend. That may seem an unremarkable event in and of itself, but it’s prompted a piece at Suite 101 about writers in the twitosphere.In her tweet, the much-lauded and o…
Two e-readers (image courtesy of Bobbi Newman, via Flickr)
Dianna Dilworth at eBookNewser wonders whether ebooks will change the way books are sold across regions.The…
Will Kindle e-books get the nod?
In another sign that the digital book market is maturing, it now has its own industry awards. The Bookseller has launched the FutureBooks…
Over at the Wall Street Journal, Joanne Kaufman is looking at how authors are becoming their own marketing departments.Changes in technology are shrinking the profit margins – and marketing budgets…
If you’ve been looking at the newspaper and thinking you could do a better job then Schmedlines could prove to be the perfect distraction.The idea is simple: get a real news story with a weak…
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is reported to have sold his memoir to UK press Canongate, according to the Bookseller.Still facing charges for sexual assault in Sweden, Assange is expected to…
The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell has threatened to sue academic Julie Posetti for defamatory tweets she allegedly made about Mitchell, according to an ABC report.Posetti was tweeting q…
Yesterday ABC Managing Director Mark Scott gave a keynote address extolling the virtues of Twitter as journalism tool and arguing against paywalls.“Lock yourself away – out of the conversation, out o…
Curious George is one of the characters appearing on an app this Christmas
Just in time for stocking stuffers, Publisher’s Weekly have surveyed what children’s publishers a…
Way back in January pundits were calling 2010 the Year of the e-reader. Over at Read Write Web, they think the year has lived up to that promise with the appearance of the Kindle, Sony e-reader and, …
Today, we’re all reading and writing more than ever, on text messages, on Twitter and on Facebook. But has social networking broken down the distinction between our public and our private lives…
Today, we’re all reading and writing more than ever, on text messages, on Twitter and on Facebook. But has social networking broken down the distinction between our public and our private lives…
Social Books on an iPad
Reading is no longer a solitary affair and book clubs are moving online. The New York Times technology blog’s review of the Social Reading app…
As Australia grapples with the future of lit journals online, a recent Guardian blog post says there has been “a renaissance rooted in technology” for the UK’s little magazines.Interestingly…
Poster from the film, The Social Network
The New York Review of Books has published a scathing review by novelist Zadie Smith on the film, The Social Network.Smith damns…
Author Paul Mitchell
Anyone fortunate enough to have had work published in Meanjin will testify to the thrill of knowing their writing has shared in a history that their…
Meanjin editor Sophie Cunningham
Meanjin editor Sophie Cunningham will leave the literary journal at the end of this year and, according to Jason Steger’s report in the…
Writer and now executive producer Max Barry
Yesterday a relieved Max Barry tweeted about his online book being made into a film by director Darren Aronofsky. Barry tweeted …
US book chain Barnes and Noble have announced they’ll release a new e-reader that’s creeping closer to being an iPad, according to GalleyCat.Unlike the Kindle the Nook Color promises a new high…
Click to see the full video
“As an online journalist, pressing the publish button is just the start,” Sophie Black told us on the Lunchbox/Soapbox as she…
Crikey editor Sophie Black
Dwarf’s penis gets stuck to vacuum cleanerThat was the headline that made me hate the internet.Were you one of thousands of readers that clicked …
Clare Bowditch on a recent album cover
It began last night when singer/songwriter Clare Bowditch watched our latest Feminism Has Failed video. She tweeted about them…
News got cheap on the internet – some would say free, but not Crikey editor Sophie Black. In this Lunchbox/Soapbox she doesn’t shy away from the worst of the web but looks to those moments when…
The 24 hour news cycle and the rise of online journalism has many critics. Sophie Black defends the role of the web in telling us about current affairs and the issues of the day.Lunchbox/Soapbox is …
Ben Eltham
When was the last time you bought a CD?If you’re like most young Australians, the answer is: a while ago. The advent of digital file sharing technologies has…
It doesn’t come as news that we’re living in an age where technology is producing profound changes
in the ways we live and communicate, remember and socialise.One of the world’s most ground-breaking …
It doesn’t come as news that we’re living in an age where technology is producing profound changes in the ways we live and communicate, remember and socialise.One of the world’s most ground-breaking …
Over at Slate, Jack Shafer is marking the decline in importance of books – both in the shrinking newspaper coverage and in the value of the printed object.Shafer remembers the glory days when the…
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cNicholas Carrwww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full Episodes2010 ElectionFox News
In this Meanland lecture, Cory Doctorow discusses how writers can seize the possibilities of the digital future.The internet and digital technology is challenging traditional notions of copyright…
In this Meanland lecture, Cory Doctorow discusses how writers can seize the possibilities of the digital future.The internet and digital technology is challenging traditional notions of copyright…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
(Image courtesy of Joi Ito)
Meanland guest Cory Doctorow believes that ‘the personal and the handmade’ are the future of content, according to his latest Guardian column.He…
Sleepers Publishing iPhone Application from Sleepers Publishing on Vimeo.
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 …
What music inspires the much-loved author of Syrup, Jennifer Government and Company? Was Max Barry listening to Kraftwerk or Men at Work when he wrote his cult online novel Machine Man? Our Writer’s…
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 s…
Cordite editor David
The latest issue of Australian online journal Cordite is asking its readers to become re-mixers by offering them the chance to download the…
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…
John Birmingham discusses his latest book After America, the empowerment of women as action heroines and how he came to be writing thrillers. He also touches topics as broad as the reaction to his w…
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
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…
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.Wyl…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
