if:book

Title:	if book
URL:	http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/
Cat:	Computers/E_Books/
Text:	book institute . . , posted bob stein terrific summer interns, rick williamson, just sent link interview marshall mcluhan skewers presidential debates completely wrong form medium television. interesting note hard imagine interview today show . goes uninterrupted minutes cut aways video footage crawls bottom screen significantly mcluhan speaks mind, critical mechanisms political discourse extent unimaginable today sanitized mass media landscape. bull tags , , , , . . , posted sonja drimmer unfurled project post online, blog form, real time, years entry originally written. elected blog format year anniversary left unsaid, questions think interesting important consider project kind. little discussion motivations project readers asked gather impression orwell face reading strongly individual piece writing diaries. happens famous author personal diaries blog form case orwell diary, walks talks blog, quite blog. uses standard template wordpress, double banner orwell prize announcing the orwell diaries sans serif image lines diaries. speaking which, curious singularizing what, original form, plural diary presented different format marked blog unify diaries one, continuous format right title banners image author work desk. running far right links page, archives, categories, series media pieces project. posts announce arrival blog, orwell writing begins. post, diary entry transposed exactly peter davison edition orwell complete works, footnotes included. different addition tags case, animal snake category domestic , link richard sparknotes, place reader comments. think, following posts currently online, safe say blog format replicate printed book, bonus add ons. publishers decided release entries real time, think intentions blog may just that. publishing entries correlation days written, blog brings writer thoughts time. fossilized completed set prestigious memoirs, quotidian reflections just impression assisted orwell entries . question done enhance present ness orwell altering entries choice select different fonts reflect different moods self reflexive piece writing stick banner include links day weather forecast morocco links current contemporary news articles political entries come despite nice, round year, ceased astonished prescience orwell political insights, relevant project brought author time associating personal thoughts current events case, links events. all, going remediate orwell work, translate creatively book heightened intelligence said, think interesting way bring orwell diaries larger audience, certainly glad daily fill thoughts observations. bull tags . . , posted kross thought terry teachout unfortunate omission column, . glimpsing bbc giant vault sound recordings, teachout bemoans inaccessibility spoken word albums priceless documents print market spoken word recordings small worth reissuing cd. bbc, harpercollins sony bmg owns columbia masterworks rca catalogs spoken word archives available digital downloading itunes imagine able keys laptop listen to, say, truman capote reading excerpts cold blood montgomery clift, julie harris, jessica tandy david wayne performing tennessee williams glass menagerie. pay bucks privilege sure would. websites host catalogs sound clips boast thousands s, nonetheless. fact, archived audio exists internet, fabulous hidden pockets. , weekly poems accompanied author readings. kenneth goldsmith , listen ezra pound , experience samuel beckett , enjoy james joyce. earlier summer, raided penn sound archives robert creeley audio files. adore ascended stanza, stumbled enjambed line. voice, hear poetry downright mean, irresistibly tender, forever . having listened repeatedly creeley , disappointed teachout treatment author readings tell audience. tsk, teachout writes literary critics picked popular unfortunate habit voice mean style. teachout lead forgets poetry began oral aural tradition, tradition pennsound looking revive. director filreis hopes project impact way poets, critics, teachers, students talk sound poetry, is, all, fundamental quality. scholarship poets read work space reader interprets audience hears words vast canyon blank intentional pauses. consider poet performance listen creeley read, way forfeited line breaks rushed conclusions frequently changes sense poem. , john berryman starts , introducing huffy henry, grumbling gruff. berryman takes sharp breath, voice goes staccato, thought thought it. then, pause proceeds, henry wicked away. berryman vocal staggering, hear departure world woolen lover... listening experiences readings texts or, practical question hybrids look end, agree teachout want more. hearing dream songs , greedy hear berryman tackle . bull tags . . , posted dan visel couple weeks ago, sebastian mary experiments sending literature twitter. disappointed dailylit abridging savagely hyper truncated delivery, delivering unabridged characters time instead, texts built twitter shoehorned twitter form. twitter electronic form du jour , problem old electronic writing presumption texts form agnostic. interesting approach problem comes unexpected source york review books begun eacute lix eacute eacute twitter luc sante translation. eacute eacute fin egrave cle french writer best known . paul signac portrait him, , below. eacute eacute man talents publicly known anarchist french publisher james joyce, secretly master miniaturized text. anonymous le matin condensed news day masterpieces phrasing caf rue fontaine, vautour, lenoir, atanis exchanged bullets regarding wives, present. eacute eacute hypercompression lends twitter. book, pieces quite space breathe crowded other, difficult reader savor individually. twitter posts, perfectly self contained, appeared feuilleton . quotation buckminster fuller synergetics . apropos thinking eacute eacute suited twitter strange facts experience try think future, thoughts jump backwards. may nature fundamental metaphysical law opening call future opens past equal degree. bull tags , , , , . . , posted kross emily dickinson poems published lifetime death sister emily manuscripts, tucked bottom trunk, decided publish them. translation manuscript printed page, aspects poems lost. editor notes, scholars admit getting snagged unusual punctuation, capitalization, line breaks. biggest stumbling block comes dickinson endnotes. poems manuscripts, dickinson provided alternate lines. adjective changed times entire stanzas morphed. old mountains drip sunset , dickinson decide single preposition, ways relation solitude. building , pulls dickinson alternate lines the poem. trying lines longer potential permanent afterthoughts. line presented the poem, receives consideration equal weight, screen time . plus, publications, editors decision lines incorporate ones discard. version, reader gets pulled discussion, closer dickinson original work. alternate line, reader press black button scroll dickinson suggested changes now, reading stand tops things , reader see effect bear dauntless fearful tranquil heads. book, reader begins encounter questions surface frequently , question best context poem. however, think type issue happening dickinson work. phrase english language , dickinson waits, tucked bedroom amherst, phrase arrive thundering prospective. line read till grope, weep till stir, weep till start, weep. single phrase fine. prefer think emily dickinson thrashing sleigh bed, groping, stirring, starting once. certain open playfulness built framework poem possibilities toggle reading experience. terms timing, pleased see judith thurman yorker article . thurman describes dickinson dashes moments evaded necessity putting period mystery own. and, earlier summer, dan gave susan howe emily dickinson read. point, howe argues dickinson built poetic form grounded hesitation. liked hesitation, circling back reconsidering say, possibly. prayed first, little girl , dickinson gives final stanzas. unlike. however, looping back, notice accomplish markedly unique things. till take balance tips frequent now, takes poise nt stay till catch balance slips easy, now, takes poise steady tho . point project, afraid sunken deep semi obsessive adoration to see sophie book useful. blog post, open concept discussion. think collection ultimately helpful download right download file. unzip file open folder. open ed sophie reader. bull tags . . , posted dan visel , institute fellow, busy writing book google, titled googlization . working public, right now, interested hearing stories people ndash means ndash began google remember time google hear google impression please comments tell stories. mudbone richard pryor character say, remember times, your last. lot interesting comments . . . bull tags , , , . . , posted bob stein got note britannica online telling prompted clay shirky nicolas carr atlantic article, google making stupid conversation britannica site, related posts john brockman edge, remind conversational swordplay typical pundits, enamored words barely bothered listen read ideas, respond sincerely. possibly coincidence players drama male grip guys scoring points. dealing issues central future species planet. long dealing missing persons, stunned realize media gurus references mcluhan, far concerned, asked profound questions effect media humans society, provided pass answers heed. myriad posts pages comprise britannica carr shirky discussion, posts particular interest. critic sven birkerts, people consider conservative. t. rather, see birkerts eloquent voice behalf losing shed culture gutenberg age. birkerts entreat time throw wrenches wheels change. just asking conscious good present. george dyson writes way worst nightmares fear prescient nicholas carr asks question asking cost machines think people risk. ancestors oysters barnacles heads. snakes lost limbs ostriches penguins power flight. man may just easily lose intelligence, warned j. b. s. haldane . third , appears comment nicolas carr response shirky. boland provide taut history lesson, setting record straight luddites, states fundamental issue time clearly controls technology ends critiques share common take granted smugly false typically misleading disparagement called luddism. original, maligned luddites commonly dismissed cranks, worse still, murderous thugs essential fact luddite complaint twisted serve ends propagandists capital. ned ludd followers necessarily opposed technological change progress social context occurred economic consequences presaged. ludd expressed it, lay arms til house commons passes act put machinery hurtful commonality . realized changes undertaken undemocratically benefit narrow class economic elites. luddite anxieties founded understanding implications working class general, foreseen consequences fully. protests resistance met aggressive murderous suppression british government day. thousands troops dispatched put rebellion, succeeding ruthlessly exterminating luddite uprising serving notice workers general close bonds state industrialists means employed discipline intractable workers. dire conditions working class industrial age ensued proved luddite premonitions largely prophetic. conditions exist parts world. fine fret impact the reading habits affluent, concerns luddites gone away. important principle now, controls technology ends taylor time motion practices tightened hold owners production technology wage serfs operating technology, undemocratic restrictive way, hurtful commonality . these, noted, principles guide technological development today worrisome aspects ultimate applications. facing similar challenge , see latent democratizing abundance shaped greatest expansion social control commercial concentration power world known. bull tags , , . . , posted sebastian mary , virtual bookstore uses amazon prices fulfilment, provides nifty browse interface lets viewer zoom , books read cover thumbnails arranged shelves category. bookshop experience encountered online. seconds reminded books meaning read. arguably proximity diverse selection titles strikes blow browsing characterizes browsing. debatable, though, kind heavily mediated pseudo serendipity, pleasant change messy amazon experience, metaphor far. all, serendipitous book thumbnails digitally rendered shelves concerns that, provides feel browsing bookstore, superficial impression reproduces worst industrialized mainstream bookstores. buying practices necessitated order keep large bookstore financially viable days skewed kinds books deemed saleable profoundly redemptive promise magical long tail create markets niche publications edged mainstream publishing book sales. understand corrections book sold place online equipped set tags isbn, summary, thumbnail image . these, multiplicity bookselling affiliate schemes, apis able carry title, book sell. additional informational labor technical time resources small publishers. bookstore ideal, pre scott pack form imagined carry genuinely serendipitous mix local publications, manager choices, remainders, bestsellers second hand titles, slick performance serendipity relies intricate invisible additional layers technologization. thus, gives feeling serendipity, data architectures required sustain bookstore metaphor push available selection literary monoculture. age books published, matter. despite attractiveness zoomii piece data visualization, to point worst case combination manual, recommendation browsing industrialized depletion diversity. bull tags . . , posted sebastian mary passing mention email chunks book read service . tried it, picking press lately way reading done network. latest news dailylit experimenting . texts offer include cory doctorow , austen pride prejudice. little look indicates twitter element slightly disappointment involves abridging savagely hyper truncated delivery, delivering unabridged characters time. readers sign twitter updates, alert instalment book goes dailylit. discuss related fora. proposing literature especially twitter, dailylit twitter bloggers status updates drive readers elsewhere. doctorow book present followers nearly double following pride prejudice... . uptake fora present. timely experiment networked, cross platform public reading, doubt teach prepare . bull tags . . , posted sebastian mary project hp labs aims print demand magazine publishing available everyone. uses similar model books, stickers cards upload digital content deal fulfillment. , founder point magazines buyer distribution shelves merely rest printer warehouse recycling plant. sustainability concerns economic ones, print demand model logical step fragmented magazine market. days xeroxed distros soon forever hard tell beta moment, publisher accounts invite only. key success slick, user friendly, customizable adaptable publishing tools matter getting pdf designed treating magcloud slightly complicated printer. magazines offer purchase fairly sparse, interface browsing unwieldy. see ways embedding cafepress style link webspaces, give ezines small magazines easy channel retail print version. see tools users readers review magazines published site. churlish snipe early days, considerable potential tool leveraging service small interest groups. link bull tags . . , posted sebastian mary covered debates digitization public domain archives, especially reference google. key debates questions access gets much, to, controlled, benefits google mentioned disturbing frequency ttime worries privacy ownership data, debate wider. piece takes look related issues. concerns privacy freedom speech usually refer state interference, neutrality points way private corporations remaking image. clearly frequently coverage attempts ringfence pre approaches copyright. space limited, tried cover drm copyright depth here. neutrality owns pipes book article topic. picked article doc searls dangers hijacked major telcos, explored parallels failure way radio potential erosion multidirectional web. second post december looked possibility redrafted telco regulations creeping transformation read write medium broadcast model. reports google decision serve neutered service china response chinese governmental restrictions prompted ranged neutrality, privacy, censorship, utopian ideals web. worth look. ray month, lessig gloomy prognostications read write web, drawing relationship neutrality copyright. may, june, congress passed amended telcos bill, . neutrality days concern telcos individuals ipdemocracy post extent issue hot topic carriers economic interest states political , little interest everyday internet users. privacy owns meta data past posts privacy, strongest arguably ben posts book reading , , , published january march especially third. looks privacy implications technologies track clickstreams digitized archives google amazon. discusses google acquisition writely based word processing extend google domain searchable private material email inboxes individuals private documents say, vantage point clear adoption based office tools overwhelming anticipated heady years . fever. view little measured google docs, writely called, tool uncontested dominance search engine. post marks key moment imperial expansion google machine territories. wide ranging essay covers neutrality, copyright, software licensing google issues. paragraph worth quoting full, remained central institute concerns print offer inimitable pleasures, social life media moving network. book care issues, tangential may future book, network neutrality, copyright privacy. issues great concern environment future reading writing. believe free, neutral network, progressive intellectual property system, robust safeguards privacy essential conditions enlightened digital age. runup posts, covered yahoo purchase del.icio.us, , siva vaidhyanathan google, privacy privatization things string digitization deals google public archives see . issue privacy just narrative corporation info expansionism. issue freedom expression world collided google revealed january chinese government insistence restrictive search terms china, somewhat dampening cred google received saying cheney . march, jesse wrote . app mentioned gained traction, issues relevant. april, ben drew string neutrality privacy posts disturbing confluence deregulated infrastructures privatised info accumulation place online. final theme deserves mention flash read media. view source command enables curious review code site, flash kin, making infinitely richer ways accessible, exacted price transparency interoperability platforms. discussed periodically, , . bull tags . . , posted chris meade delighted announce received grant , esmee fairbairn trust explore media generate active reading, creative writing fresh enthusiasm literature young people . collaboration teachers writers, creating library materials schools commentpress sophie, running workshops building success project found, funded booktrust. actor writer toby jones currently playing karl rove oliver stone , worked class twelve year olds inner city birmingham immersed story lost child personality was, unbeknownst them, created themselves. read full account book london developing projects work literature organisations uk. bull tags , , . . , posted sebastian mary fun book metadata. hot heels comes , app lets keep track amazon rank book. writer, thinker social media maven love thing keeping track book. sooner said built far users, fairly connected ones. reading mcqn picture booklert time saving tool hypercompetitive stat obsessed writers, possibly kind masochistic entertainment publishers morbidly addicted seeing industry flounder. uncharitable assuming accept deeply dodgy premise meaningful book sales conducted amazon, booklert similar create personalized bestseller lists, adding layer market data work trusted reviewers curators. interested top selling titles rest institute personal favourites list interested effect weeks endorsement high flying member digerati handful books. is, davies , exactly sort thing major book business thought of, thought of, , booklert illustrates extent which, context web, key developments future book concern form, purposes delivery mechanism book. concern metadata collected, owns it, it. talking drm, digitization, archiving, folksonomies feeds, brings tendency ability see world terms static content terms dynamic patterns, flows aggregated masses user generated behavior. measured units dynamic system, books contain secondary importance. say future serious culture world visualization bull tags , , , . . , posted bob stein book readers may remember october doris lessing nobel prize. coincidentally read golden notebook summer realized younger colleagues read it, knew generation read it, started musing possibilities having readers generations reading together, commenting publicly margins commentpress. mentioned antonia byatt british arts council she, coincidence, just read book summer. antonia intrigued months grant arts council deal harper collins reality. mid october readers reading golden notebook carry conversation margins. open rest able follow reading participate related public forum. think readers book best known role the women liberation movements confronts complex issues race political fall ideological soviet union. original invite women different generations, open ideas. please, tell see designated readers. interested general categories specific recommendations. nominate yourself. arts council grant includes generous honorarium readers. way working fantastic group london, , build completely commentpress application better reading the comments. bull tags . . , posted sebastian mary discussing institute folks reviewing year worth blog posts, felt torn times. cherry pick thinky posts discuss particular topic depth, draw narratives strings posts not, itself, literary gem cumulatively form bedrock blog thought it, realised really other. fair use, digitization, public domain, archiving, role libraries cultural heritage intricately interconnected. name connects issues years google. institute covered google incursions digitization libraries things way explored issues raised questions urgent ever. okay privatize vast swathes common cultural heritage privacy issues technology tracks online reading copyright, fair scholarly research depth coverage google digitization helped draw issues central blog. thus, drawing forth narrative book google coverage is, extension, watch political cultural stance emerging. post tried cake eat trace story, give sense depth thought going story discussion. order keep things manageable, kept post largely google centric focus. reviews covering copyright related posts, general discussion libraries technology follow. google rampages libraries, annoys europe, gains rivals december , book gave numbers university michigan project. february , head france national libraries anglo centricity implicit google plans digitize libraries. company seemingly relentless advance ways forming non google coalitions digitization. august, google appease publishers angry encroachments copyright. clearly enough, october , google . however, undeterred european hostility legal challenges, month company . october , yahoo , time. month, put case authors favor google searchable online archive. november google google print known google book search, print reference struck close publishers. month, ben . december google digitization hot news institute topic, . fact, month posts dedicated google digitization numerous justice . digitization spreads , digitization digital archives attendant debates spreading. january march, posts book reading parts , looked privacy, networked books, fair use, downloading copyright google book search. march, post google amazon incursions publishing. april, smithsonian cut deal showtime making media company preferential media partner documentaries smithsonian resources. jesse . june, library congress partners . google book search, meanwhile, reassure publishers dedicated search not, fact, library. month, ben french book attacking google, extension america, cultural imperialism. debate continued july. august, google downloadable pdf versions of public domain books. then, august, publication google contract ucal library month. october reported , . november saw commentary google book search improvements, . month, reported dutch government pouring millions vast public digitization program. december, clunkier version google books, live book search. google environment january, player rich skrenta google environment , declared. meanwhile, having seemingly forgotten tussles, company . february company august, institution , economist . following month, siva monday podcast . now, google remains theme, commercial digitization public domain archives far broader issue. january, , effectively paywalling digital access slew public domain documents august, commercial distribution film archive. month, . may, ben people card catalog devised rival google gated archive. open archive , mixed reviews month ongoing back forth institute academic siva vaidyanathan bore fruit. siva networked writing project, googlization everything, announced launched september . then, august, . october, major american libraries refused digitization deals google. november, google digitization month literature links archived. quiet january librarything interfaces british library, march . siva book month. google coverage slighter year, suggest happy story. , raising questions viability open content alliance. skrenta right. googlization continues, challenged ever. bull tags , , , , . . , posted bob stein period extreme introspection winding down. seen days sebastian mary embarked review book years. unfold weeks prepare way design intended encourage lot reader participation chronological tyranny traditional blog format, cuts conversations just start interesting. ton interesting things tell about. posting lot weeks. bull tags . . , posted sebastian mary marked contrast rowling, battles publication fan created potter encyclopedia , fantasy author hosts wiki fans writing create encyclopedic guide temeraire novels. coincidence novik handful fanfic writers transition publication original authors. chairs , . novik approach reflects growing recognition content industries mass audience engagement given fictional world deliver benefits worth outweigh perceived losses due copyright infringement derivative work. echoing tacit truce manga industry participatory fan culture , novik explicit welcoming fan participation fictional universes points model authorship goes crude protectionism supposed privileged position author recognition that, creativity participation senses intrinsic read write web, creators created equal wish be. simplistic egalitarianism propose participatory media flatten creative hierarchies, reality content engage develop pre existing fiction, desire originate such. recognising fact, challenge post . writers evolve structures reflect support relationship, simply inscribing originator participator split cast stone digital era reworking author reader dyad. bull tags , , , , , , , . . , posted sebastian mary beautifully animated slightly inscrutable created papervision, real time engine flash. scrolling takes series animated pop books tell vaguely eco educational stories. pretty, unclear aimed at. heavy book styling think though. children future experience pop books animated form, onscreen pop book conceit resonance raised paper versions put way, animated book enchant simply baffle adult raised infancy screen based reading so, meaning attempts transpose codex qualities digital realm ultimately serve comfort dwindling generations which, , probably early years print took precedence digital text. bull tags , , , . . , posted sebastian mary research article arg genres came interesting tidbit. telling client, architect renovating upper east side apartment . frequent topic book fetishization codex irreducibly physical qualities. project complete fictionalized da vinci code esque book hidden walls apartment takes heights, arguably gesturing elitism costliness exclusivity implicit fetishization. bull tags , , , . . , posted sebastian mary london based creative studio social think tank put impressive effort thinking incarnations reincarnations written material printed digitized forms. , proboscis ish ventures, technology lays short texts form enables printed turned, cuts folds, easily portable pamphlets. now, beta, hear proboscis founder giles lane aiming technology widely available. meanwhile, proboscis diffusion produce , series downloadable public domain texts selected introduced guests. works far include , selected technology critic journalist , selected editor , selected myself. short work pieces exclusively period, interesting note guest selections date eighteenth century. simply texts short, public domain doubt . eighteenth century saw explosion printing, outdone textual explosion web, political, intellectual critical voices emerged babel print raise questions ongoing evolution current digital discourse. bull tags , , , , , comments roberto forns broggi richard w. symonds entries search book tags frightful taxonomic bog links bull bull bull bull bull bull bull bull bull bull archives plumbing powered hosted
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Thinking about the evolution of publishing, education and creative labor in the digital age."/> <meta name="keywords" content="blog, books, publishing, ebooks, digital, sophie, multimedia, open_source, bob_stein, e-learning, education, journalism, internet, web, USC, humanist"> <title>if:book</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/styles-site.css" type="text/css" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ifbook" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/atom.xml" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 1.0" href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/index.rdf" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/index.xml" /> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/rsd.xml" /> <!-- <rdf:RDF xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <Work rdf:about="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog"> <dc:title>if:book</dc:title> <dc:description></dc:description> <license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/" /> </Work> <License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/"> </License> </rdf:RDF> --> <script defer="defer" id="snap_preview_anywhere" type="text/javascript" src="http://spa.snap.com/snap_preview_anywhere.js?ap=1&key=9d95184d4d7bb6c1cdece507b22b88c5&sb=0&domain=www.futureofthebook.org/blog"></script> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="banner"> <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/" accesskey="1" class="blog-link"> <span>Main Blog Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/" accesskey="2" class="site-link"> <span>Main Site Page</span></a> </li> </ul> </div> <div id="center"> <div class="content"> <div id="intro"> <h1>Elsewhere at the Institute:</h1> <h1><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/01/expressive_processing_an_exper.html">* <i>Expressive Processing</i>: An Experiment in Blog-Based Peer Review (on Grand Text Auto) »</a></h1> <h1><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress">* CommentPress 1.4.1 available now! (works with WordPress 2.3) »</a></h1> <!--<h1>Elsewhere At The Institute:</h1> <h1><img alt="fournier arrow.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fournier arrow.jpg" width="25" height="25" align="left"/><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="10" height="25" align="left"/> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/09/from_booktrust_to_books_of_the.html">A note from our new co-director, Chris Meade »</a></h1> <h1><img alt="fournier arrow.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fournier arrow.jpg" width="25" height="25" align="left"/><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="10" height="25" align="left"/> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/09/the_institute_sets_up_shop_in.html">The Institute sets up shop in London »</a></h1>--> <!--<h1><img alt="fournier arrow.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fournier arrow.jpg" width="25" height="25" align="left"/><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="10" height="25" align="left"/> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/07/welcome_siva_vaidhyanathan_our_1.html">Welcome Siva Vaidhyanathan, our new fellow. And coming soon, <i>The Googlization of Everything</i>... »</a></h1>--> <!--<h1><img alt="fournier arrow.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fournier arrow.jpg" width="25" height="25" align="left"/><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="10" height="25" align="left"/> <a href="http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/">MediaCommons: A Digital Scholarly Network</a></h1>--> <!--<h1><img alt="fournier arrow.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fournier arrow.jpg" width="25" height="25" align="left"/><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="10" height="25" align="left"/> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/the_networked_book">The Networked Book</a>: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/mitchellstephens">Mitchell Stephens - Without Gods</a> / <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark">McKenzie Wark - Gamer Theory</a></h1>--> <!--<h1><img alt="fournier arrow.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fournier arrow.jpg" width="25" height="25" align="left"/><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="10" height="25" align="left"/> <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/itinplace">IT IN place: a Brooklyn painter working with his hands and a few machines...</a></h1>--> </div> <h3 id="a003293"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/09/macluhan_skewers_the_president.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">MacLuhan analyzes the presidential debates of 1976</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  09.04.2008, 10:19 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by bob stein</a></h3> <p>One of our terrific summer interns, Rick Williamson, just sent a link to this 1976 TV interview of Marshall McLuhan in which he skewers the presidential debates for being completely the wrong form for the medium of television. It's interesting to note that it's hard to imagine an interview like on the Today show of 2008. It goes on for ten uninterrupted minutes; there are no cut-aways to video footage or text crawls at the bottom of the screen; and most significantly McLuhan speaks his mind, critical of the mechanisms of political discourse to an extent unimaginable in today's sanitized mass media landscape.</p> <p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZF8jej3j5vA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZF8jej3j5vA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/09/macluhan_skewers_the_president.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/09/macluhan_skewers_the_president.html#comments">Comments (2)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/today/">TODAY</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/debate/">debate</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/mcluhan/">mcluhan</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/presidential/">presidential</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/show/">show</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/mcluhan" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">mcluhan</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/presidential" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">presidential</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/debate" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">debate</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/TODAY" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">TODAY</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/show" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">show</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003291"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/remediating_orwells_diaries.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">Remediating Orwell's Diaries</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  08.14.2008, 11:45 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sonja drimmer</a></h3> <p>The <a href="http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/home.aspx">Orwell Prize</a> has recently unfurled their project to post <a href="http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/">George Orwell's personal diaries</a> online, in blog form, and in real time, seventy years after each entry was originally written. </p> <p>Why they've elected the blog format and the seventy-year anniversary is left unsaid, but they're questions that I think are not only interesting but important to consider for a project of this kind. There's little discussion of the motivations behind the project and readers are asked only to "gather [their] own impression[s] of Orwellâ��s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries."</p> <p>But what happens when (a famous author's) personal diaries get <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3468">remediated</a> in blog form?</p> <p>In the case of Orwell's diary, it walks and talks like a blog, but it isn't quite a blog. The site uses a standard template from Wordpress, with a double banner-- one for the Orwell Prize and the other announcing the site as the "Orwell Diaries" in a sans serif font above an image of a few lines from the diaries. (Speaking of which, I'm curious as to the singularizing of what, in its original form, is plural-- will each new diary be presented in a different format or be somehow marked? Or will the blog unify several diaries into one, continuous format?) To the right of the title banners is an image of the author at work at his desk. And running down the far right of the page are links to the about page, archives, categories, and a series of media pieces on the project. The first two posts announce the arrival of the blog, and it is not until the <a href="http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/1938/08/09/august-9-1938/">third post</a> that Orwell's writing begins. </p> <p>In that post, the diary entry has been transposed almost exactly from Peter Davison's edition of Orwell's Complete Works, footnotes included. What's different is the addition of tags (in this case, "animal" and "snake") as well as a category ("domestic"), a link to Richard II in Sparknotes, and a place for reader comments. I think, from this and the following few posts currently online, it's safe to say that the blog format is being used here to replicate the printed book, with a few bonus add-ons. </p> <p>But because the publishers have decided to release the entries in real-time, I have to think that the intentions for the blog may have been more than just that. By publishing the entries in correlation with the days in which they were written, the blog brings the writer's thoughts into our time. These aren't a fossilized and completed set of prestigious memoirs, but rather quotidian reflections just like our own (an impression assisted by the sometimes-<a href="http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/1938/08/12/august-12/">banality</a> of Orwell's entries).</p> <p>My question is what can be done to enhance the present-ness of Orwell without altering the entries themselves? What font choice would you select? Different fonts to reflect different moods? Would you find a self-reflexive piece of his writing and stick that on the "about" page? What about the banner? Would you include links to the day's weather forecast in Morocco? What about links to current or contemporary news articles for the more political entries to come? Despite 70 being a nice, round year, I've never ceased to be astonished by the prescience of Orwell's political insights, and how much more relevant this project might be if we brought the author further into our time by associating his personal thoughts with current events--in this case, via links to those events.</p> <p>Above all, if one is going to remediate Orwell's work, why not translate it creatively instead of using the web as a book with heightened intelligence?</p> <p>That said, I think it's an interesting way to bring Orwell's diaries to a larger audience, and I'm certainly glad to get a daily fill of his thoughts and observations.</p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/remediating_orwells_diaries.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/remediating_orwells_diaries.html#comments">Comments (6)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003290"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/i_heard_words_and_words_full_o.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">"I heard words and words full of holes."</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  08.12.2008, 6:01 PM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by kross</a></h3> <p>I thought that Terry Teachout made an unfortunate omission in his recent column, â��<a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121763115075105923.html">Hearing is Believing: The Vanished Glories of Spoken-Word Recordings</a>.â�� After glimpsing into BBCâ��s giant vault of sound recordings, Teachout bemoans the inaccessibility of most spoken-word albums:</p> <blockquote>Why are so many of these priceless documents out of print? Because the market for spoken-word recordings is too small for them to be worth reissuing on CD. So why don't the BBC, HarperCollins and Sony BMG (which now owns the Columbia Masterworks and RCA catalogs) make their spoken-word archives available for digital downloading via iTunes? Imagine being able to click a few keys on your laptop and listen to, say, Truman Capote reading excerpts from "In Cold Blood" or Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Jessica Tandy and David Wayne performing Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie." Wouldn't you pay 10 bucks for that privilege? I sure would.</blockquote> <p>But what about <a href="http://www.poets.org/">poets.org</a> and <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/">Penn Sound</a>? Both websites host catalogs of sound clips and boast thousands of mp3s, for free nonetheless. In fact, archived audio exists across the internet, in fabulous--even if sometimes hidden--pockets. Over at <a href="http://www.slate.com/">Slate</a>, all weekly poems are accompanied by author readings. On Kenneth Goldsmithâ��s <a href="http://www.ubu.com/">UbuWeb</a>, you can listen to Ezra Pound <a href="http://www.ubu.com/sound/pound.html">reading at the Harvard Vocarium</a>, experience Samuel Beckettâ��s <a href="http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/beckett_samuel/krapp/Beckett-Samuel_Krapps-Last-Tape_1.mp3">Krappâ��s Last Tape</a>, and even enjoy <a href="http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/joyce_james/Joyce-James_Anna-Livia-Plurabelle.mp3">a rare 1929 recording </a>of James Joyce. </p> <div align="center"> <img alt="rcreelkitchen.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/rcreelkitchen.jpg" width="300" height="209" /> </div> <p>Earlier in the summer, I raided Penn Soundâ��s archives for Robert Creeley audio files. I adore <a href="http://larrysawyer.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-was-astonished-at-closeness-of-his.html">Creeleyâ��s readings</a>â��how he ascended each stanza, how he stumbled through an enjambed line. In his voice, you can hear when his poetry is downright mean, irresistibly tender, and forever <a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Creeley/The-Door-Selected-Poems_1975/Creeley-Robert_22_The-Language_The-Door-1975.mp3">hesitant</a>. Having listened repeatedly to Creeleyâ��s â��<a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Creeley/SFSU_5-20-56/Creeley-Robert_24_I-Know-a-Man_SFSU_5-20-56.mp3">I Know a Man</a>,â�� I was disappointed in Teachoutâ��s treatment of what author readings tell the audience. Tsk, Teachout writes to all literary critics that picked up that popular â��unfortunate habitâ�� of using â��voiceâ�� when they mean â��style.â�� Teachoutâ��s lead forgets that poetry began as an oral/aural tradition, a tradition which PennSound is looking to revive. Director Al Filreis hopes that the project â��has already had an impact on the way poets, critics, teachers, and students talk about the sound of poetry, which is, after all, its most fundamental quality.â�� </p> <p>Is there scholarship on how poets read their work? The space between how a reader interprets the text and how an audience hears the words is often vastâ��a canyon of blank page and intentional pauses. Shouldnâ��t we consider the poetâ��s performance? When I listen to Creeley read, the way he forfeited line breaks and rushed toward conclusions frequently changes my sense of the poem. On <a href="http://www.poets.org/">poets.org</a>, John Berryman starts <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15206">The Dream Songs</a>, introducing his Huffy Henry, grumbling and gruff. Berryman takes a sharp breath, and his voice goes staccato, â��It was the thought that they thought/they could do it.â�� Then, there is a pause and he proceeds, â��made Henry wicked & away.â�� In Berrymanâ��s vocal staggering, you can almost hear the departure from when the world was once like a woolen lover... </p> <p>How can we use our listening experiences with our readings of texts? Or, maybe the more practical question: what should these hybrids look like? In the end, I do agree with Teachout; I want more. After hearing "Dream Songs 1," I am greedy to hear Berryman tackle "<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15207">Dream Songs 4</a>."</p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/i_heard_words_and_words_full_o.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/i_heard_words_and_words_full_o.html#comments">Comments (6)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003289"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/twittering_from_the_past.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">twittering from the past</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  08.11.2008, 12:18 PM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by dan visel</a></h3> <p>A couple of weeks ago, Sebastian Mary <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/dailylit_experiments_with_publ.html">posted</a> about experiments with sending out literature via Twitter. She found herself disappointed that DailyLit was neither "abridging the text savagely for hyper-truncated delivery, or else delivering the unabridged text 140 characters at a time"; instead, texts not built for Twitter were being shoehorned into the Twitter form. Twitter might be the electronic form <em>du jour</em>, but this is a problem as old as electronic writing: the presumption that texts are form-agnostic. </p> <p>An interesting approach to the problem comes from an unexpected source: the New York Review of Books has begun <a href="http://twitter.com/novelsin3lines">serializing</a> Félix Fénéon's <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=7039"><em>Novels in Three Lines</em></a> via Twitter in Luc Sante's translation. Fénéon was a <em>fin-de-siècle</em> French writer who's best known as the <a href="http://www.abcgallery.com/list/2002aug01.html">art critic who coined the term "pointillism"</a>. (Paul Signac's portrait of him, <a href="http://artchive.com/artchive/S/signac/signac_feneon.jpg.html"><em>Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones and Tints, Portrait of Felix Feneon in 1890</em></a>, is below.) Fénéon was a man of many talents; while publicly known as an anarchist and the first French publisher of James Joyce, he was secretly a master of miniaturized text. His anonymous <a href="http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2005/01/glass_bead_game.html">feuilletonage</a> in <em>Le Matin</em> in 1906 condensed the news of the day to masterpieces of phrasing:</p> <blockquote>In a cafÃ© on Rue Fontaine, Vautour, Lenoir, and Atanis exchanged a few bullets regarding their wives, who were not present.</blockquote> <p>Fénéon's hypercompression lends itself to Twitter. In a book, these pieces don't quite have space to breathe; they're crowded by each other, and it's more difficult for the reader to savor them individually. As Twitter posts, they're perfectly self-contained, as they would have been when they appeared as <em>feuilleton</em>. <br /> <br /> <div align="center"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/signac-feneon.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/signac-feneon.html','popup','width=914,height=685,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img alt="signac-feneon.SMALL.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/signac-feneon.SMALL.jpg" width="600" height="450" /></a></div></p> <p>A quotation from Buckminster Fuller (from <em>Synergetics</em> 529.10) seems apropos for thinking about why Fénéon seems so suited to Twitter:</p> <blockquote>It is one of the strange facts of experience that when we try to think about the future, our thoughts jump backwards. It may well be that nature has some fundamental metaphysical law by which opening up what we call the future also opens up the past in equal degree.</blockquote> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/twittering_from_the_past.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/twittering_from_the_past.html#comments">Comments (1)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/microlit/">Microlit</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/feuilleton/">feuilleton</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/feneon/">fÃ©nÃ©on</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/nyrb/">nyrb</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/twitter/">twitter</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/twitter" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">twitter</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/microlit" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">microlit</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/feuilleton" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">feuilleton</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/fÃ©nÃ©on" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">fÃ©nÃ©on</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nyrb" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">nyrb</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003288"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/emily_dickinson_in_sophie.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">Emily Dickinson in Sophie</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  08.06.2008, 6:23 PM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by kross</a></h3> <p>Emily Dickinson's poems weren't published during her lifetime- it was only after her death that her sister found Emily's manuscripts, tucked at the bottom of a trunk, and decided to publish them. In the translation from manuscript to printed page, many aspects of her poems were lost. In editorâ��s notes, scholars admit to getting snagged on her unusual punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks. The biggest stumbling block comes with Dickinsonâ��s endnotes. For many poems in her manuscripts, Dickinson provided alternate lines. Sometimes only an adjective changed but at other times entire stanzas morphed. In â��How the Old Mountains drip with Sunsetâ�� (291), Dickinson couldnâ��t decide upon a single preposition, so there became six ways that one could be in relation to Solitude.</p> <div align="center"> <img alt="solitude slice.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/solitude%20slice.jpg" width="357" height="80" /> </div> <p>Iâ��ve been building a <a href="http://sophieproject.org/">Sophie book</a>, which pulls Dickinsonâ��s alternate lines into the body of the poem. Iâ��ve been trying to make the lines no longer seem like potential-yet-never-permanent afterthoughts. When the line is presented within the text of the poem, I find it receives more consideration (if not equal weight, at least more screen time). Plus, in most publications, editors make the decision which lines to incorporate and which ones to discard. With this version, the reader gets pulled into that discussion, closer to Dickinsonâ��s original work. When there is an alternate line, the reader can press on a black button and scroll through Dickinsonâ��s suggested changes: </p> <div align="center"> <img alt="First Stage.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/First%20Stage.jpg" width="300" height="37" /> </div> <div align="center"> <img alt="Second Stage.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/Second%20Stage.jpg" width="300" height="37" /> </div> <div align="center"> <img alt="Third Stage.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/Third%20Stage.jpg" width="300" height="37" /> </div> <div align="center"> <img alt="Fourth Stage.jpg" src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/Fourth%20Stage.jpg" width="300" height="37" /> </div> <p>Now, when reading â��When we stand on the tops of Thingsâ�� (242), the reader can see what effect it has when â��they bear their dauntless/fearful/tranquil heads.â�� In the book, the reader begins to encounter questions that surface frequently in <a href="http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/pessoa/excercise/">literary translation</a>, the question of â��what is best in context of the poem." However, I think that another type of issue is happening here with Dickinsonâ��s work. In â��Many a phrase has the English Languageâ�� (276), Dickinson waits, tucked in her bedroom in Amherst, for a phrase to arrive with its thundering prospective. The line can read: a) till I grope, and weep; b) till I stir, and weep; or c) till I start, and weep. Each single phrase is fine. But I prefer to think of Emily Dickinson thrashing in her sleigh bed, groping, stirring, and starting all at once. A certain open playfulness becomes built into the framework of the poem once you can let all the possibilities toggle by in one reading experience.</p> <p>In terms of timing, it pleased me to see Judith Thurmanâ��s recent New Yorker article â��<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/08/04/080804crbo_books_thurman">Her Own Society</a>.â�� Thurman describes Dickinsonâ��s dashes as moments in which she â��evaded the necessity of putting a period to their mysteryâ��or to her own.â�� And, earlier this summer, Dan gave me Susan Howeâ��s â��My Emily Dickinsonâ�� to read. At one point, Howe argues that Dickinson built a new poetic form grounded in hesitation. I liked that idea of hesitation, circling back and reconsidering what you might say, what you could possibly. For â��I prayed at first, a little Girlâ�� (576), Dickinson gives two final stanzas. The two arenâ��t that unlike. However, looping back, you notice that they accomplish markedly unique things.</p> <p> Till I could take the Balance <br /> That tips so frequent now,<br /> It takes me all the while to poise â��<br /> And then Â¬â�� it doesâ��nt stay â��</p> <p> Till I could catch my Balance<br /> That slips so easy, now,<br /> It takes me all the while to poise â��<br /> It isnâ��t steady thoâ��.</p> <p>At this point in the project, Iâ��m afraid Iâ��ve sunken too deep into semi-obsessive adoration to begin to see how this Sophie book could be useful. With this blog post, Iâ��d like to open up the concept for discussion. How do you think a collection like this could be used? Is it ultimately helpful? </p> <p>Download it <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/sophie/files/emilydickinson.zip">here</a><br /> Right click to download the file. Unzip the file to open the folder. Open "ED Ten" in Sophie Reader.</p> <p><br /> </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/emily_dickinson_in_sophie.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/08/emily_dickinson_in_sophie.html#comments">Comments (4)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003286"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/do_you_remember_the_first_time.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">do you remember the first time?</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  07.24.2008, 11:20 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by dan visel</a></h3> <p><a href="http://www.googlizationofeverything.com ">Siva Vaidhyanathan</a>, the Institute's fellow, is busy writing a book about Google, to be titled <em>The Googlization of Everything</em>. He's working in public, and right now, he's interested in hearing stories about how people – that means you! – began to use Google:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>Do you remember the first time you used Google? When was it? How did you hear about Google? What was you first impression?</p> <p>Please use the comments over on <a href="http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/2008/07/can_you_remember_your_first_ti.php">The Googlization of Everything</a> to tell me stories. </p> <p>As Mudbone (Richard Pryor's character) used to say, "you only remember two times, your first and your last."</blockquote></p> <p>There are a lot of interesting comments there already . . .</p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/do_you_remember_the_first_time.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/do_you_remember_the_first_time.html#comments">Comments (0)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/google/">google</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/in/">in</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/public/">public</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/writing/">writing</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">google</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/writing" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">writing</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/in" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">in</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/public" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">public</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003285"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/post_12.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">kerfluffle at britannica.com</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  07.23.2008, 10:07 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by bob stein</a></h3> <p>I got a note from someone at Britannica online telling me about a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/07/this-is-your-brain-this-is-your-brain-on-the-internetthe-nick-carr-thesis/">discussion</a> prompted by Clay Shirky's <a href="http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/07/why-abundance-is-good-a-reply-to-nick-carr/">riposte</a> to Nicolas Carr's <em>Atlantic</em> article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"</p> <p>The conversation on the Britannica site, and the related posts on John Brockman's EDGE, remind me as much as anything of the conversational swordplay typical of TV pundits, who are so enamored of their own words that they can barely be bothered to listen to or read each other's ideas, much less respond sincerely. </p> <p>(Can it possibly be a coincidence that all the players in this drama are male? Get a grip guys! This is not about scoring points. You're dealing with issues central to the future of the species and the planet.) </p> <p>And as long as we're dealing with missing persons, i was stunned to realize that not one of these media gurus references McLuhan, who as far as i'm concerned, not only asked more profound questions about the effect of media on humans and their society, but provided first-pass answers which we would still do well to heed.</p> <p>Of the myriad posts and pages that now comprise the Britannica Carr/Shirky discussion, three posts are particular interest. </p> <p><a href="http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/07/a-know-nothings-defense-of-serious-culture-and-reading-a-reply-to-clay-shirky/">The first</a> is from the critic Sven Birkerts, whom many people consider conservative. I don't. Rather, I see Birkerts as the most eloquent voice on behalf of what we are losing as we shed the culture of the Gutenberg age. Birkerts doesn't entreat us to stop time or throw wrenches in the wheels of change. He's just asking us to be conscious of what's good about the present.</p> <p><a href="http://www.edge.org/discourse/carr_google.html#hillis1">Another</a> is from George Dyson who writes in a way that in my worst nightmares i fear is prescient:</p> <blockquote>Nicholas Carr asks a question that all of us should be asking ourselves: <p>"What if the cost of machines that think is people who don't?"</p> <p>It's a risk. "The ancestors of oysters and barnacles had heads. Snakes have lost their limbs and ostriches and penguins their power of flight. Man may just as easily lose his intelligence," warned J. B. S. Haldane in 1928.</blockquote></p> <p>The third is a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/07/why-skepticism-is-good-my-reply-to-clay-shirky/">comment by Blair Boland</a>, which appears as a comment to Nicolas Carr's response to Shirky. Not only does Boland provide a taut history lesson, setting the record straight on the Luddites, but he states a fundamental issue of our time more clearly than anyone else: "who controls technology and for what ends?" </p> <blockquote>What both critiques share in common and take for granted is a smugly false and typically misleading disparagement of so-called Luddism. The original, much maligned Luddites are commonly dismissed as cranks, or worse still, "murderous thugs" and the "essential fact" of Luddite "complaint" twisted to serve the ends of propagandists for capital. Ned Ludd and his followers were not necessarily opposed to technological 'change' or 'progress' per se but the social context in which it occurred and the economic consequences it presaged. As Ludd expressed it, "we will never lay down our armsâ�¦['til]the House of Commons passes an act to put down all machinery Hurtful to Commonality". They realized that these changes were being undertaken undemocratically for the benefit of a narrow class of economic elites. Luddite anxieties were well founded as was their understanding of the implications for the working class in general, even though they couldn't have foreseen all of the consequences fully. Their protests and resistance was met with the most aggressive and "murderous" suppression by the British government of the day. Thousands of troops were dispatched to put down the rebellion, not only succeeding in ruthlessly exterminating the Luddite uprising but also serving notice to workers in general of the close bonds between the state and industrialists; and the means that could be employed to discipline intractable workers. The dire conditions of the working class in the new "industrial age' that ensued proved Luddite premonitions largely prophetic. These conditions still exist in many parts of the world. So while it's fine to fret over the impact of the net on the reading habits of the affluent, the concerns of the Luddites still haven't gone away. The important principle then as now, is who controls technology and for what ends? Taylor's time/motion practices further tightened the hold of the owners of production technology over the wage serfs operating that technology, again in a very undemocratic and restrictive way, "hurtful to commonality". These, as noted, are the same principles that guide much technological development today and are among the most worrisome aspects of its ultimate applications. "And now we're facing a similar challenge", to see that the latent democratizing abundance of the net is not "shaped" into the greatest expansion of social control and commercial concentration of power the world has ever known.</blockquote> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/post_12.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/post_12.html#comments">Comments (6)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/google/">google</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/mcluhan/">mcluhan</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/shirky/">shirky</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/mcluhan" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">mcluhan</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/shirky" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">shirky</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">google</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003282"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/now_you_can_judge_a_virtual_bo.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">now you can judge a virtual book by its cover too</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  07.10.2008, 10:36 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p><a href="http://zoomii.com/#">Zoomii</a>, a new virtual bookstore that uses Amazon's prices and fulfilment, provides a nifty 'browse' interface that lets the viewer zoom in and out of 21,000 'books' - read cover thumbnails - arranged on 'shelves' according to category. </p> <p>It's the most bookshop-like experience I've encountered online. Within seconds I'd been reminded of several books I've been meaning to read. And arguably the proximity of a diverse selection of titles could help strikes a blow for browsing and against the <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/homophily-in-social-software.html">homophily</a> that characterizes much Web browsing. </p> <p>It's debatable, though, whether this kind of heavily-mediated pseudo-serendipity, while a pleasant change from the messy Amazon experience, isn't one metaphor too far. After all, how 'serendipitous' are the book thumbnails I find on its digitally-rendered 'shelves'? </p> <p>What concerns me is that, while this site provides something of the feel of browsing a bookstore, this is not only a superficial impression but reproduces the worst of the industrialized mainstream bookstores. The buying practices necessitated in order to keep a large bookstore financially viable these days have skewed the kinds of books that are deemed saleable profoundly; the redemptive promise of the Web was that the magical long tail might create markets for even those niche publications that have been edged out of mainstream publishing and book sales. </p> <p>And yet (as I understand it - corrections welcome) for a book to be sold in more than one place online it must be equipped with a set of tags (ISBN, summary, thumbnail image etc) according to <a href="http://www.editeur.org/">a metadata standard</a>. Without these, the multiplicity of bookselling affiliate schemes, APIs and so on will not be able to carry the title, and the book will not sell. And this additional informational labor is beyond the technical and time resources of many small publishers. So while a bookstore (in its ideal, pre-Scott Pack form at least) might be imagined to carry a genuinely serendipitous mix of local publications, the manager's choices, remainders, bestsellers and second-hand titles, this slick performance of serendipity relies on several intricate but invisible additional layers of technologization. Thus, while it gives the feeling of serendipity, the data architectures required to sustain the 'bookstore' metaphor push the available selection ever more towards a literary monoculture. </p> <p>In an age where more books than ever are being published, perhaps this doesn't matter. But despite the attractiveness of Zoomii as a piece of data visualization, it seems to me to point towards a worst-case combination of manual, recommendation-free browsing and industrialized depletion of diversity. </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/now_you_can_judge_a_virtual_bo.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/07/now_you_can_judge_a_virtual_bo.html#comments">Comments (4)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003281"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/dailylit_experiments_with_publ.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">dailylit experiments with public reading via twitter</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.26.2008, 11:15 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p>I made a passing mention of email-me-chunks-of-book-to-read service <a href="http://www.dailylit.com/index">DailyLit</a>in <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/03/on_writing_less.html">my recent-ish post on writing less</a>. Though I've not tried it, it's been picking up some press lately as a way to get your reading done via the network.</p> <p>The latest news is that DailyLit is experimenting with <a href="http://www.dailylit.com/about/twitter">public and participative reading</a> via <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a>. Texts on offer include Cory Doctorow's <a href="http://craphound.com/down/download.php">Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom</a>, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice. </p> <p>A little look around indicates that the Twitter element - slightly to my disappointment - neither involves abridging the text savagely for hyper-truncated delivery, or else delivering the unabridged text 140 characters at a time. Readers sign up for Twitter updates, which then alert them whenever a new instalment of the book goes up on DailyLit. This they can then discuss in related fora. So rather than proposing literature especially for Twitter, DailyLit is using Twitter much as many bloggers do: for status updates that drive readers to a webpage elsewhere. </p> <p>Doctorow's book at present has 300 followers (nearly double the following of Pride and Prejudice...). There's not much uptake in the fora at present. But overall it's a timely experiment in networked, cross-platform public reading, and will no doubt have much to teach us as we prepare for <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/readers_wanted.html#c222255">the Golden Notebook public reading project</a>. </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/dailylit_experiments_with_publ.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/dailylit_experiments_with_publ.html#comments">Comments (3)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003279"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/lulu_for_magazines_1.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">lulu for magazines?</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.23.2008, 2:05 PM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p><img src="http://magcloud.com/images/layout/logo-large-beta.png"></p> <p>A new project by HP Labs aims to make print-on-demand magazine publishing available to everyone. <a href="http://www.magcloud.com">MagCloud</a> uses a similar model to<a href="http://www.lulu.com">Lulu</a> for books, or <a href="http://www.moo.com">Moo</a> for stickers and cards: upload your digital content here and we'll deal with fulfillment.</p> <p>In <a href="http://powazek.com/posts/984">his post introducing MagCloud</a>, founder <a href="http://powazek.com/about">Derek Powazek</a> makes the point that well over 50% of most magazines never make it to a buyer - that the distribution shelves are merely a rest-stop between the printer's warehouse and the recycling plant. Between sustainability concerns and economic ones, a print on demand model seems a logical step for the ever-more-fragmented magazine market.</p> <p>So will the days of Xeroxed 'distros' soon be behind us forever? It's hard to tell - it's still in beta at the moment, and publisher accounts are invite-only. Key to success will be how slick, user-friendly, customizable and adaptable the publishing tools are - or whether it's a matter of getting a PDF designed somewhere else and treating MagCloud like a slightly complicated printer. Then the magazines on offer for purchase are fairly sparse, and the interface for browsing before you buy is unwieldy. I'd like to see ways of embedding a Cafepress-style link into other webspaces, so as to give ezines and small magazines an easy channel to retail a print version. I'd also like to see and also more tools for users/readers to review magazines published through the site. </p> <p>But it seems churlish to snipe too much - it's very early days, and the idea has considerable potential as a tool for leveraging the Web to service very small interest groups. </p> <p>(Link via <a href="http://booktwo.org/">Booktwo</a>)</p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/lulu_for_magazines_1.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/lulu_for_magazines_1.html#comments">Comments (0)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003276"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/ifbook_review_3_privacy_and_ne.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">if:book review 3 - privacy and net neutrality</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.23.2008, 4:50 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p>My <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/google_digitization_and_archiv.html">last review post</a> covered the debates around digitization of public domain archives, especially with reference to Google. Key to these debates are questions of access: who gets how much, what to, how is this controlled, and who by? And who benefits? Though Google is mentioned with disturbing frequency any ttime someone worries about privacy and ownership of data, the debate is much wider. So this piece takes a look at some related issues. </p> <p>If concerns for privacy and freedom of speech usually refer to state interference, net neutrality often points the other way: towards private corporations remaking the Web in their image. Clearly this is frequently (as recent coverage of <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008052715053658">the ongoing Viacom/Google spat points out</a>) about attempts to ringfence pre-Web approaches to copyright. But space is limited, so I haven't tried to cover DRM and copyright in depth here. </p> <p><strong>Net neutrality: who owns the pipes? </strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/11/flushing_the_net_down_the_tube.html">Ben's November 2005 post about net neutrality</a> was the first if:book article on the topic. It picked up an article by Doc Searls about the dangers of the Web being hijacked by major telcos, and explored some of the parallels between the failure of two-way radio and the potential erosion of a multidirectional Web. A second post on December looked at the possibility that redrafted telco regulations could help the creeping transformation of the Web from a read/write medium towards a broadcast-only model. </p> <p>Reports of Google's decision to serve a neutered service in China in response to Chinese governmental restrictions prompted <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/01/illusions_of_a_borderless_worl.html">a remarkable January 2006 article from Ben</a>that ranged across net neutrality, privacy, censorship, and the utopian ideals of the Web. Very much worth a look. Ray <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/2006/02/an_argument_for_net_neutrality.html">picked up the theme again in February. </a> The same month, we <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/02/lessig_readwrite_internet_unde.html">reported</a> on Lessig's gloomy prognostications for the read/write web, drawing out the relationship between net neutrality and copyright. And in May, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/05/accesselujah.html">a handful of people protested against the net neutrality bill</a>; in June, Congress passed the amended telcos bill, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/06/house_passes_bill_breaking_int.html">roundly condemned by this blog</a>. But net neutrality seems these days to be of more concern to telcos than to individuals: a recent IPDemocracy post <a href="http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/002998net_neutrality_is_a_big_topic_at_cable_show.php">gives an indication of</a> the extent to which the issue is a hot topic to carriers (which have an economic interest) and states (which have a political one), but of little interest to everyday internet users. </p> <p><strong><br /> Privacy: who owns your (meta)data? </strong></p> <p>Of all the past posts on privacy, the three strongest are arguably Ben's three posts on 'The book is reading you', <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/01/the_book_is_reading_you.html">parts 1</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/google_buys_writely_the_book_is_reading_you.html">2</a> and <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/the_book_is_reading_you_part_3.html">3</a>, published between January and March 2006 - especially the third. </p> <p><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/01/the_book_is_reading_you.html">The first </a>looks at the privacy implications of technologies that track your clickstreams across digitized archives such as Google and Amazon. </p> <p><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/google_buys_writely_the_book_is_reading_you.html">The second</a> discusses Google's acquisition of Writely: would web-based word processing extend Google's domain of searchable private material even beyond email inboxes to individuals' private documents? (I have to say, from the vantage point of 2008 it is not clear that adoption of web-based office tools has been as overwhelming as some anticipated in those heady years of web2.0 fever. The view from here is a little more measured; Google Docs, as Writely is now called, is one tool among many but has none of the uncontested dominance of the search engine. But the post marks a key moment in the imperial expansion of the Google machine into ever new territories.)</p> <p><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/the_book_is_reading_you_part_3.html">The third</a> is a wide-ranging essay that covers net neutrality, copyright, software licensing and Google issues. One paragraph is worth quoting in full, as it's remained central to many of the Institute's concerns:</p> <blockquote>Though print will always offer inimitable pleasures, the social life of media is moving to the network. That's why we here at if:book care so much about issues, tangential as they may seem to the future of the book, like network neutrality, copyright and privacy. These issues are of great concern because they make up the environment for the future of reading and writing. We believe that a free, neutral network, a progressive intellectual property system, and robust safeguards for privacy are essential conditions for an enlightened digital age.</blockquote> <p>In the runup to these posts, we also covered Yahoo!'s purchase of del.icio.us, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/12/open_rights_group.html">the launch of the Open Rights Group</a>, Siva Vaidhyanathan's <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/11/sober_thoughts_on_google_priva.html">sobering thoughts</a> on Google, privacy and privatization (<a href="http://www.sivacracy.net/archives/002445.html">still very much worth a read</a>) - and amongst other things a string of digitization deals between Google and public archives (see <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/google_digitization_and_archiv.html">my previous review post</a>). </p> <p>The issue of privacy is not just a narrative of one corporation's info-expansionism. The issue of freedom of expression around the world collided with that of Google when it was revealed in January 06 that <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/01/google_gets_midevil.html">Google had decided to comply</a> with the Chinese government's insistence on restrictive search terms within China, somewhat dampening the cred Google received for saying no when Cheney <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/01/cheney_and_google.html">requested government access to citizens' Google search records</a>. </p> <p>In March, Jesse wrote about <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/identity_in_the_bits.html">identity management in the age of search engines</a>. Though the app he mentioned does not seem to have gained much traction, the issues are still relevant. In April, Ben drew together a string of net neutrality and privacy posts for <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/04/">a hefty post</a> about the disturbing confluence of deregulated Web infrastructures and privatised info-accumulation taking place online.</p> <p>One final theme that deserves a mention is that of Flash and other read-only media. Where the 'View Source' command enables the curious to review the code behind any HTML site, Flash and its kin, while making the Web infinitely richer and in some ways more accessible, has also exacted a price in transparency and interoperability across platforms. This has been discussed periodically, as <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/10/social_powerpointing_or_the_darker_side_of_flash.html">here in October 2006</a>, and <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/03/hmmm_please_discuss.html">again in March 2008</a>. <br /> </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/ifbook_review_3_privacy_and_ne.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/ifbook_review_3_privacy_and_ne.html#comments">Comments (2)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003278"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/new_ways_with_words.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">new ways with words</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.23.2008, 4:43 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by chris meade</a></h3> <p>I'm delighted to announce that we've received a grant of Â£93,000 from the Esmee Fairbairn Trust to help us "explore how new media can be used to generate active reading, creative writing and fresh enthusiasm for literature amongst young people". In collaboration with teachers and writers, we'll be creating a library of materials for schools made in CommentPress and Sophie, running workshops and building on the success of our recent project FOUND, funded by Booktrust. Actor and writer Toby Jones (currently playing Karl Rove in Oliver Stone's W), worked with me and a class of twelve year olds in inner city Birmingham who found themselves immersed in the story of a lost child whose personality was, unbeknownst to them, being created by themselves. You can read a full account on <a href="http://bookfutures.blogspot.com/2008/06/found-project-report-by-toby-jones-and.html">the bookfutures blog</a> which if:book london is developing for its projects and work with literature organisations in the UK. </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/new_ways_with_words.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/new_ways_with_words.html#comments">Comments (2)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/education/">Education</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/funding/">funding</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/london/">london</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/london" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">london</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/education" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">education</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/funding" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">funding</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003277"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/the_long_tale_another_book_met.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">the long tale: another book metadata app</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.20.2008, 11:00 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p>More fun with book metadata. Hot on the heels of <a href="http://www.bkkeepr.com/">Bkkeepr</a> comes <a href="http://www.mcqn.com/booklert/">Booklert</a>, an app that lets you keep track of the Amazon rank of your (or anyone else's) book. Writer, thinker and social media maven <a href="http://russelldavies.typepad.com/home/">Russell Davies </a><a href="http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2008/02/tales-from-the.html">speculated</a> that he'd love to have such a thing for keeping track of his book. No sooner was this said than <a href="http://www.mcqn.com/">MCQN</a> had built it; so far it has few users, but fairly well-connected ones. </p> <p>Reading MCQN's <a href="http://www.mcqn.com/weblog/are_you_author_want_follow_your_books_rank_amazon">explanation</a> I get a picture of Booklert as a time-saving tool for hypercompetitive and stat-obsessed writers, or possibly as a kind of masochistic entertainment for publishers morbidly addicted to seeing their industry flounder. Then perhaps I'm being uncharitable: assuming you accept the (deeply dodgy) premise that the only meaningful book sales are those conducted through Amazon, Booklert - or something similar - could be used to create personalized bestseller lists, adding a layer of market data to the work of trusted reviewers and curators. I'd be interested to find out which were the top-selling titles in the rest of the Institute's personal favourites list; I'd also be interested to find out what effect a few weeks' endorsement by a high-flying member of the digerati might have on a handful of books. </p> <p>But whether or not it is, as Davies <a href="http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2008/06/booklert.html">asserts</a>, "exactly the sort of thing a major book business could have thought of, should have thought of, but didn't", Booklert illustrates the extent to which, in the context of the Web, most of the key developments around the future of the book do not concern the form, purposes or delivery mechanism of the book. They concern metadata: how it is collected, who owns it, who can make use of it. Whether you're talking DRM, digitization, archiving, folksonomies or feeds, the Web brings a tendency - because an ability - to see the world less in terms of static content than in terms of dynamic patterns, flows and aggregated masses of user-generated behavior. When thus measured as units in a dynamic system, what the books themselves actually contain is only of secondary importance. What does this say about the future of serious culture in the world of information visualization? </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/the_long_tale_another_book_met.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/the_long_tale_another_book_met.html#comments">Comments (12)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/web20/">Web2.0</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/booklert/">booklert</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/books/">books</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/metadata/">metadata</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/metadata" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">metadata</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/books" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">books</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/booklert" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">booklert</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/web2.0" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">web2.0</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003275"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/readers_wanted.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">The Golden Notebook â�� readers wanted</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.18.2008, 4:50 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by bob stein</a></h3> <p>if:book readers may remember my <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/10/doris_lessing_wins_the_nobel_p.html">excited post</a> from last October when Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize. I had coincidentally re-read <em>The Golden Notebook</em> over the summer and when I realized that none of my younger colleagues had read it, or even knew anyone of their generation who had read it, I started musing about the possibilities of having readers from two generations reading it together, commenting publicly in the margins in something like CommentPress.</p> <p>I mentioned this idea to Antonia Byatt of the British Arts Council only to find that she, by coincidence, had also just re-read the book over the summer. Antonia was intrigued by the idea and eight months later we have a grant from the Arts Council and a deal with Harper Collins that will make this a reality. In mid-October 3-5 readers will begin reading The Golden Notebook and carry out a conversation in the margins. The site will be open and the rest of us will be able to follow their reading and participate in a related public forum.</p> <p><strong>Who do you think should be the readers? </strong>The book is perhaps best known for its role in the beginning of the women's liberation movements of the 1970s but it also confronts complex issues of race and the political fall-out from the ideological collapse of the soviet union. The original idea was to invite women from different generations, but we're open to other ideas. </p> <p>Please, tell us who you would like to see as the designated readers. We're interested in general categories but also in specific recommendations. You can even nominate yourself. [The Arts Council grant includes a generous honorarium for each of the readers.] </p> <p>By the way we're working with a fantastic group in London, <a href="http://aptstudio.com/">apt</a>, to build a completely new CommentPress-like application that should be much better for reading both the text and the comments. </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/readers_wanted.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/readers_wanted.html#comments">Comments (13)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003273"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/google_digitization_and_archiv.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">google, digitization and archives: despatches from if:book</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.16.2008, 3:35 PM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p>In discussing with other Institute folks how to go about reviewing four year's worth of blog posts, I've felt torn at times. Should I cherry-pick 'thinky' posts that discuss a particular topic in depth, or draw out narratives from strings of posts each of which is not, in itself, a literary gem but which cumulatively form the bedrock of the blog? But I thought about it, and realised that you can't really have one without the other. </p> <p>Fair use, digitization, public domain, archiving, the role of libraries and cultural heritage are intricately interconnected. But the name that connects all these issues over the last few years has been Google. The Institute has covered Google's incursions into digitization of libraries (amongst other things) in a way that has explored many of these issues - and raised questions that are as urgent as ever. Is it okay to privatize vast swathes of our common cultural heritage? What are the privacy issues around technology that tracks online reading? Where now for copyright, fair use and scholarly research? </p> <p>In-depth coverage of Google and digitization has helped to draw out many of the issues central to this blog. Thus, in drawing forth the narrative of if:book's Google coverage is, by extension, to watch a political and cultural stance emerging. So in this post I've tried to have my cake and eat it - to trace a story, and to give a sense of the depth of thought going into that story's discussion. </p> <p>In order to keep things manageable, I've kept this post to a largely Google-centric focus. Further reviews covering copyright-related posts, and general discussion of libraries and technology will follow. </p> <p><strong>2004-5: Google rampages through libraries, annoys Europe, gains rivals</strong></p> <p>In December 2004, if:book's <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2004/12/google_takes_on_u_of_michigan.html">first post about Google's digitization of libraries</a> gave the numbers for the University of Michigan project. </p> <p>In February 2005, the head of France's national libraries <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/02/non_merci.html">raised a battle cry</a> against the Anglo-centricity implicit in Google's plans to digitize libraries. The company's seemingly relentless advance <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/05/europe_aims_canon_at_google.html"> brought Europe out in force</a> to find ways of forming non-Google coalitions for digitization. </p> <p>In August, Google <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/08/google_halts_book_scans_until.html">halted book scans for a few months</a> to appease publishers angry at encroachments on their copyright. But this was clearly not enough, as in October 2005, Google <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/10/google_is_sued_again.html"> was sued (again) by a string of publishers for massive copyright infringement</a>. However, undeterred either by European hostility or legal challenges, the same month the company <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/10/google_expands_bookscanning_pr.html">made moves to expand Google Print into Europe</a>. Also in October 2005, Yahoo! <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/10/yahoo_announces_bookscanning_p.html">launched the Open Content Alliance</a>, which was <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/10/microsoft_joins_open_content_a.html">joined by Microsoft</a> around the same time. Later the same month, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/10/">a Wired article</a> put the case for authors in favor of Google's searchable online archive. </p> <p>In November 2005 Google <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/11/google_print_is_no_more.html"> announced</a> that from here on in Google Print would be known as Google Book Search, as the 'Print' reference perhaps struck too close to home for publishers. The same month, Ben <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/11/google_prints_notsopublic_doma.html">savaged Google Print's 'public domain' efforts</a> - then <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/11/having_browsed_google_print_a.html">recanted (a little) later that month</a>. </p> <p>In December 2005 Google's digitization was still hot news - the Institute <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/12/google_libraries_podcast_now_a.html">did a radio show/podcast with Open Source</a> on the topic, and <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/12/google_book_search_debated_at.html">covered the Google Book Search debate at the American Bar Association</a>. (In fact, most of that month's posts are dedicated to Google and digitization and are too numerous to do justice to here).</p> <p><strong>2006: Digitization spreads</strong></p> <p>By 2006, digitization and digital archives - with attendant debates - are spreading. From January through March, three posts - 'The book is reading you' parts <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/01/the_book_is_reading_you.html">1</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/google_buys_writely_the_book_is_reading_you.html">2</a> and <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/the_book_is_reading_you_part_3.html">3</a> looked at privacy, networked books, fair use, downloading and copyright around Google Book Search. Also in March, a further post <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/03/googlezon_and_the_publishing_i.html">discussed</a> Google and Amazon's incursions into publishing. </p> <p>In April, the Smithsonian cut a deal with Showtime making the media company a preferential media partner for documentaries using Smithsonian resources. Jesse <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/04/corporate_creep.html">analyzed the implications for open research</a>. </p> <p>In June, the Library of Congress and partners <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/06/web_news_as_gated_community.html">launched a project to make vintage newspapers available online</a>. Google Book Search, meanwhile, was <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/06/google_print_gets_its_own_addr.html">tweaked</a> to reassure publishers that the new dedicated search page was not, in fact, a library. The same month, Ben <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/06/google_and_the_myth_of_univers.html">responded thoughtfully in June 2006</a> to a French book attacking Google, and by extension America, for cultural imperialism. The debate continued with <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/07/the_myth_of_universal_knowledg.html">a follow-up post</a> in July. </p> <p>In August, Google <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/08/googles_window_on_the_public_d.html">announced</a>downloadable PDF versions of many of its public-domain books. Then, in August, the publication of Google's contract with UCAL's library <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/08/showtiming_our_libraries.html">prompted some debate</a> the same month. In October we reported on <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/10/microsoft_steps_up_book_digiti.html">Microsoft's growing book digitization list</a>, and <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/10/literary_zeitgest_googlestyle.html>Google released its literary Zeitgeist data</a>. November saw further commentary on Google Book Search improvements, and <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/11/brewster_kahle_on_the_google_b.html">some criticism of the same from Brewster Kahle</a>. The same month, we reported that the Dutch government is pouring millions into a vast public digitization program.</p> <p>In December, Microsoft <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/12/microsoft_launches_live_search.html">launched</a> its (clunkier) version of Google Books, Microsoft Live Book Search.<br /> <strong><br /> 2007: Google is the environment</strong></p> <p>In January, former Netscape player Rich Skrenta <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/01/has_google_already_won.html">crowned Google king of the 'third age of computing'</a>: 'Google is the environment', he declared. Meanwhile, having seemingly forgotten 2005's tussles, the company <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/01/unbound_google_pulishing_confe.html">hosted a publishing conference at the New York Public Library</a>. In February the company <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/02/google_library_dominoes.html">signed another digitization deal, this time with Princeton</a>; in August, this institution <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/08/cornell_joins_google_book_sear.html">was joined by Cornell</a>, and the Economist <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/08/jp_google.html">compared Google's databases to the banking system of the information age</a>. The following month, Siva's first Monday podcast <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/09/siva_podcast_on_the_googlizati.html">discussed the Googlization of libraries</a>.</p> <p>By now, while Google remains a theme, commercial digitization of public-domain archives is a far broader issue. In January, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/01/national_archives_sell_out.html">the US National Archives cut a digitization deal with Footnote</a>, effectively paywalling digital access to a slew of public-domain documents; in August, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/08/privatizing_public_goods_our_t.html">a deal followd with Amazon</a> for commercial distribution of its film archive. The same month, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/08/audiovisual_heritage_double_pl.html">two major audiovisual archiving projects launched</a>. </p> <p>In May, Ben <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/05/the_peoples_card_catalog_a_tho.html">speculated</a> about whether some 'People's Card Catalog' could be devised to rival Google's gated archive. The Open Archive <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/07/the_open_library.html">launched in July</a>, to mixed reviews - the same month that the ongoing back-and-forth between the Institute and academic Siva Vaidyanathan bore fruit. Siva's networked writing project, The Googlization Of Everything, was announced (this would be launched in September). Then, in August, we <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/08/the_bookish_character_of_books.html">covered an excellent piece by Paul Duguid discussing the shortcomings of Google's digitization efforts</a>. </p> <p>In October, several major American libraries refused digitization deals with Google. By November, Google and digitization had <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/11/digitization_and_its_discontents.html">found its way into the New Yorker</a>; the same month <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/11/library_of_congress_to_archive.html">the Library of Congress put out a call</a> for e-literature links to be archived. </p> <p><strong><br /> 2008: All quiet? </strong></p> <p>In January we <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/01/no_longer_separated_by_a_commo.html">reported</a> that LibraryThing interfaces with the British Library, and in March on <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/03/google_books_api.html">the launch of an API for Google Books</a>. Siva's book <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/03/googlization_of_everything_now.html">found a print publisher</a> the same month. </p> <p>But if Google coverage has been slighter this year, that's not to suggest a happy ending to the story. Microsoft <a href="http://www.newser.com/article/d90s0aco0.html">abandoned its book scanning project in mid-May of this year</a>, raising questions about the viability of the Open Content Alliance. It would seem as though Skrenta was right. The Googlization of Everything continues, less challenged than ever. </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/google_digitization_and_archiv.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/google_digitization_and_archiv.html#comments">Comments (5)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/archive/">archive</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/digitization/">digitization</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/google/">google</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/libraries/">libraries</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/review/">review</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/archive" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">archive</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/review" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">review</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">google</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/libraries" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">libraries</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digitization" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">digitization</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003274"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/were_on_our_way_back.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">we're on our way back</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.16.2008, 10:17 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by bob stein</a></h3> <p>The period of extreme introspection is winding down. As you've seen over the last few days Sebastian Mary has embarked on a review of if:book's first four years. This will unfold over the next few weeks and will prepare the way for a re-design of the site intended both to encourage a lot more reader participation and also to free us from the chronological tyranny of the traditional blog format, which cuts off so many conversations just as they start to get interesting.</p> <p>There's a ton of interesting things to tell you about. I'll be posting a lot in the next few weeks. </p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/were_on_our_way_back.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/were_on_our_way_back.html#comments">Comments (0)</a> <!----><br>tags: <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> </div> --> <h3 id="a003271"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/fantasy_authors_site_hosts_fan.html" style="color: #ff6600; text-decoration: none;">fantasy author's site hosts fan-created wiki encyclopedia</a> <span><img src="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/images/icn_post.gif" width="12" height="9" alt="Post date" border="0">  06.13.2008, 2:55 AM</span></h3><p class="posted">posted by sebastian mary</a></h3> <p>In marked contrast to J K Rowling, whose battles against the publication of a fan-created Potter encyclopedia we've <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/04/old_school_1.html">covered here</a>, fantasy author <a href="http://www.temeraire.org/index.cgi?pagetype=bio">Naomi Novik</a>'s website hosts a wiki in which fans of her writing help to co-create an encyclopedic guide to her Temeraire novels. It's no coincidence that Novik is one of a handful of fanfic writers who've made the transition to publication as 'original' authors. She also chairs the <a href="http://transformativeworks.org/">Organization for Transformative Works</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/12/a_safe_haven_for_fan_culture.html">an archive dedicated to fanfic or 'transformative' work</a>. </p> <p>Novik's approach reflects a growing recognition by many in the content industries that mass audience engagement with a given fictional world is can deliver benefits worth that outweigh any perceived losses due to copyright infringement by 'derivative' work. Echoing the tacit truce between the manga industry and its participatory fan culture (<a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/11/anmoku_no_ryokai.html">covered here last November</a>), Novik's explicit welcoming of fan participation in her fictional universes points towards a model of authorship that goes beyond a crude protectionism of the supposed privileged position of 'author' towards a recognition that, while creativity and participation are in some senses intrinsic to the read/write Web, not all creators are created equal - nor wish to be. </p> <p>While a simplistic egalitarianism would propose that participatory media flatten all creative hierarchies, the reality is that many are content to engage with and develop a pre-existing fiction, and have no desire to originate such. Beyond recognising this fact, the challenge for post-Web2.0 writers is to evolve structures that reflect and support this relationship, without simply inscribing the originator/participator split as a cast-in-stone digital-era reworking of the author/reader dyad.</p> <p class="date"><a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/fantasy_authors_site_hosts_fan.html">Permalink</a> • <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/06/fantasy_authors_site_hosts_fan.html#comments">Comments (0)</a> <!----><br>tags: <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/authorship/">authorship</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/fan_fiction/">fan_fiction</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/fanfic/">fanfic</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/fiction/">fiction</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/novik/">novik</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/participation/">participation</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/tags/rowling/">rowling</a>, <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/writing/">writing</a> <!-- <div class="link-note"> <a href="http://www.technorati.com/">Technorati tags:</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/fanfic" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">fanfic</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/fan_fiction" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">fan_fiction</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/rowling" rel="tag" class="TechnoratiTags">rowling</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/novik" rel="tag" clas