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Thursday, April 8th, 2010
Cory Doctorow has a great rant on Boing Boing about why he won’t buy an iPad and why he thinks you shouldn’t buy one either. It’s a great article, full of passion and well thought through arguments. Problem is it’s mostly bunkum.
He makes a number of points in the article that are worth looking at one by one.
Incumbents made bad revolutionaries
His argument here seems to be that Apple is more interested in using the great technical features of the iPad to either restrict its use or find a way to make people pay for it.
The example he uses is the Marvel iPad comic app. The argument is the app – and by extension the iPad – is bad because, for example, you can’t lend someone else your comic. Put aside the fact that it’s really an anti-DRM rant (which I mostly agree with) he forgets one simple thing. The device actually makes it extraordinarily easy to lend someone your comic – hand them your iPad. It is in this way exactly as easy to lend someone a comic on your iPad as it is with a physical comic book.
And if Apple gets this right, they’ll help craft – or at least speed up – the development of a whole new computing and media model - tablet computing.
That leads nicely into the next argument…
Infantilizing hardware
Tonight I had leftover pizza for tea. I heated it in the microwave and then put it under the grill for a minute to crisp it up. I punched some buttons on the microwave and it did what it needed to do – help me consume my dinner. I don’t need to be able to take it apart, repait it and install Linux on it. I just need it to work – like my television, my bed and my table.
But Cory’s argument here seems to suggest that if I’m only using a device to consume something I’m somewhat less likely to survive in the brave new world of the 21st century than someone who can take a device apart and put it back together.
I can enjoy consuming a book even if I don’t know how to pull the spine off, reorder the pages and put it back together again. It should be okay that not everyone wants to take everything apart all the time.
Boing Boing is a site supported by ad revenue. I bet there’s a strong correlation between the rates for those adverts and the number of people simply consuming the site – page hits or unique visitors. I hope the number of people actively interacting with the site by adding comments also factors in there but I doubt simple consumers of the site take a back seat when it’s time to crunch the numbers.
Wal-Martization of the software channel
According to Wikipedia there are around 150,000 third-party applications in the App Store. If Apple was the only computer maker in a regulated market I’d be more likely to accept the claim that “the iStore lock-in doesn’t make life better for Apple’s customers or Apple’s developers.”
But again this is an anti-DRM argument, that’s not (or shouldn’t be) restricted to the iPad. Clearly developers and customers aren’t stupid. That’s why more than three billion downloads have been made from the App Store.
The Wal-Mart analogy is a bad one too – at least on one level. The development of the iPod Touch, the iPhone and now the iPad has not seen a massive takeover of an existing market, it’s fostering a massive expansion of a new, previously small market.
Journalism is looking for a daddy figure
It’s not the device’s fault if journalists and bloggers get sucked into the spin from Apple’s marketing team. Indeed, arguing that Rupert Murdoch is silly because he thinks putting up a pay-wall will save his newspaper empire in the long-run should not be confined to discussion about the iPad.
Gadgets come and gadgets go
I’ve got some sympathy for the argument that “the real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.” But that’s the real crux of the whole post. Until he gets to here, Cory seems to be arguing that the iPad can’t won’t and shouldn’t change things. But here, he pretty much gives up the ghost and you almost get the sense that he knows it will.
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
A quick preview of some of Penguin’s plans for books on the iPad. Shiny!
It’s followed by a less shiny but more interesting talk from Penguin CEO John Makinson about how publishers will become more relevant, not less, and how they’ll be taking a giant leap into a distribution model that lets them play around with pricing and access a lot more consumer data. You can see that video over at PaidContent.org.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
The winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award – a literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender – have been announced.
Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales, by Greer Gilman won the Tiptree this year, along with Ooku: The Inner Chambers by Fumi Yoshinaga.
Cloud & Ashes is published by Small Beer Press run by Gavin Grant and Kelly Link. Great to see such a wonderful press getting a well-deserved gong. Ooku is the first time manga has been chosen for the award.
On top of that Wives by Paul Haines got a mention in the honors list too! Hopefully nod for Wives and the recognition of two stories from Eclipse 3 - edited by Jonathan Strahan – augur well for the Hugo nominations.
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
The March 13 deadline for Hugo ballot nominations isn’t far away, so it’s time to ramp the campaign back up.
The story so far, for those who’ve missed it: The Hugo Awards are coming to Australia courtesy of Aussiecon 4. Here’s our chance to help some of our best authors get their best work recognised by getting them nominated for an award.
It’s a pretty simple idea – get out there and nominate your favourite Aussie, writers, works, editors and fans.
But the numbers remain stacked against us.
As of January 1, there were 352 Australians registered and eligible to nominate for the Hugos. A healthy number, yes. But a very small one when compared to the 856 Americans eligible to nominate. And breaking those numbers down further says a bit more about why it’s important we get out there and nominate. Of those 856 Americans, 388 are “supporting” members – ie people who are unlikely to attend the convention but have paid a fee to get regular updates and to be eligible to vote in the Hugos. On top of that, add all the members of last year’s Worldcon, held in Montreal, who are also eligible to nominate and vote in the awards this year.
It’s perfectly understandable that US readers have less exposure than locals to great Australian speculative fiction. But if you think local works and authors deserve recognition; if you think it’s possible to make a difference and if you think it’s important to try then check out the Aussiecon 4 website for nomination details. And if you’re Facebook inclined, log in and join the conversation here.
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
The Homegrown Hugo Nomination Campaign continues apace.
For those who are still catching up the campaign is designed to get more recognition for great Australian writers and great Australian stories by getting people to think about which local works are worth nominating for a Hugo award.
Most of the discussion is on the Facebook group. Log in and check it out here. There’s also some discussion at the Vision Writers Yahoo group if you’re a member.
Some other useful recommendations and pimpage can be found here:
Go read, enjoy and nominate.
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
American speculative fiction authors and their works get more recognition out of the Hugo Awards than anyone else because most of the time the annual Worldcon is held in the US. And good on them for it.
But with the 2010 Worldcon being held here our community has a great chance to internationally recognise the best work from Australia’s best authors.
Here’s how we can do it together.
Nominations for the Hugo Awards are open until March 13. You can help by nominating your favourite Australian work, writers or artists from 2009.
The works I’m highlighting and recommend nominating are:
Best Novella: Horn by Peter M. Ball
Best Novelette (two recommendations):
“Sister, Sister” by Angela Slatter in Strange Tales III
“Inevitable” by Sean Williams in The New Space Opera 2
Best Fan Writer: Bill Wright
The John W Campbell Award for best new writer (two recommendations):
Peter M. Ball
Lezli Robyn
I think Jonathan Strahan will receive another nod for Best Editor (short form) and I encourage people to nominate him. I will be.
If you haven’t already read works by these people track them down and see if you think they deserve a nomination.
There are lots of other categories too. Check them out and see if you’ve got other favourite works worth nominating as well. It’s nominations I’m interested in and I won’t be campaigning like this to get particular people particular awards once the nominations are in. But let’s get some of our best authors out there on the international awards stage.
While nominations don’t close until March 13, you need to be a member (supporting or attending) of Aussiecon 4 by January 31 to be eligible to nominate works.
Spread the word.
About Aussiecon 4 and nominating: www.aussiecon4.org.au/
About the Hugo Awards: www.thehugoawards.org/
Friday, January 8th, 2010
The announcement by Realms of Fantasy it will do a ‘Women in Fantasy” issue has opened up another round of discussion about how the under-representation of female writers in some short fiction markets can be addressed. The announcement that their August 2011 issue will feature fiction, non-fiction and art by female writers has set off a fairly wide-ranging discussion.
There’s not a lot of great data on this out there but I suspect some of the under-representation problem – though far from all – is a flow-through issue. Part of the reason female writers are under-represented in various anthologies and magazines may be that they are under-represented in the number of submissions.
And this is where I’m mostly interested in – and supportive of – the move from Realms. Announcing the issue so far in advance should encourage more female writers to submit. Hopefully that might go beyond just one issue but only time will tell.
Plenty of people are dissing the move and it’s also being conflated with a poor choice of language (which has been apologised for) when the announcement was made. But I think there’s value in it. Unlike a one-off antho, a magazine can address issues like this over time. And if this move helps redress an imbalance and encourage more submissions from a broader range of writers, all the better.
It would be an interesting data-set if Realms tracked their submissions on a gender basis this year and next year and see if the announcement has an impact on submissions. Either way, Shawna McCarthy is a great fiction editor and I’m keen to see what she’ll produce.
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
There’s a lot more in the Australian Productivity Commission’s report into parallel book imports than just their economic argument about cheaper books.
There’s been some good analysis of what implementing the recommendations could mean for Australian authors, booksellers and publishers. And there’ll be plenty more to come, which I might do a wrap up of next week. I don’t want to revisit those arguments now because, frankly, others have done it in more depth.
My interest today is Appendix F.
Appendix F is titled: “Design of financial support for book producers”. It analyses grants and literary prizes for authors and publishers. They don’t offer much of an explicit opinion on the Public and Education Lending Right schemes, which compensate authors for books borrowed from public and educational libraries. Except they make the point that most authors receiving payments under PLR and ELR get small amounts; only a few get the big bucks, which seems code for saying it’s not much use when it comes to author incomes. Many authors will tell you different.
Stick with me, I’m getting to the Sean Williams hatred real soon.
The Productivity Commission suggests, that instead of inefficient grants to individual authors and various organisations:
Subsidies to book producers ideally should be delivered only for books that yield material cultural and educational externalities that would not otherwise be generated. The externality value of books, and the likelihood that it would be generated without a dedicated subsidy, is likely to vary between classes or genres of books, as well as within them, and so ideally subsidies should vary to reflect these differences.
And which class of books do they say are likely to offer more value?
Among the diversity of the adult trade sector, Australian stories, histories and biographies are examples of books which are more likely to generate cultural externalities than generic fiction or some non-fictional material such as Australian-authored computer manuals.
There’s the hatred. Sean Williams – a great Australian storyteller – writes some of that dreaded generic fiction. No PLR or ELR for him. The Productivity Commission says instead subsidies could be dished out by a panel of assessors who – as they suggest – should probably give the science fiction section a big miss.
But it’s not just Williams. The productivity hates any number of great Aussie speculative fiction authors like Karen Miller and Marianne de Pierres. They probably don’t hate Margo Lanagan quite so much but only because she writes lots of those great youth-oriented page-turning cultural externalities yarns.
Though having a panel to assess subsidy eligibility is probably a bit inefficient. Here’s what they suggest could streamline the process:
An alternative approach to aligning subsidies with potential differences in cultural externalities of books, that may be more suitable for a broad book subsidy scheme, would be to distinguish book content according to generally accepted bibliographic classification systems.
Why bother with a pesky assessment panel – they may let a few genre books through – when you can just wall off the entire science fiction and fantasy section and forget about it? It’s kinda like saying you can go for a jog along any street you want but you’ll only get fit if your route goes through the rich suburbs.
So what type of books are likely to be Productivity Commission pre-approved:
Most obviously, the core ideas that were embodied in books such as The New Testament, The Wealth of Nations, Mein Kampf and The Female Eunuch have had major impacts on how societies operate. Truly ‘iconic’ works are rare, but some books have similar, though smaller, external effects through their influence on people’s views and attitudes.
But watch out for those negative externality generators
For example, some people would see Professor Ian Plimer’s recent book Heaven and Earth — which purports to debunk the scientific consensus on climate change — as generating external costs, to the extent that it weakens community support for measures to reduce greenhouse emissions. Most clearly, books that have the effect of promoting intolerance between groups can diminish certain forms of social capital and generate external costs.
Mein Kampf’s okay but don’t challenge climate change, okay? (And before anyone throws Godwin’s law back at me, just remember – the Productivity Commission started it).
And here’s the biggest problem for me. The Productivity Commission started off making an economic argument. And there’s probably an important discussion to have around some of these things. It would be good to pay less for books. But why isn’t the Productivity Commission saying we should drop the GST on books, or force Amazon and other online retailer to pay the 10% tax and reduce their government-regulated competitive advantage. Lets discuss them.
Instead we get this nonsense – essentially an argument over what has literary merit. Stories matter to me, not externalities.
But clearly it’s important to them. So just in case they didn’t check – a note for the Productivity Commission: Cheapest I could find Mein Kampf on Amazon was US$1.46 (without shipping). But if that’s a bit much you can probably get it cheaper if everyone puts in and you buy the order in bulk.
Monday, December 1st, 2008
You know you’ve really made it as an author when fans start leaving their ashes in the gardens surrounding your museum.
News sites are reporting that the Jane Austen House Museum is so distressed by people leaving the ashes of loved ones in their garden, they’ve written to fans of the author asking them to stop.
Says the museum’s collections manager Louise West: “While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. On three or four occasions, our gardener Celia Simpson has found piles of human ash placed in the garden secretly.”
Wonder if anyone was cremated with a copy of Pride and Prejudice?
Photo: Mark HillarySaturday, November 15th, 2008
Today, the second part of my analysis of the Obama win.
Age and race as indicators of change
Americans were in the mood for change. Obama’s age and race provided an immediately obvious difference to crystallize on, even before people started comparing policies. He was a generation removed from Bush, from McCain and from the Clintons.
Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, and 40 years after Ali was stripped of the world heavyweight title for refusing to go to Vietnam an African-American was elected president of the United States. The symbolism was magnificent.
But while African-American turnout was good, it was also strong across most demographics. People wanted to vote. His race or age weren’t responsible for him being elected but they were both a lightning rod for the change that had happened in America and the change he was proposing. They helped people focus.
The Palin Gambit and other McCain errors
The choice of Sarah Palin was illustrative of a number of serious tactical errors the McCain camp made during the campaign. Denied his supposed first choice of independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman, McCain chose the Alaskan governor to appeal to the Republican base and Democratic women put off by the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primaries. But the two-for-one Palin deal only delivered on half of the bargain and it wasn’t the half they needed. Somewhere along the way the Republicans forgot that the Democratic women who were supporting Clinton so strongly were a generation older than Palin. The fact she was a woman didn’t matter – she was too young to have fought the battles their generation had fought. They didn’t like her politics and weren’t going to do her any favours.
The Palin gambit also meant McCain gave up one of his best tactical advantages over Obama – the experience card. No longer could McCain level the argument that Obama lacked experience because his choice for Vice President was clearly even worse. It was one of the worst own-goals in recent political history.
For large parts of the campaign it seemed like McCain just couldn’t catch a break., McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign amid the growing economic crisis wasn’t entirely flawed. But to pay off it needed his party to at least pretend to look to him as a leader and not vote the original stimulus package (whatever you think of it) down and blame Nancy Pelosi for being too nasty.
His decision to go so negative so soon was another flaw. McCain should have spent the last three weeks of the campaign telling American families why he thought Obama’s tax plan would be bad for them. But no, instead he mixed his messages with hyped-up negatives that only appealed to his base.
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