“See, you can’t really say that you’re going to ‘change everything’ when it comes to textbooks and announce that your partners are the 3 companies who already control 90% of the textbook market. You can’t say that you’re going to disrupt the textbook industry by going digital when Pearson — one of those big 3 and, indeed, the largest educational company in the world — made over $3 billion from digital content last year alone.”
Tag: 01.19.12
A Conference To Figure Out What Broadway Will Look Like 20 Years From Now
“The dozen or so speakers are expected to discuss how data will be collected in the future, how marketing and customer service will change, the role of cultural institutions, audience demographics and how technology will alter live events. A principal at a public school from an impoverished section of the city will talk about the importance of arts funding.”
Controversial Revival Of “Porgy” – How “Controversial” Depends On How Well You Know It
“It has been interesting to note how people are reacting to the show in different ways according to their familiarity with the score, and more particularly their history (or not) of hearing it in the opera house, where it has most regularly been performed since its Broadway debut in 1935.”
Michael Christie, Having Taken Minnesota Job, To Leave Phoenix Symphony
Conductor Michael Christie, newly-appointed head of Minnesota Opera, will give up another of his jobs, music director of the Phoenix Symphony, at the end of next season.
Bill T. Jones Dances John Cage
His latest work, Story/Time, is based on Cage’s 1958 piece Indeterminacies, “a series of one-minute spoken-word stories that was different each time it was performed and was eventually recorded as an album. Mr. Jones’s version puts him at a desk onstage, reading his own series of mostly autobiographical stories, as his troupe’s nine members surround him.”
Italian Case Against 92-Year-Old Antiquities Dealer Thrown Out
“The trial of Robert E. Hecht Jr., the alleged mastermind of an international black market in ancient art, ended with no verdict this week when a three-judge panel in Rome found the time allotted for the trial had expired.”
YouTube, Venice Festival, Ridley Scott Create Online Film Competition
“YouTube’s aggressive effort to leave its low-rent entertainment reputation behind continues: On Thursday the Google-owned video hub plans to announce a partnership with the Venice Film Festival and Ridley Scott’s production company to create what it’s calling an online film festival.”
Leonard Cohen, Deadpan Humour And Artful Dodging
“He was always funnier than he was given credit for; now he has honed his deadpan to such perfection that every questioner becomes the straight man in a double act. … He still resists explaining [his songs] and his relentlessly dry self-deprecation works as a very effective, very entertaining shield.”
How Apple Will Kill Traditional Textbook Publishing
“Apple’s product is big on promise and will, in the end, kill the sale of paper textbooks. Of that I’m certain. How long it takes is the million dollar question today, but knowing the speed at which Apple forces the paradigm to shift, I doubt the textbook publishers will survive much longer just selling dead tree product.”
How Is Technology Changing Our Brains?
“One thing the luminaries mostly agree on is that the technological revolution of the late 20th century is the biggest upheaval since Gutenberg, and that growing up in a information-surfing culture is affecting us on a personal and social level.”