Chris Anderson’s vision “today looks curiously conservative and static, and is both deeply reductive and pessimistic about human nature. We are happy to pay when we perceive value, even for the most unlikely products, such as bottled water. The ideas at the heart of Free do little to explain that.”
Tag: 04.30.09
Culture Seems To Have Detached From A Sense Of Forward Progress
“The current decade has been characterised by an abrupt sense of deceleration. What has happened is that technology has been decalibrated from cultural form. The present moment might in fact be best haracterised by a discrepancy between the onward march of technology and the stalling, stagnation and retardation of culture.”
Why The Book Biz Is In Trouble
“We simply publish too many books. We need more midlist novels and less of the celebrity books that challenge the bottomline of publishing conglomerates. The supply chain is broken. In the 20th century you got books to distributors and they got books into stores, and reps from publishers into stores telling buyers what to order… that doesn’t work anymore.”
Why The Internet Won’t Solve All Our Problems
“The internet is one of the most dazzling inventions of the past 50 years, indispensable to the way we live today. But the truth is that many of those in authority have stopped seeing the internet as a medium by which people send messages and receive feedback via a loop of electronic information. Instead, they have invested the flow of electronic information with a metaphysical significance about human nature and how things work.”
Technology? Bah! Humbug!
“We have been taught in schools since the late 18th century, and by the culture at large, to revere technology and to place faith in it as a liberator. Soon, soon, it seems to say, soon you will be free. I have a different view. I hold in supreme contempt 90 per cent of modern technology. The whole sorry shebang is actually a costly distraction, which isolates us, makes us stupid and is never going to free us.”
The Art Of Video Games (Of Course)
“If video games are art, what kind of art are they? What are their particular attributes and potential? And, perhaps most importantly, just how good are they?”
Libraries Vs. Google – Here’s What You Need To Know
“In the best case scenario for Google, it will have something resembling the library of the future online sometime in 2010, but given the number of lawyers eying this deal and the potential amount of money at issue, one can be pretty sure the legal battle will drag out far into the 2010s.”
Merce Cunningham – 65 Years Of Dance
“Earlier this month marked the 65th anniversary of what the dancer-turned-choreographer calls his beginnings as a dance maker. Mr. Cunningham began dancing professionally in 1939 and after creating a few dances along the way, gave a joint concert with avant-garde musician John Cage in 1944. It was then, according to the choreographer, that his career path was set.”
Aussie Publishers, Authors, Losing Battle For Public Opinion On Cheaper Books Deal
“Authors, publishers and the print industry appear to have lost momentum against the Cheaper Books argument, with their 11th hour pleading for the special case threat to children’s books acting as a sandbag to protect Australian publishing from what appears to be an unstoppable flood of public opinion in favour of change.”
Is Apple Creating The Kindle Killer?
“Amazon has shown that an e-book reader can find customers, provided the content is available. Amazon has the content part nailed and will, presumably, be happy to see Apple create a much larger installed based of e-book-capable hardware than Kindle ever will. My prediction is that if Apple really does the mediapad, Kindle will go away.”