Category Archives: Dissertation

The Cult of the Amateur

If you’re looking for a thoughtful discussion of amateurs vs. experts in the world of Web 2.0, Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur isn’t it. It starts out as a rant against amateurism, which Keen equates with incompetence. Obviously, this is a fallacious argument. (The book is a series of those.)

Not only that, but he doesn’t even agree with his own argument. For example, it’s highly doubtful that any of the record store sales clerks that he reveres were professional musicologists. Rather, they were knowledgeable amateurs who took sales positions at record stores because they liked music! The book is full of conflicting arguments like this. Keen protests that he’s not a Luddite but his concerns say otherwise. On one hand, he derides high schoolers editing Wikipedia. On the other, he reveres the same high schooler when he’s working in an indie record store. The only possible conclusion: his issue is not with an amateur music lover showing off his knowledge but with that knowledge being shown off online.

He considers the average person to be an idiot who can’t tell a personal blog from CNN or the NY Times and who is therefore constantly in peril of conflating Joe Blow’s opinions with those of professional journalists. Not only is this ridiculous (ok, there are probably some people who are just that dumb, but it’s obviously not true for the majority of people), but while he criticizes the bias of the amateur, he is completely uncritical of the bias of the professional. Ahem. As I think is pretty clear to the average person sitting at home watching cable news, just because someone is getting paid to talk about news on TV doesn’t make them unbiased.

He argues that buying music from Tower Records (now-defunct music store) = good! Buying music from iTunes = bad. Renting movies from Blockbuster? Good! Netflix? Bad. The hell? I mean, if his actual concern is people “stealing” intellectual property, then he shouldn’t have a preference where or how they obtain it, as long as they do in fact pay for it. He also makes such a big deal about people buying singles on iTunes, like singles are some kind of online invention (!) that’s an affront to musicians. With arguments like these, he betrays his own bias as someone who simply doesn’t want people to buy stuff online.

He is pro-corporation, expecting readers to feel bad for mega-corporations such as Disney. Seriously? Disney? The same Disney that is pretty much single-handedly responsible for crazy copyright extensions? Right.

We must keep content creators and content consumers separate, he argues. Really? Really? Give me a break. Elitist much? Sure, there’s a lot of crap online. Sure, there are legitimate issues with respect to content creation and how creators should be compensated (believe me, this is an issue I’m interested in), but the idea that only a certain class of people are allowed to create and everyone else should just sit down and shut up and consume? [censored]

Why does Jane Doe posting how-to-crochet tutorials on YouTube or John Smith blogging about the exploits of his family bother him so much? If he’s not interested in these things, he doesn’t have to “consume” them. But it seems to bother him that they exist. Or rather, that he knows they exist. Because average people have always created things, they just weren’t so visible to the elites. His big issue seems to be that he is forced to acknowledge their presence. And, of course, that their presence (content) might be competition for his.

Do I think that, if someone is an expert, their views on their subject of expertise should be given more weight than that of non-expert? Sure. But what makes someone an “expert”? Credentials? Paid employment? Being knowledgeable about a subject? Being skilled at something? What Keen seems to miss is that a) a person can be both an amateur and an expert on a subject, b) not all professionals are experts (i.e. a person might hold a paid position, but not be very knowledgeable or skilled), c) people can obtain knowledge & skills through means other than formal education & employment, and most importantly: d) every professional starts out as an amateur. You don’t get good at something by passively “consuming.” You get good by trying, doing, creating, learning, experimenting. Yeesh.

Oh wait. He didn’t actually miss that because in his acknowledgments at the end of the book he actually admits that he, writing his first book, is an amateur. So, it’s ok that he (an amateur) writes a book putting down amateurs (as well as the general population), but it’s not ok that other amateurs write (or make videos or whatever) about subjects they’re interested in? How can he not see that he’s doing exactly what he doesn’t want others to do? What makes him so special?

Finally, perhaps a bigger problem than anything I’ve discussed here is, after a few chapters, Keen veers wildly off-topic, digressing into discussions of such things as IP theft, privacy, identity theft, online gambling, online porn, and parental controls. I guess he ran out of things to say to support his stated thesis. Overall, it’s a shallow and flawed argument. Disappointing.

Writing and Handedness

Just finished watching this video (public lecture with Leonard Shlain). There’s an interesting bit about left brain/right brain, handedness and the introduction of the typewriter, and later the personal computer. The idea is that when you handwrite, you only use one hand. And if you’re right-handed, that taps into the left side of your brain (the un-creative “masculine” side). However, with a typewriter and/or computer, you use both hands to write, hence connecting to both sides of your brain.

Aside: My junior high art teacher was obsessed with the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Well, perhaps obsessed is a bit strong, but he went on about it quite a bit. At the time, we found it kind of funny, but lately I’ve been thinking he was ahead of his time.

I’m weakly right-handed (right-leaning ambidextrous?). Some things I have no preference of doing them right- or left-handed. Either way is fine. Like when I was playing sports in school, sometimes I’d play left (things with sticks) and sometimes I’d arbitrarily switch back & forth. I do write right-handed, but I’ve always been able to also write with my left hand. Not as quickly, of course, but that’s mostly due to less practice, I would think. With writing, it makes sense to focus your energies on one hand. (Or does it?! Now I’m wondering…) Anyhow, I have lots of things I do either-handed, and some things I like to do left-handed. I can draw with my left hand.

But whereas with handedness I often wonder if I’m just doing stuff right-handed out of habit rather than actual preference (because if I switch hands it seems fine the other way too), I am strongly left eye dominant. I frame things with my left eye. I take photographs with my left eye.

So anyway, point. It just occurred to me while listening to this lecture that maybe my difficulty with writing pre-computer, i.e. when I was trying to write by hand, is related to mixed-dominance. I used to chalk my lack of production up to laziness or my wrist getting tired. I would think about writing a lot. Work out stories in my head. But when it came time to write them down, not much would come out. Journaling was also a slog for me. But when I started wordprocessing, the words just flowed in a way they never did when I was handwriting. In other words, maybe being able to use both hands at once was really important for me. More significant than just being physically easier. In terms of creativity, and being able to tap into both sides of the brain at once and make connections that just weren’t happening when I was trying to write solely with my right hand.

And! Now I’m thinking about this in terms of blogging / online writing vs. traditional diaries. Maybe there’s an importance to the typing side of it (using both hands, tapping into creative “feminine” side of brain) that’s been overlooked with the focus on public/private and all that jazz.

Hmm… Remember in elementary school, when you were learning to write and they had the letters with arrows showing which direction to form them? Once I mentioned to a teacher that I went the opposite way (and got chastised for doing it “wrong,” of course). I never said anything again, but kept making the letters the way I always had. I always had terrible handwriting anyhow. I’d get put in the remedial section (with the boys) where you had to use those interlined books and write your letters two feet tall. Which resulted in not better, but bigger, handwriting, that I got chastised for by other teachers down the line. OMG. I always chalked up my crappy handwriting to impatience—just wanting to be done already with boring busywork. Maybe that wasn’t it at all.

Anyhow. Possibly this explains why when people rhapsodize about writing longhand, it feels a bit like romanticizing the pen to me. Maybe handwriting is more creative/expressive if you’re strongly handed one way or the other, but not if you’re not so much so?

Nothing else going on

Just finished watching (well, listening) to this Nicholas Carr lecture in which he says:

I think one way to think about this is that what the web does—despite the fact that it’s this incredible high technology and we think of it as the cutting edge and everything—is bring us back to a much more primitive and in a way more natural style of thinking. I mean I think Fred and Barney would have been very happy online and using our new technologies, because our brains seem to be naturally wired to shift our focus very rapidly. And you can understand this if you think about our distant ancestors in Stone Age times and so forth. You were rewarded by your ability to keep track of as much of what was going on around you at once. You know by shifting your attention all the time, by shifting your focus, you were the person who survived because you saw the predator approaching before everyone else, or you were the person who survived because you spotted that bush of berries that you could eat that everybody else missed. And so in a way we’re naturally wired to be distracted, to be interrupted, and what’s hard for us is to pay attention, what goes against our instincts and our nature is to focus on one thing. You know, the worst thing a caveman could do is actually focus on one thing for a long period of time because then he would end up being eaten pretty quickly.

And I think in this regard it’s very very interesting and very informative to compare what the web is doing to us with what the other great modern information technology did for us and that is the book. I mean, think about the difference between being online between looking at a screen and sitting down with a book. The fundamental difference is that whereas the screen bombards us with distractions and interruptions, the book, the printed page, shields us from those distractions and interruptions that come at us all the time. You know, we tend to think of the book, the printed book, as somehow being flawed today because it doesn’t have links, it doesn’t have video, it doesn’t have multimedia, you can’t like check your email while you’re reading a book, but in fact that’s the fundamental strength of the book as a technology. There is nothing else going on. And so that way of thinking that’s very hard and very unnatural for us, for we human beings, that very attentive way of thinking was encouraged by the book and in fact I think you can argue that for many people over the last 500 years the story of our intellectual lives is the story of how the book helped us to pay attention. And that, because the brain is adaptable and plastic, our ability to pay attention that we learned from reading could then be applied to all sorts of other aspects of our mental lives.

—Nicholas Carr
(starting @ 49:40; emphasis added, obvs.)

The first part (single-minded focus vs. multitasking) is interesting because it fits into where I”m going with my dissertation, this idea that in online writing we have conflict and misunderstandings because of a clash between worldviews, i.e. writers (creators) and non-writers (communicators). (Or literacy/individuality vs. orality/community.)

The second part… I’m like, hmm, I’m sure I’ve said/written something to this effect before. So then I dug around in my archives a bit and aha! I did indeed. Now I just need figure out how to get people to pay me to write books and give lectures based on my amazing and prescient blog posts.

Thin on story … thick with introspection

The [new Great Gatsby] film won’t come close the power of the novel, but not simply because Gatsby is a book, and, as the cliché insists, the Book is Always Better Than The Movie. Film versions of Fitzgerald’s masterwork inevitably fail because of the kind of novel Gatsby is—frankly thin on story, but incredibly thick with introspection, thoughts unspoken, intricately woven metaphor, and long, dazzling descriptions of otherwise mundane things like sunsets, front lawns and angry wives that are only special because of how the narrator describes them.

Not every book is better than the movie, after all. … [Fight Club and The Godfather] made such good movies because their plots are visual and action-packed. Gatsby‘s plot isn’t. … The novel’s genius is in how Fitzgerald can invest mere tabloid fodder with some sort of epic grandeur. He delves deeply into his character’s thoughts, Nick’s semi-omnipotent narration describing motives and sensations that simply don’t translate well to the screen.

Movies, for all their scope and power, and for all the CGI/3D technological whiz-bangery, have never been any good at expressing human thought.

—Hampton Stevens

This is something I’ve often thought about / discussed before. How I often enjoy movies (or TV series) based on books I didn’t like (or know I wouldn’t like, based on past experience). And of course part of it is that good actors turn stock characters into nuanced ones and similarly, that good cinematography can turn bland descriptions of place into stunning visuals. But part of it is also this, i.e. that some material is more suited to film than books and some material is more suited to books than film. Anyhow, what I was wondering is if this can be related to ebooks vs. pbooks. As in ebooks are perhaps more suited to plot-based reads, books where the story is more important than the writing (how the story is told). Books where you can be a little distracted and it doesn’t really matter. And correspondingly, pbooks are perhaps more suited to character-based reads, books where how the story is told is more important than the plot. Books that require undivided attention, where all the benefits of ebooks and ereaders would not actually be beneficial. As in, the pbook is better suited for this kind of reading than any ebook (with accompanying distractions) because this kind of book was developed for the pbook. Whereas the plot-based story has been around forever and is easily transferable from one medium to the next—but is perhaps best-suited to media other than the pbook.

Further, while plot-based stories have universal appeal (I don’t mean that everyone likes every story, but that everyone likes some plot-based stories), writing-based stories do not. Writing-based stories have always had a smaller audience. It’s a niche market.

So I think one of the reasons the “death of the book” argument seems to go round and round in circles is that you have two groups of readers and two groups of writers who think they’re discussing the same thing, but really aren’t. When every story was packaged in a pbook, they were all booklovers and it was all good. But now, with choice of medium, the divisions start to create this content/format clash. For example, I think this is why you get people saying stuff like content is what matters; format is irrelevant. By “content” they’re thinking of the story, the plot, which could be told in any medium. But to a writer/reader who leans toward writing-based stories, this makes no sense. To them, of course it’s important where the words appear on the page, what typeface is used, whether Britishisms have been Americanized, etc. Because it’s about the writing… as an art, I guess. As opposed to a craft. Yes, I guess you could think of it like that: art vs. craft.

I tried to start a discussion about this at TC once but it didn’t go so well. I think I was misunderstood. It’s not about one style being better than the other. They’re different. One has a wider appeal; one has a narrower appeal. But there are always going to be plot-driven stories that appeal to those who generally like character-driven ones and vice versa. Just like classical music vs. pop. Or modern art vs. Etsy crafts. Both have their merits and it is totally possible to find both appealing (but probably for different reasons). Both require skill, but different kinds of skills.

If you think about modern art, for example, when people look at a piece, they often say, “I could have done that.” But that’s the key: they didn’t. The execution of the piece may not have required a great deal of skill, but the skill is in the idea, the concept, the meaning of the piece. On the other hand, a craft might not have a “big idea” behind it, but it can nevertheless require a lot of technical skill to execute. The artist needs to continually be coming up with new ideas (i.e. “wow, where did that come from?” ideas). The crafter needs to be able to replicate (or riff off) successful pieces. They’re different, but (done well) neither are easy.

I think you have to start from that point, that both kinds of story can be good (and also: both can be terrible) in order to even have a discussion where people are actually listening to each other and not just shouting that the other is elitist or dumb or covering their ears and going, “lalala I can’t hear you.”

Reality Hunger

I’ve just been writing 100-word reviews at Goodreads of the books I’m reading for my comprehensives, but I was unable to keep my thoughts on Reality Hunger to 100 words. And I know someone will say that just the fact I feel compelled to write about it means it’s good, but— I think my need to say something about this book stems more from the overwhelmingly positive response to it than from the book itself. That said…

My main takeaway from Reality Hunger is that fiction bores David Shields (and therefore, it should bore you, too!). Sure, there were some interesting quotes in the book and some points I don’t disagree with—that memoir and fiction are closer than people think, for example, or that memoir is much like poetry in its mix of real and invented. Sure. Yes. But mostly, in the bits that weren’t the unattributed words of other people, it was Shields going on about how he finds fiction boring and memoirs are too close to fiction and essays are where it’s at. Ok, then. Write an essay.

This wasn’t an essay. It was a bunch of disconnected sentences and quotations, some Shields’s own, some from other people. I’m not sure where the manifesto comes into it. While it was a book object-wise (hilariously, one with a deckle edge! Quote from RH‘s Amazon page: “Deckle edge books are bound with pages that are made to resemble handmade paper by applying a frayed texture to the edges.” So it’s a fake handmade book! Muahaha! Now that is awesome. Intentional?), it wasn’t a book content-wise, meaning there was no rationale for this being a book.

It was as if I took the contents of my blog for the past year, stripped the attributions from the quotes, dumped it all in to a Word doc and published it as a book. Which I could do easily enough through any one of the many POD services available. But to what end? What would be the point? Bookifying the quotes and posts I’ve written would mean stripping out the links (context). And a string of quotations, without context or explanation for why I’ve saved them would be pretty meaningless to anyone else.

No, the best place for such a compilation is my blog, not a book. Which I think is maybe the greater point that Shields is missing. Not everything should be a book. We have different media now; make use of them where appropriate. Reality Hunger could have been an interesting blog project, but it makes for a boring book.

That’s right. I said boring.

There’s nothing I find more boring than a privileged person going on about how bored they are. Give. me. a. break. I really do not care if you don’t enjoy novels or find them boring. Don’t read them then. Problem solved. Why are you telling me this? Why are you telling anyone this?

If I had to sum up my opinion of RH in one word, that word would be: meh. I didn’t hate it, because, like I said, there are interesting ideas blobbed in here and there, but they’re not explored. To me, it has a “been there, done that” quality. Yes, I know the lines between fiction and memoir blur. Yes, I know there’s a trend to reality/nonfiction. etcetera. Shields was stating (or quoting) these ideas like they were revelations when they’re obviously not. (And now, I’m wondering, it this just me? Maybe I’ve been thinking about this stuff for too long. Maybe these are revelations to some people.)

Anyway, I wanted more. I was expecting an exploration of what reality is. Or why the “reality” we seem to be hungering for is so fake. But Shields seems to take the trend to reality at face value, like it’s actually a trend away from fiction to nonfiction, from “let’s pretend” to “let’s be real.” But let’s be serious. The “reality” we’re trending to is just as contrived (if not more) than the fictional worlds Shields claims he can’t stand. (At least fiction has the honesty to admit it’s made up.) It’s not the contrivance that’s changed; it’s what we call it. Used to be we were fine with saying “this is pretend” and now we have to say “this is real” (but of course we all know it’s fake). So the real question is not what’s driving us to reality, but what’s driving us to claim we want realness when really we just want to pretend that the fake is real.

Kind of like how the abundance of positive reviews of RH go on about the freshness of Shields’s ideas, his argument, his manifesto. What?! He is quoting other people who already said these things. By definition these are not fresh, new ideas. They’re recycled ideas.

And that’s the other thing. Shields fancies himself a bit o’ a copyfighter: “I’m going to direct quote a bunch of people but not attribute them! Whee! I’m getting back to the roots of writing!” Um, no. Copyright is the exclusive right to make copies, derivative works, etc. And yes, it’s out of control, but that’s an issue separate from what Shields is doing (or wanted to do) here. Attribution is a moral right. If you’re not attributing something you know someone else said, you’re not copyfighting, you’re being an asshole. Copyright restrictions do inhibit creativity; crediting (or hat-tipping) people for the contribution they’ve made to your work does not.

Of course all creative work builds on what has come before. But acknowledging that your ideas build upon bits and pieces that you’ve read and seen and heard over the course of your lifetime, much of which you don’t consciously remember, is quite different than directly quoting someone else but deliberately choosing not to give them credit.

This hit home most acutely when I realized Shields quotes from at least two unpublished theses—I assume former students of his. While one might expect that the writings of famous authors would be recognized and identified by some, if not all, readers, the same cannot be said for the writings of unknown graduate students, especially when the quoted-from manuscripts are only available in the university library (not online). If Shields hadn’t been forced to cite, who would ever have known these words were not his? Seems rather unfair (especially considering he’s profiting from this book, and they, presumably, are not. Correct me if I’m wrong!).

And it’s not just unfair to the writers whose work he’s quoted. It’s unfair to his readers. With the authors credited, readers can find and read the works Shields quoted from. If the authors had not been credited, RH would have just been a dead end for a lot of people. Not citing advantages those who have already read pieces Shields quotes from and are able to recognize them, and disadvantages those who haven’t. I can’t help thinking there’s a whole power/privilege dynamic going on here. Those already on the inside get the references, drawing them in closer, while those on the outside get pushed further out.

Shields tries to position his unattribution as akin to sampling in music or collage in art. But there’s a big difference. In music and art, the source material is implicitly credited. In music, the sample will be readily identifiable as being from a different source because the singer’s voice, for example, will be different, so even if the listener doesn’t know who the singer is, they’ll recognize that part of the song as a sample from something else. Similarly, with artistic collage, the collaged bits are identifiable as being from a different source via style, via medium, etc. The artist and the musician are not trying to pass off the samples as their own work but rather openly incorporating it in something new.

With a printed book, it’s different. A lot of the cues you have with visual or aural media are missing. In RH, for example, everything is presented in the same way: the typeface is the same throughout; there’s no attempt to use bold or italics or a different font size or numbering scheme to indicate which words are Shields’s and which are quoted. What you have left are writing style and context. And to be sure, it was obvious that some of the quotations were not written by Shields due to a jarring difference in style or a reference to things that made no sense in terms of Shields’s own background. But if you went into RH not knowing anything about Shields or that the book was made up of a patchwork of quotes, you could be excused for wondering how he managed his many careers (writing! music! movies!)—not to mention how such an inconsistent voice got past an editor.

RH would have been better as a real scrapbook, torn bits pasted together, a true patchwork quilt of quotations, different typefaces and papers, one where the reader could see the torn edges and how Shields knit them together.

I found this remixed version of Reality Hunger, with the attributions from the appendix incorporated into the text, and just having those cues there makes for a better read, imo. The changes in voice make sense and there’s a better sense of time and context (the attributions aren’t dated, but you can be sure a long-dead writer isn’t referring to the internet, for example). But it also makes you really aware of how radically not a book this text is. It’s just a bunch of quotes!

Is it possible that all the positive reviews, including the ridiculously over-the-top cover blurbs are meant to be sarcastic? Cause if you read them with sarcasm they kind of make sense. If they’re meant to be taken seriously, it feels like an Emperor’s New Clothes kind of deal, like how people keep claiming that Twilight actor is attractive, but all I think about when I see photos of him are the fugly hockey players back in high school who girls pretended were cute (boys with no front teeth are adorables, amiright? ;-)) because, hey! they were hockey players.

Let’s pretend that the fake is real.

If we repeat it often enough maybe we will make it so.

Everyone and their dog reviewed RH; this is the one that I thought captured it best. Oh, and also this.

I’ll comment on yours if you comment on mine

As a concept [relatability] grew valuable, and could be attached to modes of engagement–whether artistic, socio-cultural, or political–that were previously uninterested in relating to their audience in any conscious way. The memoir boom was built on this idea, as is much of chick lit, reality TV and of course the blogoscenti. With the dawn of the internet and its attendant traffic in user-generated, confessional minutiae—and I’ll comment on yours if you comment on mine—an ascendant cultural irregularity found the medium to turn its message into a malignancy. …

The most dangerous thing about relatability is the way it is often presented (and accepted) as a reasonable facsimile of or substitute for truth. This, I worry, may handicap our culture so violently that recovery, if it comes at all, will be generations in the reckoning; if in the meantime we lose our appetite for the real thing we are pretty much doomed. The pursuit of truth is a basic human instinct, and guides our engagement with ourselves, with art, and with other human beings; the scourge of relatability—and its sweetheart deal with another basic instinct, adaptation—puts all three relationships at risk.

—Michelle Orange

The medium of creation and consumption is critical

One could argue that writing is writing – it’s all communication – whether it’s scratches on a cave wall, glyphs in stone, ink on papyrus, pencil on paper, typed characters on bond stationery, or digits in the ether. I disagree. In writing and reading, no less than in art, the medium of creation and consumption is critical to a work’s effect. That’s not to say that writing longhand is better than writing on a typewriter, or that writing on a typewriter is better than writing on a laptop; rather, it’s to say that each of these acts is different from the others and will yield different types of prose. All writers and even the most casual readers sense this.

—Bill Morris

The Internet has changed us

The point, it seems to me, isn’t whether the Internet is “good” or “bad” for our brains. The Internet has changed us, just as the printed book and the typewriter did. The Internet sharpens us and makes us faster thinkers, more adept at shifting between tasks, even as it erodes our ability to focus on a single topic, a single work, for long periods of time. The point is that whether you think the Internet is “good for your mind”, or exactly the opposite, depends on your values.

…

it seems to me that [Nicholas Carr has] approached this problem primarily as a writer—in other words, as someone whose profession requires the ability to close oneself in a room and remain utterly focused on the business of researching and completing a manuscript for hours at a time. For a writer, an inability to focus for long periods on the work at hand is at best an impediment, at worst a disaster.

—Emily St. John Mandel

Her narrative is compelling

[Lisa’s] blog is great. But I haven’t completely settled the “is she talking to me” question. While Lisa follows me back, we don’t interact with each other. She uses Tumblr in a very social way, she isn’t really part of the crowd of people whom I otherwise follow. And I find this somewhat troubling. … I like following her because, for whatever reason, her narrative is compelling. Following her blog is somewhat akin to watching a reality TV show (Not one of the ones where they try to out-dance each other or diet for money, but one that just follows someone’s daily life). She’s my Jersey Shore. But of course, Lisa isn’t a reality TV character, she’s a real person. Yes, I know Snooki is real, too, but celebrities are different. … treating real people, regular people, the same way we treat celebrities, is problematic.

—Patrick Brown

Where does this feeling bad for reading (reading!) a published piece of writing come from? When and why has it become so transgressive to read? I can see perhaps feeling bad for reading something a third-party wrote about a person, for example, if it’s nasty gossip or a breach of confidence. But when it’s a person writing about themselves… well, they’ve made a choice to be a writer (or at least a “writer”) just like Snooki has made the choice to be an “actor.”

Brown is right that personal blogs are compelling in the same way as reality TV. In fact, I think personal blogs are as much responsible for the decline of the soap opera as reality TV. I think lots of people read blogs as episodic stories (there’s a limit to how many interactive relationships a person can keep up), but it’s unpopular to admit to doing this, because it transgresses the “rules” of blogging/social media. It’s ok to watch an episode of Jersey Shore and then shut the TV off and go about your day, but if you read a blog entry, then close your browser and go about your day, you’re “creepy” and a “stalker.” The overuse of those two words probably gets to the heart of why Brown feels bad about reading someone’s blog in the way he wouldn’t if he were reading a book written by the same person.

Where his argument falls apart is in his analysis of celebrity. Arguing that bloggers are not analogous to reality TV stars because people wouldn’t recognize them on the street is fallacious. People who are on TV are obviously more visually recognizable than people who write. But that doesn’t make every TV personality more of a celebrity than every writer. How many people would have recognized JD Salinger had they passed him on the street? At any rate, it’s not like Brown is acting like a papparazzo, virtually stalking Lisa with the goal of finding out something salacious to sell to a gossip blogger. He’s reading her blog. And, in this case, she actually knows he’s part of her audience, and may even be reading his blog.

He asks “is she talking to me”? The answer, obviously, from his pov is yes. He finds her narrative compelling. Ergo, she (or, more specifically her writing, her narrative) is talking to him. Now, did Lisa anticipate that people outside her immediate social circle might be interested in her writing when she started blogging? Perhaps she did, perhaps she didn’t. But once she decided to blog publicly, she opened herself up to the possibility that her real readership (audience) might, and probably would, extend beyond her imagined readership.

BookCamp Vancouver 2010 – Part 6

The Bonus Session: Print Books

@jmaxsfu Cranbury: so what is it about the physical book?

Physicality of the book is still important.

@jmaxsfu Physicality of book involves having a tactile sense of limits. @bookpromogirl

Some thoughts that online/ereader good for short pieces, print for longer works, which I tend to agree with. Why? Suggestion that with a book you’re able to see the entire text and know where you are in it, whereas when you’re reading an ebook or online it may feel bottomless (don’t have a good feel for where you are).

@jmv A feeling of bottomlessness with ebooks; compare the evolutionary development of the book; digital brought back vinyl; elitism?

Print books have a specialness, can be given as a present. Compare the signed first edition hardcover or limited edition art book with “Hey, I downloaded the latest Dan Brown for you. Happy Birthday!” 😉

@jmaxsfu Physical collectibility/giftability of books… Is this decoupled from the actual reading?

Maybe pbooks are like vinyl records? The idea being that people buy the hardcover to look pretty on their shelves, but actually read the ebook. I think some publishers are bundling hardcover/ebook. Apparently some people buy vinyl records (to display) but listen to CDs/MP3s.

@jmaxsfu People buy vinyl, even though they may listen digitally.

Really? I thought vinyl-buyers bought it because of the sound was more “authentic” than digital and all that. No? I think this is probably another case where you have a divergence: a group who really prefers the hardcover/vinyl for its original use value and a group who recognizes the collectibility of such items and/or their cachet as, hmm, well not exactly status symbols. Coolness signifiers? Do hipsters read books? (If I shout that question out the window, will a hipster answer me? Ok, now I’m getting punchy.) Anyhow, if you’re a purported hipster buying vinyl/hardcovers for your shelves but actually reading ebooks on your iPad and listening to mp3s on your iPhone, I think your hipster cred has sailed 😉

@jmaxsfu Publishers’ efforts… Enough? Not? Perception, reality?@jmaxsfu Cranbury hopes publishers will do more with vinyl.

@jmaxsfu How big is the vinyl market, really? There is some debate…

Some prefer pbooks for some kinds of books/reading, ebooks for others. This makes sense. What I find a bit perplexing, however, is that it’s often novels/pleasure reading that people say they prefer in ebook format. My impression is this is because they don’t plan to re-read the book, so they sort of view it as disposable. I guess it’s something like the 21st C version of how in HS, I’d go to the used bookstore in my spare (yeah, I was cool like that), trade in the mass market paperbacks I’d read the previous week and use the store credit (alternatively, you could get cash, but if you chose store credit you got a higher rate of return) to buy a new stack. But two crucial differences: 1) I didn’t trade all the books back. I kept the ones I thought I’d re-read (I used to do a lot of re-reading) and 2) I got $ for taking the books I’d read back.

Where was I? Oh, yes. It’s just that I think the pleasure reading/ebook connection is kind of odd. Maybe if I didn’t spend all day most days in front of a screen, I’d feel differently. But for me, reading a book for pleasure is something I look forward to doing away from the computer, away from the association with work. I mean, sure, I can see the appeal for travel and such situations. But in general, when I’m at home, it’s nice to get away from the electronic devices for a bit and just read a pbook. IOW, for pleasure reading, the pbook has more use value to me than an ebook does.

On the other hand, if we’re talking about reference material, stuff I’d use for research, etc. I much prefer that be accessible in an e-version (assuming one that is not freakishly annoying to use), because with that kind of stuff, I’m not just reading, I’m also processing, taking notes, making connections, writing, etc. and having it all available digitally and in one place makes all that so much easier. And I mean, there’s no bigger waste of time than having to type out quotations, am I right?

@jhope071 Content is not king, how people use content is king.

@Kathleen_Fraser Terry McBride at TedX Vancouver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQOWNU5-nNs

The gist: context, not content. Think about selling experience not content.

it’s about behavior, not owning content
away from content, toward context
connection of artist and fan

I liked this way of thinking about it. I’m committed to having TC remain open access; I don’t want readers to have to pay a subscription to read it. I also don’t want to charge writers to submit; I think that’s super-cheesy. So, the question remains: how do we generate an income stream that’s steady enough that we’re able to able to pay writers?

The workshop that Baker ran earlier this year was very successful. What if we could somehow tie the workshop idea in with author interviews? Like try to get them to either provide something as an incentive for workshop sign-ups (a writing exercise, a book giveaway?) or maybe even have a guest appearance one week at the forums or chat. Author X could answer questions for a limited time and afterward everyone goes back to regularly-scheduled workshop, but all inspired.

@jmaxsfu A plea for building a book culture, in Vancouver and elsewhere.

@jmaxsfu Wisdom from @art3fact on selling experiences vs selling manufactured objects. We won’t win in price wars.

@jmaxsfu Experiences are individual… Not mass services, not commodities – @adamgaumont

There was a good point made about the fact that kids/teens are actually buying print versions of popular YA books (Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games). (Would be an interesting comparison, pbook/ebook reading by age.) I think that’s partly logistics—if you don’t have a credit card it can be hard to buy stuff online. Probably it’s also partly visibility: if you’re reading a cool book, you want people to see what you’re reading. But I think the major reason that pbooks are still popular with kids is the way kids read. Kids get totally absorbed in their books. I read an essay about this recently, let me go find it. Ah, here we go.

So, the appeal of a pbook to me is that it’s a unitasking device. You fix yourself a snack, you find a cozy place to curl up, and you read. And at first you might be distracted by your environment, but if it’s a good book, you eventually get completely into it, doing nothing more than reading and turning pages and occasionally adjusting your position because your arm or leg has fallen asleep. And while I still do this sometimes now, it’s not often enough, because I’m distracted by adult things. When I was a kid I read this way every day.

And so I think adults like ebooks because they’re doing 27 things at once and ebooks make it easy to squeeze in a some reading on their commute or on business trips or on vacation. But they’re not contained the way pbooks are. They, especially iPads, don’t block out the world. Ebook reading is shallow reading, pbook reading is deep reading. I think that’s part of the difference between the two.

With a pbook, you might underline a word or phrase but you’re not automatically clicking it to find out more. And yes, I’ve heard the argument that clicking for a definition is no different than going to look up a word you don’t know in a dictionary. But I disagree. As a kid, deep-reading, I never interrupted my reading to look up words I didn’t know (and I still don’t do it now when I’m reading for pleasure). I gathered what they meant from the context and moved on. Later, if I thought about it when I had the dictionary out, I might look it up then. But never while I was reading. I think that’s a huge difference. But I think it would be impossible to stop yourself from clicking. We’re so used it. You’d just do it without thinking. Hence, your reading would be shallower than with a pbook, because you’d be less in the story-world.

Death! (of the book, of reading, of everything analog…)

Coincidentally, when catching up on my blog-reading post-conference, I ran across this: R.I.P., Mock Obituaries which led me to this: The Tragic Death of Practically Everything (hilarious!).

Oh, and here’s a book trailer for a book about a… book (which sort of ties into the thing I was saying earlier about why pdf might not be a book per se):