NaNoWriMo isn’t about writing a polished, end product novel. It’s about getting the first draft (or part of it) down on paper. It’s also about getting into the habit of writing on a regular basis, something which I sometimes need to be prodded into because ‘life’ tends to get in the way. Finally, it’s about being part of something, sharing an activity.
This.
[M]ore and more we’re starting to explore the social side of reading. We’re asking questions like: in a world where every store has every book, is the best store the one with the most interesting readers, connected in the most interesting ways? By connecting them, can they find books they otherwise would never have found? Or read a book more deeply? … [Sometimes] reading is about ideas that want to be shared or fought over or debated. With us, those debates can rage around the pages themselves, as they’re being read. We can connect those readers in a way that no publisher or bricks & mortar bookseller ever could.
—Michael Tamblyn of Kobo
(via Bookninja)
The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. … This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.
…
Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.
This structure makes networks enormously resilient and adaptable in low-risk situations. … There are many things, though, that networks don’t do well. … Because networks don’t have a centralized leadership structure and clear lines of authority, they have real difficulty reaching consensus and setting goals. They can’t think strategically; they are chronically prone to conflict and error. How do you make difficult choices about tactics or strategy or philosophical direction when everyone has an equal say?
[A]uthors and educators protesting the censorship of literary works need no longer wait for the next school board meeting. Add this to the growing list of unexpected but welcome ways in which Twitter has become … a “game changer” in public discourse.
I’ve taken to Twitter like a duck to water. Its simplicity allows the user to customize the experience with relatively little input from the Twitter entity itself. I hope they keep it simple. It works because it’s simple. I was never interested in Facebook or MySpace because the environment seemed too top-down mediated. They feel like malls to me. But Twitter actually feels like the street. You can bump into anybody on Twitter.
I’ve noticed two things [are different since publishing my last book]. One is that I’m able to observe via Twitter the global launch of the book. I’m able to simultaneously see for the first time that the English language editions, which have been exported from England into Europe and Australia, are released a week and a half before they’re released to the rest of the world. I kind of vaguely knew before but didn’t think about. The other thing is the number of Twitter users asking me questions that I’m usually woefully unable to answer about formats and editions.
I am [experiencing a greater level of fan engagement]. It’s much more direct and much more pleasant than I would have expected it to be.
This original conception of hypertext fathered two lines of descent. One adopted hypertext as a practical tool for organizing and cross-associating information; the other embraced it as an experimental art form, which might transform the essentially linear nature of our reading into a branching game, puzzle or poem, in which the reader collaborates with the author. The pragmatists use links to try to enhance comprehension or add context, to say “here’s where I got this” or “here’s where you can learn more”; the hypertext artists deploy them as part of a larger experiment in expanding (or blowing up) the structure of traditional narrative.
These are fundamentally different endeavors. The pragmatic linkers have thrived in the Web era; the literary linkers have so far largely failed to reach anyone outside the academy. The Web has given us a hypertext world in which links providing useful pointers outnumber links with artistic intent a million to one. If we are going to study the impact of hypertext on our brains and our culture, surely we should look at the reality of the Web, not the dream of the hypertext artists and theorists.
Reading their life story in scattered posts feels exactly like reading Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. The landmark 1957 novel about modern love was told in four books written from different characters’ points of view against the backdrop of inter-war Egypt. Incidents we glimpse in the first novel, Justine, aren’t fully realized until we see the observations of characters in the subsequent stories. Readers are asked to construct the whole picture by collecting puzzle pieces sprinkled throughout four narratives.
Of course Susan and her circle are more of a satire, as their banal posts give us a hilarious glimpse of early 21st century life. But the online confessions offer just the sort of raw clay that fiction writers love to lay hands on. Let me quote from her bio: “I’m madly in love! I’m free!” Many friends click the thumbs-up “Like” button.
Ok, I hadn’t thought about that, but it reminds me that I really should read the whole quartet (re-read Justine and read the others) now that I’ve found all four of them. I can call it research.
I’ve always thought StoryCorps is about the coolest project ever. Now they’re making videos (sob!):
via Chookooloonks
We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. … This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.
The Remainder Table 