Question Technology

Cult of the Muggles

I have successfully avoided an iPhone post, but, alas, I am unable to resist a Harry Potter post.

Over at BoingBoing Cory Doctorow is trumpeting the recent pirating and posting of the new Harry Potter book: Last Harry Potter Leaks Online.  There are two things I find amusing about his post: 

1) Cory links to the book at Amazon using his associates ID (link)!  So what's the message here?  Get the book for free, but if you must buy a hardcopy then kick in a few percent for me?

2) He makes a little spoiler joke: "Who dies? The publishing industry."  Ha.  No-one should feel bad for Bloomsbury/Scholastic (they'll still do just fine), and I know Cory is trying to be funny, but the implication seems to be that publishers are useless and ought to be done away with.  Is this really how he thinks?  Cory and others in the "free culture" crowd seem to have a very simplistic idea of culture -- that it just magically happens without the need for intermediaries like professional publishers, and that somehow people will be able to earn a living doing it for free.  I haven't yet read a convincing argument for how this might actually work (though Chris Anderson claims he will explain it all in his next book, Free.)

This brings me back to Andrew Keen and his book, The Cult of the Amateur.  I've mentioned the book before, but I've actually read it now, so I'll offer some amateur thoughts.  Keen does a great job pointing out the fallacies in a lot of this silly talk about Web 2.0, free culture, the wisdom of crowds, and Time's "You".  The book is a polemic aimed at a popular business audience, so you won't find any deep analysis here -- much of the argument is based on anecdote, newspaper articles and common sense.  (There are undoubtedly many smart graduate students working on more rigorous studies, for which we might have to wait a little longer.)  For what it is, though, Keen's book is great -- well-written, enjoyable, stimulating.  My only quibble is with later chapters, where he loses focus and veers off into rants against internet gambling and pornography.  Those topics are worthy of criticism, but seem like they would fit better in a different book.

See also: New York Times: New Potter Book May Have Made its Way to the Web.

p.s. I haven't read the Harry Potter books so I'm not sure if I'm using the term "muggles" in any sensible way... I just thought it sounded funny.

Three Books about the Future of Journalism

Todd Oppenheimer has a great article on this topic in today's San Francisco Chronicle.  From the intro:

This dilemma  --  the slow death, seemingly by suicide, of a cultural grandfather and its precarious replacement by an energetic, out-of-control adolescent  --  is the subject of three timely new books: American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media by Neil Henry (University of California Press; 326 pages; $24.95), We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age by Scott Gant (Free Press; 240 pages; $26) and The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen (228 pages; Doubleday; $22.95).

Together, these books raise vital questions  --  and ignore others that are just as central. Coincidentally, each book squats on a different corner of the ideological triangle that has defined the debate over the future of news. Keen takes one side, angrily lambasting today's online "citizen journalists"; Gant takes the opposite corner, extolling these amateurs; and Henry takes the middle corner floating gracefully above the  two others, and not just because he has staked out the middle ground. In "American Carnival," by far the most reasoned and well documented of these works, Henry struggles earnestly to reconcile the fiery viewpoints Gant and Keen represent, along with the many other impatient forces in today's media revolution.

Link: Read all about it -- but where exactly? Three books consider the current state of journalism and its future in a landscape dominated by the Internet.

Web 2.0 Backlash Frenzy

Scott Rosenberg has a good roundup of the players, including Andrew Keen, Nicholas Carr,  Michael Gorman of the ALA, and the Britannica folks.  Rosenberg also repeats a common argument:

Regardless of how you feel about all these issues, it’s hard to miss one meta-elephant in the room: The members of this phalanx of Web 2.0 cynics have all chosen to deliver their critiques via the very form that their rhetoric detests. Keen promotes his book from his blog. Carr weaves his ideas on his blog. Gorman explains what’s wrong with the “Blog People,” where? On a blog hosted by Britannica.

What’s the thinking here: First join them, then beat them?

Link: The blog-dimmed tide is loosed!

It's ironic, to be sure, but it doesn't necessarily detract from their arguments.  (1) Keen and Carr have both published books -- they wouldn't be getting nearly as much attention if they were only blogging.  (2) I don't think most of these critics are absolutely opposed to all amateurism on the web, but rather to the techno-enthusiast view that amateurism is all we need.  We all start as amateurs, but it only gets you so far.  The web's low entry price is a great thing and I doubt that most critics of web 2.0 would deny that. 

TSA Joins the YouTube Generation

In response to a customer's complaint on a blog, the Transportation Security Administration has posted security camera video on the web.  From the AP:

The Transportation Security Administration is denying allegations that an airport screener seized a toddler's sippy cup and mistreated his mother, taking the unusual step of posting security camera footage on its Web site.

The TSA said in a statement that the incident and the videotape demonstrate that its "officers display professionalism and concern for all passengers."

At issue is whether Monica Emmerson, a former Secret Service officer, was improperly detained June 11 after she spilled water out of her child's sippy cup at Washington's Reagan National Airport.

TSA has banned most fluids at airport security checkpoints for nearly a year because of concern about possible liquid explosives.

Link: TSA Counters Sippy Cup Allegation (SFGate/AP)

The TSA posted the video on a page called MythBusters.  Here's the original story at the "crowd powered media" site NowPublic: Nightmare at Reagan National Airport.  Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing has a play-by-play of the video.

So is the TSA being run by teenagers now?  Is this really a professional way to respond to a passenger's concern, by shaming the person in public on the web?  Whether the woman's story is accurate (and there's good reason to think it's not) I still find the TSA's methods here disturbing and unprofessional, as are some of the comments by the "citizen journalists" at NowPublic.

The fact that TSA will post security videos on a whim doesn't give much confidence about the privacy of images from those new X-ray backscatter people scanners.  Perhaps soon the TSA will also be posting disputed X-rays on the web to shame passengers who lie or make too much fuss.

Video of Andrew Keen Talk

Cult of the Amateur author Andrew Keen speaking at Google: video at YouTube.  I watched this earlier and was quite impressed.  He makes some good anti-Web 2.0 arguments and comes across as more reasonable than might have been expected from early buzz about the book.

Lessig on Keen

Lawrence Lessig unleashes his sarcasm on Andrew Keen in a rather petulant review: Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur": BRILLIANT!

More Amateur Stuff

Continuing with the previous topic: Clay Shirky has posted a thoughtful critique of Andrew Keen's book: What are we going to say about the "Cult of the Amateur"?

Amateurs and Other Internauts

Scott Rosenberg has a recap of tonight's Berkeley Cybersalon with "Cult of the Amateur" author Andrew Keen:

“Is it always like this?” A business acquaintance who I chatted with briefly at the Berkeley Cybersalon earlier this evening asked me as the panel discussion — titled “New Media Wars: Amateur versus Auteur” — wound down.

“Quite often, actually,” I answered him.

I assumed he was referring to the heated back-and-forth between the attendees and the panelists — and, occasionally, among the panelists themselves (Dan Gillmor, Katie Hafner, Robert Scoble and Andrew Keen). The event’s hook was Keen’s new book, “The Cult of the Amateur.” Keen’s self-described “polemic” is not yet available, and I haven’t read it, so I won’t comment directly on it. But the book’s subtitle tells you where Keen’s coming from: “How today’s Internet is killing our culture.”

[...]

Keen has lobbed his bombs before — and in the same place, yet — but I find it hard to take them seriously. (I should mention that he did a podcast interview with me about my book — and he’s charming when he’s not lobbing grenades and building stockades around the ancien regime.) I don’t think he honestly believes that, as his book’s subtitle has it, “The Internet is killing our culture.” Ironically, of course, Keen himself used his own blog as a launch pad for his ideas. He admitted tonight that he is, himself, an “amateur writer.” He claims to be motivated by a desire to “annoy libertarians of the left and libertarians of the right.”

Something tells me he might win a little less attention but a lot more credibility if he stopped trying so hard to annoy. There must be some valuable criticism lodged among all the bluster.

Link: Amateur Hour.

I must admit I'm a bit tired of Keen's shtick already, just from all the publicity and blogging about it.

Rosenberg mentions another new book that it seems everyone in that incestuous A-list Silicon Valley/Wired blogger world is gushing over: David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous.  Publisher's Weekly says Weinberger "joins the ranks of social thinkers striving to construct new theories around the success of Google and Wikipedia."  In other words it's the latest half-baked "the internet is changing everything!" business claptrap to keep the venture capitalists excited.  I think I'll pass.

On the Internet, the Big Get Bigger

Excerpt from an article by Nicholas Carr in the Guardian last week:

On the internet, the big get bigger. It wasn't supposed to be like that. When the web arrived in the early 1990s, it was heralded as a liberating force that would free us from the confines of gated communities like AOL and Compuserve. The internet was supposed to be an open, democratic medium, an information bazaar putting individuals on the same footing as big companies.

In the end, though, the internet seems to be following the same pattern that has always characterised popular media. A few huge outlets come to dominate readership and viewership and smaller, more specialised ones are consigned to the periphery. Most of the largest sites are now in the midst of acquisition sprees or expansion programs intended to extend their dominion.

Link: The net is being carved up into information plantations.

See also the discussion at Nicholas Carr's blog, and the cartoon by Oliver Widder.

Risks of Mixing iPods and Pacemakers

From Reuters:

iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.    

The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient's chest for 5 to 10 seconds.   

The study did not examine any portable music devices other than iPods, which are made by Apple Inc.

In some cases, the iPods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest. Interfering with the telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart's pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether.

The study was held at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University. The results were presented at the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting in Denver.

Link: iPods can make pacemakers malfunction: study.

I imagine this is not terribly surprising and from the little I've read I get the impression that  people with pacemakers are told to be cautious with any electrical devices.  So I doubt this is big news for most regular people who might actually be affected by it. 

What I find most interesting is two aspects of the coverage this story is getting online, based on articles and comments I've read at TechCrunch, CrunchGear, TechDirt, and Consumerist.

First there's the ageism: people assume that only old people have pacemakers and only young people use iPods.  Newsflash: old folks like music! and they too like to take it with them.  And one day you kids will be old and you'll still want your iPods, though you'll probably need extra large buttons by then because of the arthritis in your fingers from all the text messaging you're now doing.

Then there's the bizarre criticism that the study is invalid because they didn't test other music players, as if medical research is just Consumer Reports-style product testing.  Apple virtually owns this market -- it'd be strange not to start with an iPod if you were doing this sort of study.  I assume their message (to the heart rhythm specialists they presented this to) is that the medical community needs to be aware of this, study it further, and maybe make their patients more aware of it.  It's silly to think that they're saying to anyone "buy a Zune instead."

Of course I should know better than to take seriously the stuff at TechDirt and its ilk.  Reading TechSmug (as I like to call it) always irritates me.  I should have stayed away from it like I swore I would months ago.

(For the record, I use an iPod and a Mac too!)

A Month Without the Net

Writer Stephen Elliott describes what it's like:

I was in Gaza when the Israeli soldiers were snatched from their posts. I was in New Orleans three days after Katrina smashed the levees to bits and the city flooded. But of all of my various adventures, people have been most curious about my recent decision to go offline for a month. I bought an old word processor and left my fancy laptop with a friend.

"How will you exist?" my roommate asked. "You'll have no idea what's going on. You won't be able to find anything."

[...]

So what did I do during my month offline? "You must be getting so much done!" was the refrain I heard constantly. That wasn't exactly true, not initially. My first week offline was mostly spent in a state of withdrawal. I suffered from bouts of extreme boredom. I realized I hadn't been bored in years because I'd gotten in the habit of never giving myself the chance.

But slowly I began to find other activities to fill my time. During weeks two and three, I watched the first three seasons of The Wire (something I might have done anyway). I subscribed to the New York Times and spent almost two hours every morning reading it from cover to cover. It was only in the fourth week that things started coming together. I wasn't just breaking the Internet habit, I was breaking the habits I had learned on the Internet: that addiction to continual bursts of small information.

Link: Surviving a Month without Internet (Poets & Writers)

via Maud Newton

I've read Stephen Elliott's book Looking Forward To It, which is about the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, and really enjoyed it.

Bryan Appleyard on Web 2.0

Bryan Appleyard has a good article on Web 2.0 in the Sunday Times (UK):  The Web is Dead; Long Live the Web. 

On his blog he describes it as "an article that asks for trouble. Everybody thinks they know more about the internet than everybody else so I anticipate a tirade of abuse and de haut en bas dismissals. But, heigh ho, there you go."

Library Juice Concentrate

Library Juice Concentrate by Rory Litwin collects a number of articles from the progressive-left librarian e-zine (and now blog) Library Juice.  The intended audience is primarily library/information scientists and others interested in library philosophy and politics, but there's much here to stimulate others interested in how technology is changing the way we record and access human knowledge.

The essays touch on diverse topics including privacy, intellectual freedom, the value of traditional librarianship, the rebranding of librarianship as information science, and  Google's project to scan and monetize library holdings.  There's a good variety of tone, ranging from heady philosophy to light-hearted quotes and limericks.

Library Juice Press is a new publisher whose other books include Library Daylight, a collection of readings on library history and controversy, and Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education and the Public Good by Ed D'Angelo.

Waking up to the Web's Misogyny

If by some chance you haven't seen any of the discussion this week about the Kathy Sierra affair and about the prevalence of abuse towards women on the web, this article by Joan Walsh today in Salon is a good starting point.  Excerpt:

Is there really any doubt that women writing on the Web are subject to more abuse than men, simply because they're women? Really? I've been following the Kathy Sierra blog storm, thinking I had nothing new to say, but the continued insistence that Sierra, and those who defend her, are somehow overreacting, or charging sexism where none exists, makes it hard for a mouthy woman to stay silent.

I say this as a mouthy woman who has tried for a long time to pretend otherwise: that Web misogyny isn't especially rampant -- but even if it is, it has no effect on me, or any other strong, sane woman doing her job. But I wasn't being honest. My own reactions and those of others to the Sierra mess served to wrestle the truth out of me, and it wasn't what I hoped.

Link: Men who hate women on the Web | Salon.com.
Also recommended: Annalee Newitz, Who's afraid of Kathy Sierra?

Cory Doctorow on e-Books

A disjointed little essay by Cory Doctorow tries to argue that you do like reading off of screens.  In it he makes light of the fact that he welcomes distractions from e-mail, IM, YouTube, etc., though it could help explain his bizarre logic.  Some excerpts:

"I don't like reading off a computer screen" — it's a cliché of the e-book world. It means "I don't read novels off of computer screens" (or phones, or PDAs, or dedicated e-book readers), and often as not the person who says it is someone who, in fact, spends every hour that Cthulhu sends reading off a computer screen. It's like watching someone shovel Mars Bars into his gob while telling you how much he hates chocolate.

But I know what you mean. You don't like reading long-form works off of a computer screen. I understand perfectly — in the ten minutes since I typed the first word in the paragraph above, I've checked my mail, deleted two spams, checked an image-sharing community I like, downloaded a YouTube clip of Stephen Colbert complaining about the iPhone (pausing my MP3 player first), cleared out my RSS reader, and then returned to write this paragraph.

This is not an ideal environment in which to concentrate on long-form narrative (sorry, one sec, gotta blog this guy who's made cardboard furniture) (wait, the Colbert clip's done, gotta start the music up) (19 more RSS items). But that's not to say that it's not an entertainment medium — indeed, practically everything I do on the computer entertains the hell out of me. It's nearly all text-based, too. Basically, what I do on the computer is pleasure-reading. But it's a fundamentally more scattered, splintered kind of pleasure. Computers have their own cognitive style, and it's not much like the cognitive style invented with the first modern novel (one sec, let me google that and confirm it), Don Quixote, some 400 years ago.

The novel is an invention, one that was engendered by technological changes in information display, reproduction, and distribution. The cognitive style of the novel is different from the cognitive style of the legend. The cognitive style of the computer is different from the cognitive style of the novel.

[...]

Or look at digital video. We're watching more digital video, sooner, than anyone imagined. But we're watching it in three-minute chunks from YouTube. The video's got a pause button so you can stop it when the phone rings and a scrubber to go back and forth when you miss something while answering an IM.

And attention spans don't increase when you move from the PC to a handheld device. These things have less capacity for multitasking than real PCs, and the network connections are slower and more expensive. But they are fundamentally multitasking devices — you can always stop reading an e-book to play a hand of solitaire that is interrupted by a phone call — and their social context is that they are used in public places, with a million distractions. It is socially acceptable to interrupt someone who is looking at a PDA screen. By contrast, the TV room — a whole room for TV! — is a shrine where none may speak until the commercial airs.

The problem, then, isn't that screens aren't sharp enough to read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren't screeny enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens.

Link: Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen.

via  BoingBoing: Why ebooks' success has nothing to do with screen quality.