Nieman Lab’s Megan Garber wrote a brilliant post about the nature of books and conversation using as illustration a conversation about my book. It is, as Jay Rosen said, too good to summarize. So please do go read it.
I love Garber’s piece not just because she said that “90 percent of Morozov’s criticisms are wildly unfair,” referring to a so-called review of my book. I love it because Garber delivered the most serious criticism of my book to date:
The precise thing that makes idea-driven books so valuable to readers — their immersive qualities, the intimate, one-on-one relationship they facilitate between authors and readers — also make them pretty lousy as actual sharers of ideas. Books don’t go viral. And that’s largely because the thing that makes books lucrative to authors and publishers — their ability to restrain ideas, to wall them off from the non-book-buying world — is antithetical to virality. How can books be expected to share ideas when the very point of their existence is containment?
I wrote a book about sharing. But a book is a bad form for sharing.
The book, Garber said, is “designed to advance books within the marketplace, rather than the marketplace of ideas. It aims at publicity rather than publicness, at selling objects rather than propelling the arguments they contain.”
Garber is right. I’ve confessed my hypocrisy in writing both my books on other grounds: I didn’t make them digital, clickable, correctable, linkable…. I did it to get paid, edited, promoted, and distributed (though with the closing of Borders, that last function becomes less valuable). Garber points out as mitigation that I had shared my ideas about publicness on my blog before I wrote the book.
“The professor has been preaching publicness for years — at Buzzmachine, in his Guardian column, at conferences, on TV, on Twitter, on the radio, on his Tumblr. If you follow Jeff Jarvis, you follow Public Parts. You’ve seen his thoughts on publicness take shape over time. The book that resulted from that public process — the private artifact — is secondary. It is the commercial result of a communal endeavor.”
She’s being too easy on me. While I wrote the book, I did share and discuss many of the ideas in it on my blog. That can be a form of collaboration and peer review. But I didn’t do it nearly enough, as far as I’m concerned. I was so busy researching, writing, and editing the book that I neglected the blog.
As Garber notes, I say in Public Parts that I should try to make my next project — if I choose to undertake one — different.
At the end of Public Parts, Jarvis mentions that his next project may not be a book at all, but rather a book-without-a-book: a Godinesque series of public events held both in person and online. “The book,” Jarvis writes, “if there is one, would be a by-product and perhaps a marketing tool for more events.”
The book, if there is one. The book, a by-product. Imagine the possibilities.
I’m still working on what that could be. So let me begin the process and outline my early thinking here to hear what you think.
Start with Kevin Kelly’s 2006 essay in The New York Times Magazine arguing that authors would come to support themselves with performance — and John Updike’s appalled reaction to this “pretty grisly scenario.” I’m not suggesting that authors become merely actors after their books are done.
I’m suggesting, as Garber does, that talks, events, symposia, blogs, hangouts… — discussion with smart people in any form — should come before the book. The process becomes the product; the book (if there is one) is a byproduct.
To take an example: I’ve been wanting to explore the impact of one simple idea, that technology now leads to efficiency over growth. I wrote a post about one aspect of that here and here as well as here and here. The conversation was amazing in its intelligence, perspective, and generosity. It became even better when Y Combinator founder Paul Graham posted it to Hacker News with a challenge, asking what makes this revolution (digital v. industrial) different. Amazing replies ensued. It took me many hours to go through it all, taking many notes.
That made me decide to propose this topic as a talk to South by Southwest. If accepted, that will give me a deadline for research. But I want — no, need — more conversation in the meantime.
That leads me to an idea for a new business. I don’t really want to start it or run it; I just wish it existed so I could use it.
It is time to disrupt the conference and speaking businesses and give some measure of control back to speakers (also known as authors) and their publics (formerly known, as Jay Rosen would say, as audiences). I hope for a way to support the work of authors and thinkers — support it with conversation, attention, and collaboration as well as money.
So imagine this: Authors decide to hold their own event. If you have the brand and popularity of, say, Seth Godin (or, in the sales arena, Jeffrey Gitomer), you can gather a large roomful of fans without effort; each does. But folks like me don’t have their brand or promotional power. So let’s say I get together with another one or two authors and we propose an event in which we discuss what we’re working on.
Kickstarter would seem to be an ideal platform to find out whether there is sufficient demand to support such a gathering, at least to get started. If enough folks sign up, the authors can rent a venue: no risk. The startup I wish for would handle logistics for a fee. It could also be a platform for groups to get together, organizing conferences without conference organizers.
The event, in my view, isn’t speeches to audiences so much as conversations. The author needs to bring value: a presentation, a talk, a set of ideas or challenges. But it’s the conversation I crave, to develop and further challenge ideas and gather perspectives. The event could be streamed for a larger public. It could be videoed and shared online for continued exchange via blogs, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, et al.
Note that this isn’t about containing ideas but sharing them. That’s what Garber and I both want.
Is there a book? Why should there be? Because a book can memorialize the ideas and research that comes out of this process. It can bring the discipline that the form — and a good editor, like mine — can demand. It can spread the ideas yet farther — to the many more people who couldn’t be bothered joining in the process and the conversation. It can make the ideas last longer. (In Public Parts, I quote Gutenberg scholar Elizabeth Eisenstein pointing out that Gutenberg’s Bible turns out to be a much longer lasting repository of data than a floppy disk.)
If there’s a book, is it printed? The likelihood of that decreases by the day. So if it is just electronic, then it can change form, including video from the process; photos and graphics to illustrate points; and permalinks to any part of the book to support conversation on the net.
So now we arrive back that the book I apologized for not writing in WWGD? — digital, clickable, linkable, correctable, updateable, part of a conversation. There are issues: Conversations can be invaded by trolls. There’s no economic certainty. We’ll make missteps.
But can we get closer to Garber’s ideal? Well, we’ll know it when we see it. But if we try this route, we now have a standard to judge it against: the one Garber sets in her great post.
Our assumptions about information itself are shifting, reshaping “the news” from a commodity to a community, from a product to a process. The same changes that have disrupted the news industry will, inevitably, disrupt the book industry; Public Parts hints at what might come of the disruption. Books as community. Books as conversation. Books as ideas that evolve over time — ideas that shift and shape and inspire — and that, as such, have the potential of viral impact.
Can books go viral? Garber asks. Maybe, if they’re allowed to be more than books.
I was so busy researching and writing Public Parts that I didn’t have time to give attention to some wonderful books written by friends. That’s such a sin because it’s such a privilege to have friends who write books, smart people who are so generous with their knowledge. So now that I’ve come up for air — just a gulp — from mine, here are books from folks I admire, some of which I’ve read, some I’ve dipped into, and some I’ll finally have the time to read.
* Micah Sifry’s WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency was invaluable for my writing of Public Parts. It is a brief but comprehensive survey of the importance of Wikileaks and the state of openness and transparency in government and society. Micah — with Andrew Rasiej, a leader of the Personal Democracy Forum — is tough on the current administration and its promises and delivery regarding openness. Highly readable, very authoritative, highly recommended.
* I love that Brooke Gladstone chose to tell the story of media’s influence as a work of graphic nonfiction. Figures she’s blaze trails. The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media is a creative, clever, clear, and concise (the alliteration is accidental, I assure you) guide to how media reached its place in society. She told me after finishing it that it was terribly hard work and she hopes not to do it again. But I hope she lies.
* Gary Vaynerchuk’s The Thank You Economy is his best so far because I think it captures his voice and is authenticity. I’m reminded of him at South by Southwest when he stood on stage and did nothing but converse with his public. That’s what he does here, giving his best and most direct and honest advice.
* I treasure arguing — not fighting, arguing — with some people. Siva Vaidhyanathan is atop that list. He challenges me and his book The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) is indeed a challenge to the ideas in my last book. We look at Google and the consequences of its size and success through different ends of the telescope. I wish we’d had the chance to debate the topic more often and I can’t wait to see what he turns to next.
* I wish I could be Steven Johnson when I grow up. He’s my idea of the great New York author even if — fink — he deserted Brooklyn for California. I love hearing him talk about his books almost as much as I love reading them. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (just coming out in paperback) is a wonderful account of creativity. I particularly enjoyed his contribution to the discussion of serendipity and its modern fate.
* It’s a crime of publishing that Heather Brooke’s The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches from the Information War is not yet released in the U.S. Pssst–editors: go buy it. Heather is the brillliant journalist in the U.K. who caused the MP’s expense scandals to come out and who was on the forefront of the Wikileaks story. She is my patron saint of transparency. I’ve just begin to dig in — terribly regretful that it wasn’t out before I had to finish my book — after having it shipped over from London. I can’t wait to dig in.
* At a talk in Ottawa, I got to meet Canadian journalist Andrew Potter and then got a copy of his book, The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves. He examines an interesting angle on our current debates on real names and real identities: when are we authentic?
* While I was working on my book, Seth Godin didn’t just write a book, he started a new publishing imprint that is disrupting the publishing model: The Domino Project. They’re putting out a bunch of neat, small books — two by Seth already — and rethinking what drives books. More on this later.
* It would be impossibly brash of me to call Elizabeth Eisenstein a friend by including her in this list of friends’ books, but I’ll use this moment to recommend her latest, Divine Art, Infernal Machine. Eiseinstein is the premier Gutenberg scholar, author of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Volumes 1 and 2 in One), which was utterly invaluable in my research and in shaping my thinking about the parallels between Gutenberg’s disruption and the internet’s. I wish I’d received her new book earlier but even as I edited the final drafts of my book, I was devouring her latest and inserting bits I learned. If you’re a Gutenberg geek, as I now am, you must read it.
* I don’t know Marc Levinson, author of The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America, but since I’m recommending books and since I just finished and was wowed by this one, I might as well throw a recommendation his way. As we look at the Senate going after Google for the nebulous sin of being too big, it’s so terribly instructive to look back at the demonization of success and size that hit A&P as America’s first chain store. Fascinating book.
To all these literary and literate friends, I apologize for the delay in linking to your good works and great generosity.
: Oops. Went to the bookstore today and found two more:
* Paulo Coelho’s Name Your Link is his latest novel. Paulo is amazingly generous with his readers — as he was with me, allowing him to interview him for my last book. A delightful gentleman.
Here’s my talk to the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt before the Book Fair there, in which I argue that books are tools for making publics and now that we all have presses publishers must ask how they can play a role in helping us make publics — and how they can protect our tools of publicness.
I’m having trouble setting the width of the player, so go to the “more” link and you can watch the videos. (more…)
I agree with Devin Coldewey at CrunchGear that Andrew Wylie’s deal to publish big authors’ backlists exclusively on the Amazon Kindle is bad for readers (and for authors and for the industry).
Fragmenting content such that one has to buy one device to read one author and another to read another is blind to the needs and realities of the market. It’s dealmaking for dealmaking’s sake.
If I were one of those authors, I’d squeal like a columnist put behind a Times paywall (either one). Random House is right to stick it back to Wylie and refuse to do business with the now-niche agency. And Amazon is putting itself in a dangerous position to be the enemy, not the friend, of writers, publishers, and readers. But Amazon’s no fool. It is driving a wedge into the heart of the industry.
The real upshot of this deal, I think, is that agents and publishers alike will find themselves locked out as big authors make deals directly with Amazon.
Yes, the Kindle reader is available on laptops and phones and iPads and coming Android tablets. But it won’t be available on other eBooks, and that’s going to hurt the eBook market’s growth, which could affect Amazon, even as it announces that its Kindle book sales exceeded hardback sales last month.
This is the same fear I have about the appification of content with magazine editors gleefully slapping their stories onto iPad apps in the belief that it returns control of the experience and business model to them when, in fact, it cuts them off from every browser user around the world. Nose. Face. Where’s my knife?
In the early days of content on mobile, we saw this game play out: Carriers made exclusive deals to get content in hopes that would get users to buy their phones instead of the other guys’. Didn’t work. A phone’s a phone. A browser’s a browser. A book’s a book.
And an e-book better damned well be an e-book, or books and authors and publishers and agents are all screwed.
One of my great joys researching Public Parts, my book about the benefits of publicness, is finding parallels between today and the early modern period of the 16th and 17th centuries (aka the renaissance) with the introduction of tools — the press, the stage, music, art, maps, markets — that enabled people to create publics and how that changed how the world operated (the way we are changing it again today).
In their early days of printing, books — and other publications — were not treated as temples of perfection, as they are today (which is why their contemporary producers — authors, editors, journalists, publishers — look down so on the ever-imperfect internet). Indeed, before Gutenberg, scribes had long entered errors into books as they were copied and recopied. Printing, Eisenstein says, both multiplied errors in so many more copies and also represented a “great leap” toward standardization because the errors were easier to find.
Print, at first, did not step toward perfection but away from it. “[A]n age-old process of corruption was aggravated and accelerated after print,” Eisenstein says. Errors could spread farther faster (sound familiar?). It was because of the fear of what this new technology could cause that printers were fined for publishing the “wicked Bible” of 1631 (which omitted the “not” from the Seventh Commandment … look it up).
But this process of error was turned to advantage by some. Sixteenth-century editors and publishers, Eisentein says, “created vast networks of correspondents, solicited criticism of each edition, sometimes publicly promising to mention the names of readers who sent in new information or who spotted the errors which would be weeded out.” So publishing became collaborative; that’s what printing allowed.
Eisenstein quotes Lloyd A. Brown from The Story of Maps about map publisher Ortelius:
By the simple expedient of being honest with his readers and inviting criticism and suggestions, Ortelius made his Theatrum a sort of cooperative enterprise on an international basis. He received helpful suggestions from far and wide and cartographers stumbled over themselves to send him their latest maps of regions not covered in the Theatrum.
We call that transparency and collaboration now.
Eisenstein goes farther. She says that publishers “often encouraged readers to launch their own research projects and field trips…. Thus a knowledge explosion was set off. The ‘fall-out’ from Ortelius’ editions, for example, encompassed treatises on topography and local history ranging from Muscovy to Wales.” (My emphasis) She argues, according to James A. Dewar and Peng Hwa Ang in Agent of Change (a book of essays on Eisenstein), that “this feedback reversed the slow degradation of recorded thought and ushered in the era of accumulation of thought on which the Scientific Revolution was built.” Says Eisenstein: “The closed sphere or single corpus passed down from generation to generation, was replaced by an open-ended investigatory process pressing against every advancing frontiers.”
Demonstrating that there’s nothing new that’s not old, when Cory Doctorow spoke to executives of Holtzbrinck in Berlin a few weeks ago (I also spoke), he told how he is doing similar things with his latest book, giving credit to readers who find errors and constantly making the book better thanks to them. And, of course, Cory’s BoingBoing is the product of sharing and collaboration.
This attitude — from the 16th century and from Cory — changes the way we look at books and media, not as sculpture cut out of rock but as still-wet clay. The problem we’ve had in recent history — from the industrial age to today — is that we made mistakes too expensive to admit and that cut us off from correction and collaboration with our public and from the free explosion of knowledge Eisenstein talks about. But the internet — always wet — begins to fix that, doesn’t it? We go back to the future.
In fact, Eisenstein argues that the printing press fixed this exact same problem vis a vis its predecessor technologies. “The sequence of improved editions and ever-expanding reference-works was a sequence without limits — unlike the great library collections amassed by Alexandrian rulers and Renaissance princes.” Their books were static, finished and done. Printed books had editions and readers who could improve them. We lost that advantage — and attitude — over the centuries.
We also lost the openness to collaboration that this new flexibility brought. It’s not just about technology, though. It’s about a worldview, a different relationship between producer and public. Eisenstein quotes David Hume writing to his publisher: “The Power which Printing gives us of continually improving and correcting our Works in successive Editions appears to me the chief Advantage of that art.”
This cultural attitude in the early days could have just as easily gone the other way (as eventually it did anyway). Ann Blair writes in Agents of Change that in the early modern period a few “humanists called for a system of censorship, never implemented, to guarantee that only high-quality editions be printed.” How often do we hear today suggestions to license or at least anoint quality in our new, uncontrolled press?
I don’t want to make it seem as if early books were all temporary and changeable. As Eisenstein next points out, the advantage of printing was that it made permanent knowledge that had been diffuse and was all too easily lost in a few hand-made copies that could be destroyed. It was printing, she said, that enabled Thomas Jefferson to collect all the laws of Virginia, adding (my emphases):
It seems in character for Jefferson to stress the democratizing aspect of the preservative powers of print which secured precious documents not by putting them under lock and key but by removing them from chests and vaults and duplicating them for all to see.”
Bringing knowledge together and making it public is what enables the public to add to it, to correct it, to be inspired by it.
I was wrong about the Kindle. When I unboxed it two nights ago, I excitedly bought my own book to feel all cyber and tweeted about it. But the book wouldn’t show up. “Opening,” it said forever. Two hours went by and I called Amazon (which – new for them – made the phone number easy to find and answered it in a minute). The lady said the modem had to be fully charged. That made no sense; it would mean essentially that it would never work unless plugged in. But, fine, I waited for the green light. Still no book. Two hours more. I called Amazon again. The man said it must be a defective unit and he nicely said he’s ship a replacement (this is why I am happy I have Amazon stock). I chronicled my frustration on Twitter, and word passed around there.
The next day, I tried the Kindle in Manhattan and it worked fine. Two more tests verified that the problem was not the Kindle but Sprint, which was never great at home when I had a Sprint Treo but would at least work. Now, it took more than four hours to download a book and even going to a new store menu page takes minutes. I confessed my mistake on Twitter and shifted blame to the phone company. Sprint monitors Twitter – that’s the good news – but they might as well not, as the Sprint guy merely tried to sidestep responsibility, saying that there wasn’t a network outage (I didn’t say there was) and shifting blame back to Amazon: “Spoke 2 @Sprint Care, Retail. Kindle issues should go 2 Amazon customer care.” Amazon should learn to pick its partners more wisely in the future. And I need to learn to cram caveats into tweets when I have problems.
So now I have a Kindle that works in some places, not others – and not working at home may be a killer. This is why I wish it came with wi-fi, or at least the option (especially for when I travel overseas). I prefer my control of communications on my iPhone. But then the problem with the iPhone is also that it has to be connected; I’d like to download content – such as the New York Times – to it so I could read the paper on the train.
The iPhone and Kindle are a study in contrasts. The biggest is, of course, the business model: One may buy books on either, but current content on the iPhone will, in most cases, be ad-supported; on the Kindle, it is paid for by the reader. The iPhone UI, right down to its flowing scrolling on its touchscreen, is elegant and happy; the Kindle is klunky and irritating. The Kindle lets me download and read anywhere; I like that; the iPhone won’t let me download The New York Times to read on the subway and that’s too bad. The iPhone lets me control my communications better. The Kindle screen is larger, yes, but the iPhone isn’t that much smaller:
So I’m undecided about the Kindle. Its organization is still inelegant to say the least. For example, when reading the Times, it wants me to go story-by-story – that’s bookthink. I want to see the menu of articles in a section. But when I then go to an article and page through it, to get back to that section listing, I have to go back to the top and then back to the section. When reading a book on either device, I miss easy ways to thumb through.
If I traveled a great deal and took books with me everywhere – which I don’t – the Kindle would clearly be a godsend. And maybe it will make me start traveling with books – and reading them – more often, as the web has been bad for my book reading habits. But I’m still not sure.
I also wish that the business model of book publishing were different: that I could buy the contents of a book and get it in any and all media: I could read it on paper when I’m home and on Kindle when I’m on the road and listen to it on my iPhone when I’m driving. I disagree strongly with Roy Blount Jr.’s assertion on behalf of authors (other than me) that the Kindle shouldn’t be reading books aloud to readers because it would cannibalize audio-book sales. This assumes that people who buy the print book also buy the audiobook in great numbers and that having a book read by the computerized and irritating voice of a Kindle will hurt sales. No, I think a book should be sold as a package: buy access to the ideas and get them however you like. I think that would spur greater sales. The next step is to move past selling books as a product, frozen in time, and start selling them as a process. But that’s a post for another day.
I’m holding onto my Kindle for now. I was wrong about it at first blush and so I need to give it more of a chance.
HarperCollins, my publisher for What Would Google Do?, just released a video version of the book, a 23-minute synopsis delivered by me, sans script, on camera. It’s for sale on Amazon here. And here’s a Wall Street Journal story about it and here’s PaidContent.
The point of this is that the publisher is trying to find new ways to release books and the ideas in them. This is their first video book; if it works, they say in the Journal they’ll make another half-dozen. The definition of “works”? Who knows?
It’s hard for me to watch myself. But you’re welcome to. Here’s a snippet:
Sorry for the bragging, but I just found out that What Would Google Do? has entered its second printing (before it goes on sale next week). I hope nice people buy it….
Also, next week, I plan to start putting up pieces of the book, one new chunk a day for 30 days, hoping for conversation.
Other digital plans: HarperCollins will provide a widget enabling the book to be read in full online (the widget limits copying and such). We’ve produced a video version of the book they plan to sell online. They plan to put out a V-book (an e-book with videos attached). It’ll also be available as an e-book on the major platforms. And they’re working on an iPhone version.
I was interviewed by Norman Oder of Library Journal for What Would Google Do? Snippets:
Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world’s information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. . . .
How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I’d really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?
I think librarians will have a key role in what I believe will be a distributed future of education… in a limitless web of teachers and students no longer bound by a classroom or campus or by geography. Librarians, like Google and like learners, are thinking past their libraries.
On Google Book Search and the settlement with publishers and authors (still controversial with some librarians):
There’s no reason publishers couldn’t have created their own consortium to do everything Google will do: scan books, make them searchable, manage purchases and payments, and even sell ads on book content. Similarly, libraries could have scanned works in the public domain on their own. That Google puts on conditions–some of which are not Google’s but are apparently rights holders’– should not be shocking. Just as ad-supported media conceded much of the ad market to Google, so did publishers and libraries allow Google to step into a void they left.
I think that Google Book Search and the settlement around it are good for books and authors because the service will enable many more readers to discover many more books. Authors and publishers might end up with another revenue stream. And books can live on past the remainder table. Rather than fighting the tide and Google, publishers should have tried to see how to offer and capture these benefits themselves. Now they’re wise to work with Google.
As I was writing my first book, What Would Google Do?, I thought I knew what my second would be – about the profound changes in culture, worldview, attitude, aptitude, impact of young people today, a group I believe will prove to be an extraordinary generation – Generation G, I call them in the book. But almost as soon as I thought that, ambitious and important books on the topic came out from people I respect. So I’ll recommend them instead.
Don Tapscott, coauthor of Wikinomics, wrote Grown Up Digital, which I believe will be seen as the seminal work on the net generation. It is the product of $4 million worth of research including 10,000 interviews in many countries, producing a treasure trove of data about behavior and beliefs.
Importantly, Tapscott, like the other authors here, debunks the shallow assumptions made about this generation – that they are unsocial or antisocial, stupefied and stupid, exhibitionistic and narcissistic and uncaring. Instead, at the start, he writes:
The story the emerges from the research is an inspiring one, and it should bring us all great hope. As the first global generation ever, the Net Geners are smarter, quicker, and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors. They care strongly about justice and the problems faced by their society and are typically engaged in some kind of civic activity at school, at work, or in their communities. Recently in the United States, hundreds of thousands of them have been inspired by Barack Obama’s run for the presidency and have gotten involved in politics for the first time. This generation is engaging politically and sees democracy and government as key tools for improving the world….
Eight characteristics, or norms, describe the typical Net Gener and differentiate them from their boomer parents. They prize freedom and freedom of choice. They want to customize things, make them their own. they’re natural collaborators, who enjoy a conversation, not a lecture. They’ll scrutinize you and your organization. They insist on integrity. They want to have fun, even at work and at school. Speed is mornal. Innovation is part of life.
Such insights continue regarding the generation and work, commerce, family, and democracy.
I believe – but won’t live to know – that this generation will prove to be as remarkable in its way – and for very different reasons – as the World War II generation was. This, too, could be a generation that builds through change and Tapscott’s book gives us a window into their culture and its impact.
I’m equally heartened by Mimi Ito’s Digital Youth Project report for the MacArthur Foundation. It, too, defends youth against common slanders. Youth, it says, “use online media to extend friendships and interests… and engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online.” In short: Digital is good and adults should encourage and enable youth to be digital and benefit from it.
Next I plan to dig into Born Digital by the amazing John Palfrey of Harvard’s Berkman Center and Urs Gasser. And then: The Pirate’s Dilemma – How youth culture is reinventing capitalism by Matt Mason.
My generation, the children of the 1960s, prided itself on nonconformity but our nonconformity became conformist. I fear it was a fashion. Some worry that Generation G’s nonconformity and individualism will be entitled rather than empowered, alone more than social, entertained more than educated. Any of that and worse could be true. But I have faith in this generation because, far earlier than their elders—my peers—did in their lives, today’s young people have taken leadership, contributed to society and the economy, and created greatness: great technology, great companies, great thinking.
Bob Miller, head of Harper Studio (a division of HarperCollins, parent of my publisher, Collins) has been blogging about the industry as he tries out new models for it. We sat down and talked in front of a Flip camera (which they also give to all their authors to get them to post videos) and talked about links and aggregation.
The Bookseller’s Blog likes the idea of making videos like this and suggests bookstores should do the same:
How can you integrate this idea into your store’s blog or website? If you have an author in the store, ask if you can record a brief video. Let the author talk about his or her area of expertise, but in a way that doesn’t just promote the book but also provides a nugget of valuable information that might be shared.
I’ve been recording more than a dozen videos using my Flip to include in an electronic version of the book; more on that later.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is phenomenal: jammed, absolutely jammed, with German book fans, including an incredible number of kid. The book culture in Germany is nothing like that in America, where allegedly one third of Americans, or more, never read a book after high school.
The Frankfurt convention grounds are also jammed with books from all around the world. What struck me was the optimism of it: all that work to create books on the hope that someone would read them. And they make fun of bloggers for whistling in the wind.
I was there on Saturday to speak with Wolfgang Blau, editor in chief of Zeit Online for what turned out to be a sizeable audience.
At the last minute, I foolishly thought I might be able to answer a question or two in German. Ha! All I know how to say in German is how I can’t say anything.
I got to meet with a few of my publishers worldwide, wonderful folks from Taiwan, Holland, and Germany.
And I got a nice ego boost – not that I need one – when I came across this:
was invaluable for my writing of Public Parts. It is a brief but comprehensive survey of the importance of Wikileaks and the state of openness and transparency in government and society. Micah — with Andrew Rasiej, a leader of the Personal Democracy Forum — is tough on the current administration and its promises and delivery regarding openness. Highly readable, very authoritative, highly recommended. 
is a creative, clever, clear, and concise (the alliteration is accidental, I assure you) guide to how media reached its place in society. She told me after finishing it that it was terribly hard work and she hopes not to do it again. But I hope she lies. 
is his best so far because I think it captures his voice and is authenticity. I’m reminded of him at South by Southwest when he stood on stage and did nothing but converse with his public. That’s what he does here, giving his best and most direct and honest advice. 
is indeed a challenge to the ideas in my last book. We look at Google and the consequences of its size and success through different ends of the telescope. I wish we’d had the chance to debate the topic more often and I can’t wait to see what he turns to next. 
(just coming out in paperback) is a wonderful account of creativity. I particularly enjoyed his contribution to the discussion of serendipity and its modern fate. 
. He examines an interesting angle on our current debates on real names and real identities: when are we authentic? 
. Eiseinstein is the premier Gutenberg scholar, author of 
, which was utterly invaluable in my research and in shaping my thinking about the parallels between Gutenberg’s disruption and the internet’s. I wish I’d received her new book earlier but even as I edited the final drafts of my book, I was devouring her latest and inserting bits I learned. If you’re a Gutenberg geek, as I now am, you must read it. 
, is right up the alley of the next project I want to work on and so I’m about to dive in. 
. Now he has a new (and thinner) book, 
, which I downloaded to my Kindle just today. Eager to dive into this, too. 
, but since I’m recommending books and since I just finished and was wowed by this one, I might as well throw a recommendation his way. As we look at the Senate going after Google for the nebulous sin of being too big, it’s so terribly instructive to look back at the demonization of success and size that hit A&P as America’s first chain store. Fascinating book. 
. It’s not out of galleys yet but I’ve been privileged to start tasting it and it’s — as I would expect — wonderful. More on that later. 
. We bonded over social media and its opportunities for business. He had me down to visit his staff and I included that in the new afterword for 
.
Don Tapscott, coauthor of Wikinomics, wrote Grown Up Digital, which I believe will be seen as the seminal work on the net generation. It is the product of $4 million worth of research including 10,000 interviews in many countries, producing a treasure trove of data about behavior and beliefs. 
