Text and Hubris

The difference between Apple as an evil empire and Microsoft as an evil empire player is simple. Where Microsoft’s technology was often a cheap imitation of what was already available in superior products, Apple’s technology continues to be solid, forward-thinking, and well designed. The game has changed and advocates of the open Internet as a creative platform need to step up.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Microsoft has changed a lot. I am no longer embarrassed to dual boot and I do find MS Office 2010 to be a fantastic suite of applications. In a lot of ways, Microsoft has done a lot to repair an image that needed it. That impetus for change didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen without an economic incentive. The same is true of Apple. If you want to help stop the proliferation of dumb licenses, help make the competition better. I am not asking you to code. I am not asking you to become a software designer. I am not even asking you to switch operating systems. I am just suggesting you look at the tools available and decide what works the best not just in the short term, but for the long haul. Use the open tools that are available or push your vendors to create standards-compliant products that can compete.

I know it is hard to compete with a free product. Then again, I don’t really think Apple’s iBook Author software is free. It is, potentially, the most expensive software available today. It pre-emptively takes full commercial control of any creative work designed in the software. I keep reading these arguments that try to liken it to a publisher buying a book and sharing the profits. Some point to Amazon’s publishing its restrictions that I would also strongly suggest everyone pay careful attention to. That said, as far as I am aware, Amazon isn’t dictating licensing based on a software package. I am able to create my work using whatever software I see fit. I can then shop my work to other publishers or sell my creation myself. Amazon only cares when they are the method by which I choose to sell, and that (like choosing Apple as a channel) is purely the author’s prerogative. More realistically, Apple’s stance would be like Microsoft demanding the right to sell and publish every commercial novel that was written with MS Word.

Hmmm….on second thought, let’s not give Microsoft any ideas. I am not so sure they have changed that much.

If Text and Hubris generated enough page hits to make a “going dark” protest practical and valid, this site would already be dark. Frankly, it doesn’t and while I can understand the value of sites like Wikipedia going dark, I feel that the best thing smaller blogs can do is act to inform people about the severe risk this type of legislation (SOPA, PIPA) poses to the Internet, economic and creative communities, artists, and our society as a whole.

Go here [ https://blacklist.eff.org/ ] to take action!

So I have an account on Facebook. I use it as a way to check on the activities of the Iowa Youth Writing Project and on those around me who still use Facebook as their primary method of communication. Otherwise, the site is useless to me. Its value as a locus of people and eyes is diminished by the fact that everything I say and do is fed back into the machine. I pay for Facebook not in cash but in information. I pay by selling my words, my interests and my friends. Personally, I think that price is far too high. Beyond that, the company has repeatedly sacrificed user security for corporate sponsorship. Zuckerberg’s belief that we should all have a single user account on the Internet is not only wrong-headed, it is a rejection of the very principles that made the Internet what it is today. Rather, it is a complete giveaway to corporations and governments that seek to track and monitor their people. Frankly, I have no interest in adding any more than I must to such a machine. My account will remain, as it has, as a pointer out and away from the poisoned walled garden.

When Google Plus came out, I was incredibly excited. Here was an opportunity to get in at on the main floor with a company whose motto is “Do No Evil.” I hunted for an invite and when a close friend sent one out to me, I jumed at the chance. To be fair, Google Plus had almost everything I wanted. The circles concept was genius, the ability to hang out was actually a lot of fun. While the site still had a long way to go, I really thought that I had found a place where I could settle into and become an active participant.

I was wrong. Within weeks, Google began to cut into its users. Anyone suspected of not using their real name was summarily removed from the network. No judge, no appeal, just erasure. Then Eric Schmidt reveals that Google Plus is not a social network but an identity service. This was surprising to me because I thought I was signing up for a social network. Furthermore, I don’t want Google acting as my identity service. I didn’t mind using my real name because I am actively seeking to merge my online and offline personas, but I quite understand the need for aliases. Personally, I use them all the time especially now that I am merging personas. There are certain things I don’t want listed under this name.

This is not wrong, it is the wonderful nature of an online universe that allows us to shed one persona for another, to discover new aspects of ourselves that we never could have imagined in the physical space (this is to say nothing of those who must conceal their identity online to actually avoid being murdered for their beliefs). Of course, it also makes it a hell of a lot harder to sell to us. It feeds incorrect data into all those carefully managed databases that track what we like and don’t like and that..well that just pisses Google off. After all, their money comes, almost entirely, from advertising. The better their information, the better the sales.

And there we have it. Google Plus and Facebook: so different, and yet, entirely the same.

Needless to say, I was frustrated. So I went to a small group of upstarts who made a splash on Kickstarter a little while ago when they suggested an distributed social network. I gathered information, found @diasporainvites on Twitter and requested an account. It is still in Alpha but this is a social network the way it should be. In a lot of ways, it feels like Google Plus. Considering how long it has been in development, you can tell that Google heavily borrowed from Diaspora’s look and feel. Circles are really just a new name for Diaspora’s Aspects and in Diaspora those useless Sparks that were on Google Plus become hashtags that allow you to track conversations inside Diaspora itself. I use them all the time. Best of all, Diaspora is built for the user. You want to use an alias? Feel free. You don’t want an account on joindiaspora.com? That fine. There are several sites (called pods) that you can sign up on. Don’t like the idea of storing your data on any of those sites? Don’t! If you want, you can run your own Diaspora server (although, right now, this is recommended for only experienced users). Create a small pod for family and friends and then connect that pod to the larger Diaspora community. Your data stays with you and no one claims any ownership.

As for financial incentive, Diaspora runs because some of the users pitch in to help. This is a community of people and users. It is built not to collect data for sale to highest bidder but to honestly connect people with one another. That is exactly what this giant Internet is supposed to do. It’s supposed to make our world a little bit smaller, a little bit closer, and little bit more open for everyone. That is why I moved to Diaspora. That is why I chose donate what I can (which isn’t much so they could use your help too!) to support Diaspora. That is why Diaspora is the first social network where I am actually going to be social.

If you want to join me, you can find me at textandhubris@joindiaspora.com. If you need an invite, leave a comment below with an accessible email and I will send you one immediately. Join a social network (ahem, or more accurately, a distributed social web) where what you do and what you say doesn’t feed some giant machine but rather helps to make the community stronger and more valuable. When was the last time that happened?

I can understand that the idea of the 99 cent e-book is a disturbing one for many. After all, both publishers and authors are used to charging much larger fees for their work. The 99 cent price tag can almost feel like an insult. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see that attitude expressed in a recent post on IndieHorror that painted authors who price their books at 99 cents as uncaring or untalented hacks [nbcite refID="4" refName="creepy1"].

The truth is, in some cases, the author is absolutely right. We’ve all seen some terribly formatted e-books in our time. Usually, a lower price means less editing and a less polished final work (hence my occasional typos). This has been a typical argument against self-publishing for years and in a lot of cases it is spot on. There is also a deep fear that a low price point will hurt authors. At such a low price new authors may not be able to afford, as Margaret Atwood put it in her talk at ToC, “their cheese sandwiches.” This is a concern, I suppose, but I think it misses the greater point.

The point is that how we buy literature is changing. We all know this. Production and distribution, especially in digital formats, continues to get easier and cheaper. No, print isn’t going away. In fact, with print on demand (P.O.D.), I think that is all but assured. We simply have more options now and that’s not a bad thing. The 99 cent e-book novel is simply a part of that process of change.

Rather than shifting our models with these changes, I think we get bogged down in concerns over form. People seem to forget that the novel isn’t some sacred idol of book technology. It’s only one of innumerable ways to tell a story. Rather than bemoaning a shift in one form of writing why not find ways to deliver content that fits both your readers and your economic needs. No, I don’t think that digital novels will start selling, in the long-term, for 99 cents. I think chapters will. That’s what matters. I think in some ways we are seeing the rise of serials and I’m not opposed to that. To be perfectly honest, that is what’s been going on in YA and genre fiction for a while anyway. Harry Potter was a serial. It was just published in larger sections.

Yes. Writing and publishing is a business. I know it sometimes hurts to think of it like that but it is. For some, writing is a job. They dedicate themselves to their craft and that is important. We need authors and poets. They provide context and create the culture and the personality of our nation. In this country, that means they need to make money. I just hope that most are willing to change with the times.

Creepywalker on IndieHorror is right to call out poor quality and sales gimmicks. Neither work. A wholesale rejection of the 99 cent model isn’t wise either, though. In some cases, it probably is the most practical pricing structure.

[nbcite print="default" ]

I had the opportunity to attend an informal discussion/presentation by Lance Mannion with occasional comments from Stephen Kuusisto titled Literary Writing in the Second Digital Age. In it they discussed whether blogs deserve their still often-maligned status as the creation of narcissists screaming into the echo chamber or whether they were something more? Mannion and Kuusisto argue that for many writers the blog has become the next evolution of the much vaunted author’s journal. As such, they contain snippets of ideas that can evolve and build into future poems and stories. They become a place for an author to share opinions, moments of reaction, and whatever else seems to fill their lives. The blog, then, for these authors becomes a medium for sharing and, almost more importantly, for storing and recalling important moments and thoughts. While it is not a replacement for other forms of writing, it is a valuable tool for the authors who are so inclined to use it.

Listening to Mannion talk, what quickly became apparent was that his blog primarily acts a way to stay connected with the world beyond his computer. According to him, the best part of running his blog comes when he is able to leave the screen behind and, instead, meet and talk with intelligent, powerful, and connected people the world over. The blog became a way to connect, share, and meet these people. It was, in a sense, his contribution to the commons and the discussions that were going on. I love this idea because, at least in my mind, this is the real reason the Internet should exist. It opens the doors of communication even wider. Even as I type this, my twitter client is streaming, collecting a #litchat discussion stream which I will read later and I have added both Mannion’s and Kuusisto’s blogs to my RSS feed. While we may not always like to admit it, writers like community. We want people to read us and, in turn, we want to read other people. That is almost a required function of the job.

While both Mannion and Kuusisto made clear that blogs were not a replacement for print publications, Kuusisto did note how publishing his work in a digital format made it more accessible and allowed for a much faster translation and dissemination of his works than did traditional print. This idea that there is a balance between print and digital publishing is one that I wish more people would take into account. Print isn’t going away, it will be a tragedy if it ever does. Instead, there is this great balance where digital access is opening new doors for distribution and even creating new ways of making print accessible. This is, in almost every way, a symbiotic relationship not a parasitic one.

Beyond that, what really caught my attention was a brief discussion on how literary fiction and poetry is, in some sense, a (and I am trying to remember the exact phrasing here) “socially informed and culturally aware form of vanity publishing.” Somewhere, I hear a clamor of authors gathering their pitchforks but I think there is some truth to that statement. There appears to be a false notion for many undergrads (and even some grad students) that there is money in writing. I’m not sure where that comes from as we have been told from day one that there is no money in writing but I am sure the first year out of college will disabuse them of such a notion. If we’re not doing this for money, then, if we write, we do so because we think we have something to say and that is, in a very real sense, vanity.

It’s why this blog is called Text and Hubris. But that is the point, after all. I want to share and I want to tell my stories. I hope that there are enough people who want to listen/read and in return I do my damnedest to be great listener/reader as well. It is the least I can do.

As I close, I will continue to complain about notification for these events. If I had known about it earlier, I would have have noted it here and in the CW4 forum as well. I am sure this would have been very valuable to the Intermedia and New Media students but it didn’t look like it made it to any of them. As with so many things, my only notification came from a hastily propped up sign on the door to EPB. Obviously, this was a talk that fell directly into my interest and study area, so I did cancel a meeting in order to sit in. I’m glad I did. I just wish more people had that opportunity.

Links
–
Lance Mannion: Lance Mannion
Stephen Kuusisto: Planet of the Blind