Author: Tom Slee

firstname.blogspot.com: a challenge

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The challenge:

Find a blog with a URL of the form firstname.blogspot.com that is either (a) not taken, or (b) still active.

The rules:

I am sole arbiter of what qualifies as a firstname.

The prize:

Fame, no fortune.[1]

Here are some that are dead. It is kind of fun[2] – if you are really bored – to look at the content of these blogs. There is something melancholy about so many abandoned sites. So much tumbleweed. Lists of tumbleweed blogs would be appreciated too.

http://queenie.blogspot.com (maybe not a valid firstname)

[1] I have actually found a blog of this form, so you lose and I win. Still it's kind of interesting[3] how many fail the test and it does make you wonder about all those counts of the number of bloggers in the world.  http://tina.blogspot.com/

[2] OK, it's not actually fun.

[3] OK, it's not actually interesting either.

Mr. Amazon’s Bookshop: What is a Book?

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[This is the fourth instalment of Mr. Amazon's Bookshop. A list of all instalments is here; the previous instalment is here.]

The next day I woke early, Google's suggestion that Mr. Amazon's Bookshop was founded on an illusion still hammering in my head. I decided that this puzzle needed to be solved and, unlike so many ideas that come on the threshold of sleep, my notion from the previous evening still seemed like a filly with legs. After breakfasting on the usual kippers, tea, and toast with ginger marmalade, I dressed and rushed into the village. I ducked into Words Worth and scanned the advertisements in the Literary Review until I found what I wanted: an announcement from Gallup Press promoting a new book entitled "Strengths-Based Leadership". It sounded like the most ridiculous form of business-speaking, self-help-inspired, positive-thinking twaddle, but the announcement brandished a ribbon-like slash across one corner proclaiming "Coming Soon!" with a date about two months hence – and that's all I needed.

I rushed out of the door, strode down the street, and marched into Mr. Amazon's Bookshop. I walked straight up to his desk and stared him in the eye. "Right then Amazon", I said loudly, "I'd like a copy of Strengths-Based Leadership, pronto."

"Certainly sir." He reached down behind his desk again and lifted up a book, "Here it is. Would you like to pre-order it?"

"Aha!" I shouted, pointing at the supposed book. "I've got you! That's not a real book. It's not even published yet. And if that's not a real book, then you're not a real bookshop! You're just a, a…. glorified catalogue!"

"Of course it's a book sir. You can look at the cover, you can order it, and although it may take a little longer to arrive than some other books, it will arrive. If it's not a book, then what could it be? Kippers and toast with ginger marmalade?"

"If it were a book, then I could touch it." I grabbed at it across the desk, but Amazon was too quick for me and pulled it back. "See!" I cried, "it's a trick! I know it's a trick!"

He was unflustered. "Sorry sir, you may not touch the books in our store, but feel free to read the back cover. Or I'll be happy to open it for you to look inside."

I stammered.

"Excuse me sir," he smiled patronizingly at me. "If I may make so bold, you seem to have a very old-fashioned idea of existence. What is a book anyway? Is it a physical lump of ink, paper and glue and card? Or is it the words, the ideas, the tale-well-told? When you buy a book, what is it you are purchasing? Printer's ink and cheap paper, or a connection with the fertile mind of an author?"

"What you think of as a book", he carried on in a patronizing manner, "is simply a replica, a particular physical manifestation of a book. Do you think a mere copy of one manifestation is the original, the archetypal, book? Certainly not – the physical object you so covet is the essence of duplicity; claiming to be a book and yet, in reality, being nothing but a grubby knock-off, a derivative product that supplements the elemental text with what is usually a poorly-chosen font and badly-illustrated covers. The real thing – the authentic book – is in the ether."

"Many would say that books live, not between the covers, but in the conception of their authors – theirs is the heart that beats, the insight that inspires. Even those postmodernists you are so keen on, those who would dismiss authorial intent – even they would claim that a book is the text itself, not its physical manifestation in font and paper. And not only is your precious book itself an illusion but so is your crude idea of some real bookshop from which it is sold. There is nothing, I understand, beyond the text. And I," (did his eyes glisten as he said those words?) "I have the text."

Usually so reserved, I had never seen him display this kind of intensity before and it quite took me aback. I had nothing to say in response. Before I could gather my wits he leant forward: "Let me tell you something, for your ears only", he whispered, "the physical book you love so much is dead. What you see here, delivering books to you by post," (did he sneer at the word "post"?) "this is just the beginning. My shelves are infinite. A book, as you will see, is nothing but a drop of condensation in the Cloud. And I," (Did his teeth twinkle as he smiled?) "I have the Cloud."

"Well then," I riposted bravely, gathering myself together. "If the grubby item you are sending me is not a real book, you won't mind if I don't pay you in this grubby money?" I waved two ten guinea coins under his nose and then put them ostentatiously back in my waistcoat pocket.

"Absolutely not sir. A credit card suits us better."

I spluttered, reduced to inarticulate mumbling, and was about to storm out, feeling that he had got the better of me again, when he spoke yet again.

"May I ask, sir. Do you believe I am real?"

"You? I don't know," I admitted, "I suspect if I reached over the desk you would withdraw yourself quick enough. So how can I know? Tell me then, are you corporeal, or an illusion?"

"I am as real as you are, sir."

"Well that's a relief. At least I know I'm the real thing", I chuckled.

"But you", he continued, "if I may make so bold, are hardly authentic are you? Not very original? Your language is a pale imitation of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End without the wit or the puns, your dress reminds me of Uncle Andrew from A Magician's Nephew, your stick-like knees are nothing but Mervyn Peake's Mr. Flay and I believe I detect a touch of Robert X. Cringely thrown in for good measure."

"I don't need to be original. I'm real."

"I see. How convenient. Please come again. I'm sure you will."

As I stepped into the gloomy summer rain of Whimsley High Street my mind was whirling. At least, it would have been if I hadn't been busy swilling down some bad cognac to slow it down. Is Amazon a real bookshop? Is there such a thing as a real bookshop? Is Mr. Amazon real? Does any of this matter? I had no idea.

Google’s counter-cultural moment is over

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Apparently Wikipedia was launched eight years ago today. According to Wikipedia.

Rereading my review of Remix from the other day, I noticed that my favourite bit is at the end. I don't expect many people to get that far, so I'm going to post it again by itself. I should say that the idea of a counter-cultural moment, probably far from original, came to me from a comment on "authentic moments" made by RAD on an earlier post of mine.

So here it is again (slightly rewritten for context), because I can. So there.

—-

For many cultural and artistic movements there is a "counter-cultural moment" when a previously obscure and out-of-the-way tendency suddenly gains prominence. It may be the surrealists in the '30s, Bauhaus in the '20s, the hippy movement in the late '60s, punk in the late '70s – each had a few years in which it was both important and yet still opposed to the mainstream. But that counter-cultural moment is short, often just a handful of years, and once it is over, the movement either becomes the mainstream or fades away. Only nine years after the summer of '67 the hippies were a thing of the past and punk set itself up in direct opposition to the pompous and irrelevant dinosaurs that "progressive rock" bands had become.

"Geek culture" has had its counter-cultural moment. It's over.

It is now eight years today since Wikipedia started, four years since blogging, ten years of Google. These formerly "hungry upstarts" are now the establishment. Netflix partners with Wal-Mart, Google partners with CBS, Amazon is bigger than any of those "establishment" bookstores it challenged and pushes around publishers with impunity. Geek culture is now mainstream. Google, Amazon, Netflix have passed their counterculture sell-by date.

Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: a rambling review

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Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy,  Lawrence Lessig, Penguin 2008.

Lawrence Lessig’s latest book is about how “a regime of copyright built for a radically different technological age”  xvi: numbers in square brackets are page numbers] is inhibiting art, culture, and individual expression in a digital world. His inspiration, as a parent of two youngsters, is the “copyright wars” and the effect they are having on a generation of children and young adults. Copyright does have an important role to play, he argues, but Criminalizing an entire generation is too high a price to pay for a copyright system created more than a generation ago” [xviii].

Surprisingly, given the author, the legal portion of the book is a relatively short final section, in which he outlines some common sense and practical suggestions for change in the regulatory environment of the USA. Instead, most of Remix is a description of what Lessig sees as the nascent and booming digital R/W culture that is under threat; of what kind of new activities are appearing and how they work economically. Lessig is mainly concerned with amateur activities like playing, hobbies, and gossip, and with how digital technology has changed them. Unfortunately, the picture he paints is less full of insight than his legal views. He paints a familiar heavily-photoshopped picture of reality that has now become almost orthodoxy in business and technological circles. Continue reading

Mr. Amazon’s Bookshop: A Conversation with the Butler

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[This is the third instalment of Mr. Amazon's Bookshop. A list of all instalments is here.]

No matter how often I went back to Mr. Amazon's shop, I never
could understand its workings. I often hinted to the man behind the
desk that I would like to know, but he ignored me. I even asked him
once in a direct and semi-serious manner: "what do you have down there
behind that desk Amazon? How do you get these books? Is it mole-people,
Amazon? Do you have hoards hordes of mole-people slaving in darkness down
below, running back and forth in some gigantic basement-warehouse
bringing you the books you need?" He smiled vaguely. "Not at all sir.
No mole-people for us. We keep our books in a Cloud." And that obscure
remark was all I could get from him.

Fortunately, there was someone I could always ask when I needed
information, and that was Google, the butler. So one evening in June,
as he brought me my glass of sherry and teaspoon of laudanum, I asked
him what he knew about Amazon
"Amazon sir? Oh yes, I know him well." Google's usually impassive
expression revealed a hint of disdain. "Can't say I like the fellow
very much – a bit big for his own boots if you ask me – but I do find I
often recommend his book shop when people ask me where to get books. He
has a remarkable collection."
"How does he do it Google? He only has one tiny corner shop and
it looks like he has no room to store anything, yet whenever you ask
him about a book he comes up with it. I can't fathom the man."

"One shop? I think not! You don't get out much these days do you
sir? Mr. Amazon has set up shops in every city, town and village I can
think of. And in each one they look the same. A desk, a person, and an
empty room, and yet he produces the books you are looking for when you
ask. Some people say all these stores are connected by a series of
tubes that run from one to another underground, so books can be shipped
from one to another at a moment's notice."

"With mole-people, right! Mole-people with preternaturally strong
forearms pushing trolleys underground from shop to shop! I knew it!"

"Er no, sir. No mole-people that I know of, although you may of course be right… But I do have my own theory."

"And what's that?" I asked, rather deflated at his understated scorn for my idea.
"They aren't books at all. He never lets you touch them, does he?
It's some kind of an illusion. A clever one, but an illusion
nevertheless. It's about as real as that Cloud he talks about. Oh yes,
I've heard that one. Believe me, he has warehouses. Big ones. And
mole-people too, I wouldn't doubt. Almost certainly mole-people."
"You don't like him very much do you, Google?"

"Well, we do cross paths from time to time. Let's just say he doesn't stock my guidebook and leave it at that."

I had to admit, once the laudanum calmed me down, that Google's idea
was more probable than my own. But both were just hypotheses, with no
obvious way of testing them. I was drifting off to sleep, with visions
of smoke and mirrors dancing in my head, when I suddenly realized how I
could put his theory to the test…

Sys-con media is an appalling and shameless outfit. Avoid it.

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Sys-con is commonly treated as a legitimate media organization. Google News indexes it, for example, and software companies quote it. My personal experience suggests it is shameless, and that reputable people and organizations should avoid it.

Here's the story. I see that others have experienced something similar.

In October I wrote a blog post about cloud computing. I received this nice email from sys-con's Jeremy Geelan ("Sr. Vice-President, Editorial and Events"):

Would you be cool with our republishing the post below in full, with your byline and bio (plus a
link back to the original URL) at

http://cloudcomputing.sys–con.com?


http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2008/10/cloudy-monopolies-ii.html



We try and do this across all our many and varied sites from time to
time by adding insightful posts by writers outside our immediate circle.
It's our way of introducing fresh new voices and technologies to our
audience…

So, let us know, yes? Thank you – meantime have a great Tuesday!
🙂

Jeremy G.

A colleague of mine has been to a couple of conferences organized by sys-con. A quick look at their website suggested they are one of those gazillion or so Silicon Valley tech. news sites. So I thought, OK, I know there's no money, and I'm displacing real columnists and it's digital sharecropping, but let's see how it goes. I said OK and they republished the post. No one came through to my blog from their publication, which surprised me, and I did have to tell them to remove a copyright notice which claimed copyright for sys-con, which should have warned me off, but so it goes.

Then in December I looked at my incoming traffic and saw someone had come from Yacht Vacations and Charters Magazine, which also includes my post here. I have no interest in my name being associated with anything that looks like a front for advertising junk so I wrote to sys-con at the email address they provided (seta@sys-con.com) saying this:

I recently gave permission for SYS–CON
to reproduce a piece of mine in a journal on cloud computing. I now see
it posted as a commentary in Yacht, Vacation, and Charters magazine. It
is completely inappropriate for that place and I did not give
permission for its use in that context. Please remove it.

The piece I am referring to can be found at http://www.yachtchartersmagazine.com/node/725544.

The email bounced. I sent it to another sys-con email address I found. I heard nothing.

Then yesterday I get someone coming to my blog from a third sys-con "magazine", CRM ("The First and Only Independent Magazine Serving CRM Developers"): from here to be precise. Also inappropriate, also without permission. Plain wrong.

So I googled some text in the article, and it turns out that sys-con has posted my piece on 19 different sites (here is the list).

I guess I could ask them to remove it again, but this is so obviously bad faith that I'll just post this and unleash the awesome power of my internet influence instead. Plus, when I get back to work, I'll write to the marketing people at work and tell them to stay well away from sys-con.

Emphasis on the con.