Loud speakers

As the news comes in that the old-skool, analogue TV signal will be switched off in the UK next year, one might be forgiven for thinking that the ones and zeroes have finally triumphed. But apparently not. First there’s the story of the Occupy Wall Street protesters getting round a ban on amplified sound by what they describe as the human microphone – essentially an agitprop variant on Chinese whispers. And then we hear of one Nyanza Roberts, a teacher from Hull who is accused of using Facebook to make some unflattering remarks about her students. The neat thing here is that parents only became aware of the comments when some thoughtful soul printed them off and pasted them on walls and lamp-posts around the neighbourhood. Which is, I suppose, nothing more than social networking gone analogue.

PS: This just in from the London protest:

The Steve Jobs memorial blog post

I got a new phone this week. It’s not an iPhone, but it looks pretty damn iPhone-y in many ways: without getting into boggy legal territory, let’s just say that if the iPhone had never existed, it’s quite possible my phone wouldn’t have existed either (or would at least have looked and felt and behaved rather differently).

Meanwhile, in China, they’ve been selling bootleg iPhone 5s in eager anticipation of a launch that never happened. So if you’re in Beijing, 28 quid will get you a simulacrum of something that not only doesn’t exist, but has not yet existed, and may never exist.

PS: Lefty analysis of Jobs’s life and the (over?-)reaction to its end.

Corporate raiders

From the Telegraph, of all places. (Click to enlarge.)

You can’t touch this

In the New York Times, Nick Bilton describes his dilemma as he moves to a new city; what to with all his books. “What’s the point if I’m not going to use them? I have digital versions now on my Kindle,” he asks. “If I was talking about throwing away my CD or DVD collection, no one would bat an eyelid.”

The latter is probably true; but if he’d been talking about a collection of vinyl records, eyelids would bat like Stuart Broad with something to prove. Maybe I’m showing myself up – like Roger Ebert – as an analogue diehard, but might it be the case that when we can get hold of stuff by digital means, whether by downloading it or ordering it from Amazon, it ceases to mean that much; and is thus easier to jettison?

(That said, this post is based on a conversation that began on Google+, so maybe I’m not as analogue as I make out.)

PS: And here’s someone quietly raging against the dying of the reading light.

Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of (unless you buy a big new telly)

Marshall McLuhan was born 100 years ago this month. Here’s self-confessed McLuhagnostic and analogue native Roger Ebert to provide a personal/historical perspective – with the help of a couple of Russians – on MM’s “rearview-mirror” concept of the social and technological environment:

I grew up in a world of books, magazines, radio, black & white television, and movies that were shown in movie theaters. I was well enough established in that world that it created an “invisible environment.” It never occurred to me that there was anything new about those forms of media. When Gorky saw the first silent films, he called them “the Kingdom of Shadows,” and added: “If you only knew how strange it is to be there.” When Tolstoy saw a movie for the first time, he said: “You will see this little clicking contraption with the revolving handle will make a revolution in our life – in the life of writers. We shall have to adapt ourselves to the shadowy screen and the cold machine.” He rather liked movies. “The cinema has divined the mystery of motion. And that is its greatness.”

Have you ever (have I ever?) given much conscious thought to the fact that movies move? The very term “motion picture” was coined in a world in which pictures did not move. Yet within a few years after Gorky and Tolstoy saw the first films, Charlie Chaplin was the most famous man in the world, and nobody gave it a moment's thought. The invisible environment had changed to accommodate a new kind of visibility.

Or, as Douglas Adams put it:

...everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal; anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

(Image from picturesofwalls.com.)

Shot by both sides

I haven’t seen the movie The Human Centipede, which is about a scientist who grafts people together, mouth to anus. Nor have I scene the sequel, brilliantly titled The Human Centipede II, which is about a man who watches the first film (postmodern, self-referential horror porn ahoy!) and is persuaded to repeat the experiment. The latter gem has joined the select band of films that have been banned outright in the UK.

While I’m instinctively opposed to censorship in general, it does strike me that the director, Tom Six, was rather setting himself up for this. Banning something on grounds of taste alone is impossibly subjective; but the likelihood that a work might provoke violent or destructive behaviour in its viewers should at least be considered. Mr Six has apparently made such a provocation the central feature of the sequel, which suggests that the first film should be banned retrospectively as well. Although the bigger issue, as poor Ryan Giggs has discovered, is that it’s all but impossible these days to ban anything that exists only as a string of one and zeroes; and trying to do so only brings further notoriety to it.

On a less tawdry note, Channel 4 is defending its decision to broadcast uncensored footage of extra-judicial executions carried out by the Sri Lankan military against Tamil militants. There’s a compelling argument here to override viewers’ squeamishness, as the whole point of the programme is to demonstrate that such atrocities did occur. But according to Channel 4’s head of news, Dorothy Byrne, while we should be allowed to see people being shot in the back of the head, any images of genitalia will be blurred out. I mean, we wouldn’t want to offend anyone, would we?

Seller of currents

Oh dear. All of a sudden, I’d rather like an iPad.

But could it really be any better than this?

Redford and Newman Never Swindled People This Way

Once upon a time, two con men named Gondorff and Hooker engineered a con to take a nasty piece of work crime boss for everything they could get. One setup, hook, tale, wire, and shut out later, they had the mark right where they wanted him, and swindled the bastard for all they could get.

Those were the days. Now con artists have moved off in another direction.

Internet scammers, the modern day scourge of technology. And like the cockroaches they are, if one of them is around, you can count on there being more.

Over at his blog, Mike Saxton regularly rakes them over the coals. There are common threads to the typical internet scammer messages, of course. Mistakes in grammar or punctuation. Sob stories to gain your sympathy. The promise of huge amounts of money. You can find his blog right here for more examples.

For the most part, my junk filters in email work just fine. Usually they catch the typical sort of junk we all get. Ads for whatever product or service some babbling chimp (oh, sorry, marketing executive) thinks we need. In the last few weeks, however, I've been getting some classic internet scam emails. One of them even borrowed the identity of an actual British lord. I wonder how His Lordship feels about identity theft.

The following message is one ludicrous example:

---

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 11:47:56 -0700
From: stella.samuel1@hotmail.fr
Subject: GOD BLESS AS YOU READ.
To:

GOD BLESS AS YOU READ. DEAR BLOVED, Greetings,I am Mrs .Stella Samuel. an aging widow suffering from long time illness. i am currently admitted in a hospital here in Abidjan cote d' Ivore, from all indication my conditions is really deterioration and it is quite obvious that I won live more than months, according to my doctor, I have some funds I inherited from my late loving husband. Engr Samuel Martin,  the sum of USD .($7.900.000.00) dollars(Seven Million,  Nine Hundred Thousand US Dollars) in a prime bank in Abidjan. and I need a honest and God fearing person who have the feelings of human that can use this funds for God's work and 30% out of the total funds will be for your compasation for doing this work of God. my late husband died after five years,and during the period of our marriage we could 't produce any child. and after my husband death I inherited all his business and wealth. So i saw your email from internet and decided to contact you.  Please if you would be able to use these funds for the Lord's work kindly reply to me. May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and your family's Amen. Your Sister In The Lord. MRS .Stella  Samuel. Classic signs of the typical Scammeritis Annoyingus species there, ladies and gentlemen. Deplorable grammar skills. The sob story. The promise of big bucks. She's even trying to appeal to religious sensibilities. Hey, for all she knows, I might worship Odin! Almighty Odin, smite down this pestilence.... She, he, or they would like to have the suckers who buy this believe that she's a decripit African lady on her deathbed, who just happens to have millions of dollars she inherited from her dead husband (whose surname doesn't even match hers, to boot) in an African bank. How many African engineers do you know who have millions of dollars? Discounting the ones who engineer weapons? Exactly.  This is the image the scammers want you to associate with this sob story. In fact, this is probably what she really looks like. Of course, there are inevitably people who are gullible enough to fall for this. If only one in a hundred people who get this respond, that's enough. The scammer at the other end of the email will have their hooks in the mark, and soon enough, will have bled every bit of money they can get out of the gullible fool. If internet scammers had been around in the days of Exodus, all it would have taken was one plague of them on Egypt. The Pharoah would have called Moses in. "Moses, take your people and leave! Go! And if you don't mind, will you drop some Nigerian scammers into the Red Sea while you're going?"

Revenge Of The Inappropriate Ringtone

Well, I had such a time writing the last installment that of course there had to be more. No doubt this may become an ongoing feature.

Some days ago I heard the trilling ringtone of a cell phone, with an abomination as the person's preferred ring tone. It was, unfortunately, this infestation.

That song, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the most irritating songs of the last fifty years. And now that you've clicked on it, it's stuck in your heads for the next few hours.

So, let's continue on with the theme of inappropriate ringtones that we left off with yesterday.

Let's say you're a defendant in a trial (innocent until proven guilty, except in Texas). Or, for that matter, you're a lawyer or judge. Either way, this tune might not be a good choice for your ringtone.

For that matter, if you're a straight woman or gay man, and securely comfortable in your preferences, you might want to avoid using Katy Perry's breakthrough as your personal ringtone. Your guy might look at you strangely.

Visiting someone whose family member was killed by the Manson gang? Don't have helter skelter as your ringtone.

Going back to my notion of bad ring tones for therapists from yesterday, there's this classic that ought to be avoided. Your patients will thank you for not having that start to sound when they're on the couch in your office. They don't need to hear about maniacs, thank you very much.

What if your therapy is directed towards a group of people with fear of flying? Obviously, this Chantal Kreviazuk tune is not an option for your  personal ringtone. Neither is Tom Petty's opus. The title alone will get them thinking about falling out of planes. And forget this one too.

Are you a white guy? Forget using rap for your ringtone. Just forget it. You look supremely silly. If you do, well, I'm gonna knock you out.

Let's say you're the head of the DEA. Or a politician known for being strictly anti-drugs. There's no excuse for using Hendrix or this stoner classic for your ringtone. It'll send all the wrong messages.

In Alcoholics Anonymous? Well, as infectious and fun as this song is, you can't use it for your ringtone.

Attending your mother in law's funeral? Delete this song  from your ringtone. That's the last thing you want interrupting the funeral. Your spouse will want to kill you.

Let's say you're in the military. Well, you might like John Lennon, but these sentiments  might not go over well at work, so avoid using it as a ringtone.

On trial for arson? Got a taste for being a firebug? Well, you don't want to incriminate yourself, so this is out of the question. So is this.

Attending the Louvre? Want to make an impression that you're impressed by the culture and the history? Want to avoid being seen as a heathen? You might want to avoid having Shania saying she's not impressed as your ringtone while standing in front of the Mona Lisa. The French will not like you for it.

Are you a bomb squad member? You might want to avoid using this Britney Spears song as your personal ringtone. After all, Oops is a word that we don't like hearing coming from a bomb squad technician, so....

In fact, if you use any of her music as a ringtone, I'm sending the hounds after you.

Live in Vancouver? London? No doubt you're used to the rain. Well, veryone else lives with it too. And they hate it. So, for your own sake, avoid using this Amanda Marshall song  for your ringtone. You might get slugged by someone sick and tired of rain for the twentieth straight day.

Let's say that you're a Bond Girl. You've managed to survive until the end of the film. Well, after James ditches you, you really ought to refrain from using this Carly Simon classic as your ringtone. Unless your future boyfriend or husband is a spy, it's going to get to him. He'll always know that the best sex you ever had was with that suave British agent you spent a couple weeks with, running around the world in exotic places and battling supervillains, Tea Party leaders, and Alaskan mama bears (yes, they're all the same person) in hollowed out volcanoes.

Finally, I submit to you this future scenario. It's the year 2029. A dystopian, dark future for one side. A glorious future for the other. In Washington, D.C., President Chelsea Clinton resides in the White House, her heart heavy. Her nation has just fought and lost a war with Canada. It's a war started when her daddy, still a skirt chaser in his wheelchair, pinched the bottom of Governor General Avril Lavigne three years ago.

Canadian troops occupy every state capital. The Canadian Prime Minister (yours truly, by the way) sits smugly at her desk in the Oval Office, victory in his grasp. She wonders how a country with a population tenth the size of her own could defeat her military so soundly. Now she must sign a negotiated peace, signing over Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and New England to become Canadian territory. Her Republican arch rival, Senator Bristol Palin, is somewhere cackling with glee.

Right about now would be a really bad time for her cell phone to go off. Even worse if her ringtone is Blame Canada.

The Curse Of The Inappropriate Ringtone

During a Christmas holiday two or three years ago, I was back at the family homestead. One of my brothers and his family were up too. Around six in the morning, with darkness still looming outside, I woke up to a strange sound. Talking. I went downstairs, hearing this peculiar voice. It was slightly nasal, low pitched, and vaguely English, going on and on about waking up.

It was, in fact, Stewie.

I don't watch Family Guy, but I've seen enough clips to recognize the voice. It was barking in a condescending way, going on and on... and then I found the reason why this annoying evil voice had invaded my sanctum: it was the alarm clock function on my brother's cell phone.

Cell phones these days feature your own personal ringtone, of course. You can customize them to have different ringtones for different people. If you're a teenager, for example, this comes in very handy. For your girlfriend, boyfriend, secret crush, or stalkee, you might select their favourite song. For your dad, you might get him to ask "What do you mean you totalled the car?" and loop it over and over as his customized ringtone. For your mom, you can ask her to say the word nag, and loop that so that when she's calling you, you'll hear your phone chirp up, "Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag."

I don't have a cell phone. If I did, would I go with a ring tone? Hard to say. If I wanted it, what would it be?

Me being me, it would have to be something like this:

The Imperial March

or

Ave Satani

Norma and I got to talking about inappropriate ringtones. She mentioned a Sunday School teacher whose cell phone interrupted the service. The ringtone? Is this appropriate for church? I think not!

A marriage counsellor would have to be careful about their particular choice for that matter. Somehow an appreciation for this Sara Evans song might be the wrong choice when it goes off during a session with a couple whose marriage is on the rocks.

Funeral directors need to be mindful of this sort of thing too. This song might tend to upset mourners trying to grieve for loved ones if their cell phone buzzes during a visitation. Come to think of it, that song would probably annoy anyone with musical taste.

How about a high-end escort who prizes discretion with her clients? Well, as much as I love Old Blue Eyes singing it,  The Lady Is A Tramp coming from her cell phone while Elliot Spitzer is accompanied by a lady of the evening just can't end well, can it?

Psychologists need to be mindful of this too. Yes, Doctor, you might love Cocoapuff cereal, but the Coocoo For Cocoapuffs jingle won't inspire your patients if they hear that from your cell phone during their therapy. Neither will this classic. Come to think of it, avoid using this one too. Not just because it's a Madonna song. That's reason enough, sure.

If you're a serial killer, you might want to avoid this one as your ringtone. It'll lead to no end of trouble, believe me.

And if you're an accountant who's a skinny, small sort of person who has a problem staying on your feet in a good stiff wind, well, I'm sorry, but this is off limits. Stop running up those steps to mimic Stallone too. It just looks silly.

Finally, here's one that's inappropriate in almost every setting. Unless you work in a shop catering to certain adult entertainment clientele:

Yes, Meg Ryan at her best.

Imagine being in church, the PTA meeting, court, or anywhere else, and hearing Meg Ryan faking an orgasm.

Printernet

Jeffrey R Di Leo argues, in the US Chronicle of Higher Education, that The Book As We Know It is not necessarily dead, but at the same time is certainly no longer integral to the educational process. Indeed, his point is much the same as the one made by that disgruntled Simpsons fan on Amazon, although Dr Di Leo quotes Barthes rather than Bart (a joke that was a tad creaky when first made in the Modern Review in the early 90s, and rigor mortis was setting in by the time Stephen Bayley got hold of it, but I still like it).

Di Leo types:

Many concerns about the intellectual quality of digital publications are valid, and digital content can be easier to plagiarize. But those concerns are historical, not permanent. There is nothing intrinsically inferior about spreading knowledge on a screen rather than on a printed page, and plagiarism is an ethical issue, not a material one. Words may look better in print, and a book may feel better in your hands than a Kindle or an iPad, but the words are the same.

Most of which is true, but I’m not sure it’s wise to dismiss so brusquely the *feel* of a book. Even in academia, where books are often read to a purpose other than pleasure, they still provoke an emotional response – a relationship, even – that transcends the mere process of getting facts into the reader’s brain. The words may be the same, but that’s not always the point.

Moreover, while the potential for digital books to enhance the reading experience is obvious, I’m not that sure the punters will actually go for it. There have been many innovative experiments in digital publishing, such as Geoff Ryman’s 253, a hypertext novel about a Tube journey, and Train Man (Densha Otoko), which began life on a chat forum, but neither of them achieved anything more than a niche reputation until they were remastered in more conventional formats (Train Man became not only a book, but also a TV show and a movie). Di Leo would argue that this was the fault of critics and consumers, who failed to seize the opportunities that the digital versions offered. And this hesitancy persists.

I’ve always been a big fan of footnotes in dead-tree books, and when, over a decade ago, I first encountered the hypertext version of The Waste Land – which offered annotations to Eliot’s own annotations – I squealed with delight. This, surely, was the way forward for writers and publishers: not a reference was too obscure, not a word too difficult, because anything could be explained, elucidated, glossed, translated, without breaking the flow of the text. I think I’ve discussed before some of the other books that might benefit from such treatment (Nabokov’s Pale Fire; Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; BS Johnson’s The Unfortunates; Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual; Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman) but there seems to have been very little action on this front. The received wisdom is that today’s multi-tasking youth, who can simultaneously play Grand Theft Auto, message their friends, watch The Inbetweeners and roll aggressively towards policemen will have no problem flitting between text and notes. But few, it seems, want a book that’s anything other than linear in structure. I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms by several publishers that readers (of print books) find too many notes distracting, and that they should be a) reduced in number and b) sent to the back of the text. I can’t see that they’ll be any more keen to have their leisure reading interrupted by hyperlinks.

Although I adore conventional books, I don’t object to their being challenged by digital versions: as Di Leo says, the words are the same. But it would be something of a pity if the only reason e-books succeed is because they’re cheaper to distribute, and easier to take on holiday, and nobody wants to take advantage of their other possibilities.

D’oh!

So, is The Book As We Know It dead?

Books do furnish a Tube carriage

Here’s an interesting piece in The Economist, in response to the suggestion (voiced in the New York Times) that e-readers are less off-putting than books; the argument is that part of the appeal of reading a book in public is that it reduces the chance of any social contact with others: “Books require a certain quiet, a solitude that is all the more valuable for the way it can be achieved in public.” And it’s true; if I’m entirely alone, I can manage without a book. If I’m surrounded by others, I need the comfort, the distraction, the protection that it offers.

But back to the notion of sociability. Surely one’s choice of e-reader gives less of a clue to one’s personality – leaving aside for the moment the question of whether that personality might be attractive to others – that one’s choice of book. Do Kindle readers feel some sort of affinity with each other, to the extent that two otherwise unacquainted readers of Stieg Larsson or Sarah Waters or Andy McNab might feel? I’ve had conversations with strangers prompted by what I or they are reading, and have also steered clear of people on the same basis. And then of course there’s the question of whether people use books as a sort of personal branding: I Am The Sort Of Person Who Reads Schopenhauer, Don’t You Know?

I suppose there might be some kind of geeky camaraderie about reading devices, in the way that people might bond over classic bikes or expensive cameras. But surely once you’ve spent three minutes bonding over your Sony or whatever, what you really want to know is what book the other person is reading. Until you find out that the other person is reading Schopenhauer, and you’re reading Andy McNab.

Squaresville

I’m not old, but not that not-old either. I still retain a passing interest in any new manifestations of social media, but sometimes I have to wait for an article in the Daily Telegraph to explain them to me, which is why I’m now an expert on this Foursquare thingumajig that you young persons are getting so excited about, daddio.

And although I think I get it, I’m not really tempted to get into it. When I joined Twitter and Facebook, when I started blogging even, there was a certain leap-in-the-dark element to the whole thing. Quite clearly, a bare-bones description of the products couldn’t communicate why people found them so addictive, so useful, so much fun. You had to get involved to understand them. Fundamentally, they offered things I already liked doing (sharing thoughts and ideas and dreams and fears, getting to know those of others) but on a rather larger scale than was previously possible, with the opportunity to get new and unexpected voices involved in the conversation.

Foursquare, however, doesn’t appear to revolve around people’s thoughts, or even their words. Like one of those dire TV shows about buying houses, it’s all about location. When you tweet, you tell us where your head is at; when you check in on Foursquare, you tell us where the rest of you is, which frankly isn’t as interesting to me, unless I’ve arranged to meet you for lunch.

So to add a little pizazz to the banausic details of users’ daily peregrinations, Foursquare adds a gaming element to the whole thing. The more you check in, the more badges of honour you attain. If you’ve checked in at a specific location more than any other user, you become “Mayor” of it. There are elements of loyalty cards and frequent flyer programmes to all this, and it’s not unexpected that commercial partners, such as Starbucks, have got in on the act, offering privileges to those whose loyalty can be measured by GPS.

And none of this really appeals. I don’t care that you're in the Starbucks on Goodge Street; I might have a passing interest in the combination of happenstance, fatigue, thirst, hangover, boredom and inertia that brought you there; I’m far more likely to pay attention to what thoughts are popping between your synapses as you wait for your Deep-Fat Burberry Pendolino; all of which can be communicated to me by other means. Maybe I’m just being like the dinosaurs who claim to have no use for this newfangled internetty nonsense, because I’ve got real friends, thank you very much, and when I want to talk to them I can talk to them properly, face to face, and sometimes there are biscuits, nice ones too. But I think I’ve had enough experience of other social packages to understand the various components of Foursquare. What it seems to offer is a combination of the most annoying bits of 21st-century information technology. There’s the people who have no qualms about their every move being tracked and recorded, because “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide”; the persistent intrusion of advertising; the inane games, Farmville and their ilk, that pollute Facebook; the people who don’t understand that Twitter is not a monologue; and above all, the dreary monotone from three seats back, announcing: “I’m on the train.”

Unless someone can convince me otherwise...

PS: And the Telegraph can’t stop with the Foursquare lovin’. Hey, you guys, get a room.

Capitalist piglet

A lasting memory from my days at university – one of the few actually connected with my studies – was a tutorial about William Blake which gradually turned into a discussion of the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner. Our tutor, a man who died far too soon, elucidated Blake’s notions of Innocence and Experience in terms of Christopher Robin’s attempt to explain his own Going Away to his friend Pooh:

“I’m not going to do nothing anymore.”
“Never again?”
“Well, not so much. They don’t let you.”

Which had quite a resonance for a bunch of fresh-faced 18-year-olds, many grappling for the first time with overdrafts and washing machines, but not quite yet in the real world. At least we were still allowed to do nothing. We were studying English after all.

Many miles and years from the 100 Aker Wood, I happen upon a piece about the bloody iPad. The schtick is that the author, Peter Bregman, wants to give his back because “any free moment becomes a potential iPad moment.” And that’s the problem:

But something – more than just sleep, though that’s critical too – is lost in the busyness. Something too valuable to lose.
Boredom.
Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that’s where creativity arises.

The funny thing is, Bregman isn’t some eternal student, a balding soixante-huitard who still deploys Christopher Robin and Blake and Alice and Syd Barrett and The Wind In The Willows and The Magic Roundabout in an effort to destabilise the military-industrial complex and justify the fact that he never irons his trousers. He’s writing for the Harvard Business Review, for crying out loud. This is work he’s talking about. So the next time your boss catches you staring into the middle distance when you’re meant to be doing something even less interesting, just tell her that you’re brainstorming with yourself, and she can run that one up the flagpole and see who plays Poohsticks with it.

Bonfire of the inanities

From xkcd.com.

I don’t know much about art but...

Lev Grossman in Time, on allowing technology to make our artistic choices:

Recommendation engines introduce a new voice into the cultural conversation, one that speaks to us when we’re at our most vulnerable, which is to say at the point of purchase. What is that voice saying? Recommendation engines aren’t designed to give us what we want. They’re designed to give us what they think we want, based on what we and other people like us have wanted in the past. Which means they don’t surprise us. They don’t take us out of our comfort zone. A recommendation engine isn’t the spouse who drags you to an art film you wouldn't have been caught dead at but then unexpectedly love. It won’t force you to read the 18th century canon. It’s no substitute for stumbling onto a great CD just because it has cool cover art. Recommendation engines are the enemy of serendipity and Great Books and the avant-garde. A 19th century recommendation engine would never have said, If you liked Monet, you’ll love Van Gogh! Impressionism would have lasted forever.

Made out of wood

I think next time somebody asks me to explain Baudrillard or McLuhan or Ballard or, I dunno, Gary Numan, I’ll just show them this image. Does the fact that it’s actually a T-shirt add or detract? From Concrete Rocket, via Culturepopped.

PS: And on similar lines, read this story from Korea, if you can bear it.

I’m going slightly Vlad

In his BookForum review of Vladimir Nabokov’s (presumably) final novel, The Origin of Laura, John Banville discusses the convoluted, controversial circumstances of the book’s appearance in the public domain, 33 years after the author’s death, and against his express wishes:

His directive was disobeyed, as such directives frequently are—one thinks of Virgil and the Aeneid and, of course, of Kafka and Max Brod.

It’s interesting to see how Banville pitches these little asides. It is assumed that we know that Virgil wrote the Aeneid, and also who Kafka and Brod were. But there’s a subtle distinction between the two, in the shape of that crucial “of course”. While Virgil comes to mind, Kafka is almost too obvious to mention.

Now, this distinction happens to fit in with the ones and zeroes of my own knowledge and ignorance. As soon as I read about Nabokov’s posthumous desires, I immediately thought of Brod, who disobeyed Kafka’s wish to have his manuscripts burned. I didn’t know about Virgil, however. (According to Wikipedia – well, why not? – he died of a fever in 19 BC, having told his executors to destroy the unfinished text.) So I think Banville gets it right, because his assumptions of understanding fit my own. But surely there are plenty of people who know the Virgil story but not the Kafka story, or know both stories, or know neither. How, in a postmodern, polycultural universe, does a writer tread the line between patronising the audience, and going over its head? And when I recently sat down to watch Tom Cruise’s prequel to Inglourious Basterds, and the caption informed me that we were in “Tunisia, North Africa”, was I right in thinking that this was a film for people who don’t know geography, and ejecting after 10 minutes?

But back to Nabokov, or more precisely to Banville. The book itself contains both reproductions of the file cards on which Nabokov wrote, and typeset versions of his text; the cards can be removed and juggled around by the reader. Banville is not convinced:

This seems dubious, for the reason that most of the cards have run-over text, and to take them out of the pages and shuffle them would make nonsense of the plot, slight and elusive though it is. And what reader would be so wanton as to remove the very vitals of the book and leave a rectangular hole running through from page 1 to page 275?

Well, there are plenty of precedents, I reckon; not least the works of BS Johnson, such as The Unfortunates (in which the reader can shuffle the chapters into a preferred or random order) and Albert Angelo (which has holes in the pages to enable the reader to see what comes next). Indeed, I can’t help but think that Nabokov’s swansongs, as well as Johnson’s experiments, Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, The Waste Land and a few more would be excellent candidates for e-book status. Above and beyond than the banal convenience of being able to take 100 books on holiday, digital status would give such transgressive texts a new lease of life, taking the dear old codex into the realm of DVDs or even video games. Chapter access, extras, cheats... why just stick to the old once upon a time > happily ever after norm? I’m sure Nabokov would have been amused. And even if he weren’t, we can ignore his objections, because he’s dead.

Which leads inevitably to Geoff Dyer’s advice to writers in yesterday’s Guardian:

Don’t be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.

(Does this mean I’m back in the blogosphere?)

Print’s charming

Maybe I’m just benevolently disposed towards The Word at the moment, seeing as how they gave my book so much coverage, but I was impressed by an article that David Hepworth wrote in the current article, suggesting that the Kindle and the Reader and such like won’t present much of a challenge to the dominance of the conventional book. His is not just a fogeyish argument that books have lasted 500 years so they ought to last for at least another 500; rather, it’s a highly modern observation about how we express our identities today:

...a lot of books and nearly all magazines are read on public transport. In the act of reading something with the cover pointing outwards we advertise ourselves and our attitudes. It’s the most complex and powerful sign language we know. An attractive woman makes herself twice as attractive when she is seen reading an interesting book. How can a brushed metal blank or a piece of nice smooth plastic begin to cope with that? We live in a culture of display, where people pay more for a ringtone than for a record. It’s the worst time in history to be hiding what you’re reading.

That said, here’s another view, from Freek Bijl. (Thanks to Ian Hocking for alerting me to this one.)