I watched the first half of THE WEST AND THE REST on PBS, with Niall Ferguson.
I think I used to take these things in without much skepticism, but nowadays I try to figure out the political leanings of the writer. Niall Ferguson, as far as I can tell, falls more into the "we're deep in debt and deep in doo doo, we must cut budgets, austerity" camp.
Unexpectedly, it was a bit of a travelogue, actually, showing castles and edifices all over the world. (Which shows the definition bias of "Success" in his estimation....)
Anyway, at one point, he talks about the how Muslim world for centuries banned printed books because they felt the calligraphy was more pure.
Which immediately made me think of books versus digital.
I had the realization that, in some respects, I'm not against digital. I think the technology needs to move forward, and used in every way that is beneficial to the world.
My opposition is personal. I don't want to used digital, I don't want to carry digital. I want to be a Luddite in my own business.
But this doesn't mean that I would ban digital options if given the chance. I think this will all have to play out, fair and square, in the marketplace. I PREFER printed books, but don't expect everyone to follow my lead.
Just enough to keep me in business.
And of course, there is the little matter of how I intend to put my fiction out in digital form, and not try to get a publisher on board. It's two different things. One is my day to day workplace and what I prefer to sell. The other is my creative side, and how I can best use digital to sidestep the ugly process of getting published.
I'm very much in favor of technology. But I'm also in favor of hanging onto some things that are a little backward, but pleasant and reassuring.
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5 comments:
Chinese had movable type 2,000 or more years before Guttenberg did his thing more recently in Europe.
Textual Technology isn't new. IBM had punched cards at the turn of the Century, Hitler used the technology to keep track of Jew processing for expedition of his 'final solution', all courtesy of USA financial technical leaders, ... aka Henry Ford and Prescott Bush ( senator and great-grandad to our luv-prez ).
Most interesting is the phenomenon now rather than dossiers being kept by the government, that people type in their own dossier ( think facebook ). In the past 'evil-gubmint' had to have a zillion henchmen to catalog shit, ... think Stasi. Now thanks to technology, kids automatically do all the work for their gub-mint.
Papyrus or Books, or Kindels, or for that matter story telling by word of mouth, or cave men writing on walls, or old farts pissing on desert rocks, ... its all the same.
The ONLY thing interesting NOW, is that morons are 'entering' their own dossiers into gub-mint databases, and therefore ensuring their own slavery.
Nothing new under the sun.
That's exactly how I feel, Duncan. Not many people want a hand made coffee mug, nor do I expect all people to have that desire. But just enough do to keep me busy, and that's all I ask.
And, for the record, I still prefer printed books to e-books. But I hate it when the local paper gives me a two week sampler; suddenly I have to deal with stacks of printed paper. If they were smart they would give folks like me a free two week pass to their digital content, I might be tempted to buy a subscription. Weird, eh? But I'd rather read news online, books in print. Go figure.
Wow ... complete silence?
I'll go farther, ... Hollerith won the contract to provide 'high tech text processing' in 1890 for the USA census.
Fascinating now that ALL the BIG stuff for 'investing' is Gub-Mint spying.
iPhone - tracking & listening device
Google - spying on all mail and conversation and tracking
facebook - dossier and intelligence on 1B+ souls in the world and growing
Those 3 companys are the biggest thing post Y2K, and they all involve the NSA/CIA and complete control and listening, watching, ... and collecting and NOTHING ever goes away. Poindexter under the first BUSH Nazi prez called it "TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS", but in 1990's the US Gubmint was too fucking STUPID to solve the Tower-of-Babel problem, .. guess what the private sector has done it all.
So here we are today the all western economy's in free-fall collapse and ALL the real investment is going into tomorrows 'Police State'.
Truth is stranger than fiction - Mark Twain
Calligraphy is still around because it's beautiful, and books will continue to be made and bought for the same reason.
I love my Kinde Fire, but they will take my paperback SciFi (and mysteries) from my cold, dead hands.
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