Reading in the dark
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Kestrell" journal:
|
01:17 pm
[Link] |
Free remixable audiobook of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Here's the announcement from Cory, and you can read my review of the book in the post previous to this one:
block quote start
My next novel, Little Brother, officially goes on sale today! In
addition to the US print edition, there's a DRM-free audio edition
(there's also forthcoming editions in the UK, Greece, Russia, France and
Norway, with others pending) from Random House Audio. My deal with
Random House is that they're absolutely not allowed to sell the book
with DRM on it, which, sadly, means that Audible (the largest audiobook
store in the world) won't carry it -- they insist on selling books with
DRM, even when authors and publishers don't want it.
Instead, you can buy the audiobook from Zipidee, a retailer that Random
House uses -- they have the spiffy embeddable Flash sales-object you can
find on Craphound.com (feel free to paste it into your own blog or
whatnot), and there's also a static URL for those of you who can't use
Flash.
The audiobook comes with my own sampling license: once you own it,
you're free to take up to 30 minutes' worth of material from it and
remix and then redistribute it as much as you like, provided that you do
so on a noncommercial basis, make sure that it's clear that this is a
remix and not the original, and make sure that you tell people where to
find the original. This is in addition to all the fair use remixing that
you're allowed to do without my permission (of course!).
I'll also be releasing (as always!) a free, Creative Commons-licensed
version of the text of Little Brother, just as soon as I get back to
London (I'm presently in Toronto, visiting my family with my newborn
daughter). It'll likely be Monday or so -- there's a bunch of little
clean-uppy things I need to do with the Little Brother distribution site
that I need to be in my office with uninterrupted time to accomplish.
Random House's page for Little Brother:
http://www.randomhouse.com/littlebrotheraudiobook
Buy Little Brother audio:
http://www.zipidee.com/zipidAudioPreview.aspx?aid=c5a8e946-fd2c-4b9e-a748-f297bba17de8
Buy Little Brother:
http://us.macmillan.com/Retailer.aspx?isbn=9780765319852
block quote end
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood:  excited
Tags: audiobooks, books, coryd, ebooks, science fiction
|
|
02:10 pm
[Link] |
Book review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
block quote start
I'm a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco's sunny Mission district, and that makes
me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when
this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced "Winston."
block quote end
As is obvious from the very first paragraph of _Little Brother_, Cory Doctorow's new book
begins with a bang and pretty much keeps up the pace straight through to the very end of the
story.
Marcus and his friends are typical teenagers in a not-too-distant future. They worry about
dating, getting into college, and how to skip class and not get caught. Then one day they
are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when a 9/11-style terrorist attack occurs in
San Francisco and they, along with many others, get picked up in a Homeland Security sweep.
Marcus soon finds himself under constnat suspicion and surveillance by his own government,
even as he begins to ask himself and others, including the adults around him, why he is
being forced to conform to a culture of fear or risk being labeled unAmerican.
( continued below cut )
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: radical
Current Music: 1776 soundtrack
Tags: books, coryd, media studies, politics, reviews
|
|
08:27 pm
[Link] |
Cory in Japan
Kes: Yes, most attendees just posted yesterday that they arrived and were going to go to sleep, and then there's Cory...It's like Godzilla all over again, can't you see the fifty foot tall Cory crunching through the city?
Posted to the Cory Doctorowmailing list:
Last night at the World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama, Japan, I
sat down for an interview with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the editor who
runs the largest science fiction line in the world for Tor Books.
Patrick is my editor and a friend, and we had a rollicking, quick
discussion about copyright, technology and the future of science
fiction. It's live now on the Tor podcast, for your listening pleasure.
MP3 Link:
http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/torpodcast/media/tor_podcast_083107_cbr.mp3
Tor Podcast homepage:
http://www.tor-forge.com/podcasts
Podcast feed link:
http://www.tor-forge.com/GenerateRSS.ashx?type=itunes
--
Current Mood: amused
Tags: copyright, coryd, science fiction
|
|
01:02 pm
[Link] |
Fair use mashup +Doctorow on fanfic
Kes: Wow, just thinking about Down and Out fanfic set in the Haunted Mansion...
1. Fair use mashup
On YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo
2. From Cory Doctorow, a Locus editorial titled
"In Praise of Fanfic."
http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/05/cory-doctorow-in-praise-of-fanfic.html
block quote start
Two things are sure about all fanfic, though: first, that people who write and read fanfic are already avid readers of writers whose work they're paying
homage to; and second, that the people who write and read fanfic derive fantastic satisfaction from their labors. This is great news for writers.
Great because fans who are so bought into your fiction that they'll make it their own are fans forever, fans who'll evangelize your work to their friends,
fans who'll seek out your work however you publish it.
Great because fans who use your work therapeutically, to work out their own creative urges, are fans who have a damned good reason to stick with the field,
to keep on reading even as our numbers dwindle. Even when the fandom revolves around movies or TV shows, fanfic is itself a literary pursuit, something
undertaken in the world of words. The fanfic habit is a literary habit.
block quote end
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: waaf
Tags: copyright, coryd, fairuse, fanfic
|
|
08:05 pm
[Link] |
Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe banned in Boston
International Pixel-Stained Technopeasants community on LJ
http://community.livejournal.com/ipstp/
Also note there is a podcast of Cory Doctorow's book _Eastern Standard Tribe_ plus some news about why it has been banned in Boston--a distinction shared with Mark Twain's _Huckleberry Finn_, btw
block quote start
Evo Terra and the Podiobooks folks have posted the podiobook of my
reading of Eastern Standard Tribe, my second novel.
Podiobooks are free audiobooks that are delivered to your podcast player
in installments. Instead of getting a full ten hours of audio in one go,
the story is sent to you in manageable chunks, on the schedule you set.
The raw audio for this podiobook came from my podcast, but the
Podiobooks people have taken my readings and cleaned them up, cut out
the intros, and equalized the levels across all the installments. It
sounds dynamite.
The timing on this couldn't be better -- this is just in time for
International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, when Internet creators
post free material for sharing and enjoying.
What's more, this book also has the distinction of having been banned by the Mayor of Boston from Boston's free WiFi network (Boing Boing is also banned!) I'm especially proud of this, since part of the book is set in
Boston. I'm lucky to have been censored by the best.
Podiobook:
http://www.podiobooks.com/podiobooks/book.php?ID=126
Eastern Standard Tribe:
http://craphound.com/est/
EST banned in Boston:
http://web.mit.edu/dsheets/www/bostonwifi/
Boing Boing banned in Boston, too:
http://boingboing.net/2007/04/21/mayor_of_boston_bans.html
International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/15/april_23_is_internat.html
block quote end
Current Music: www.wumb.org
Tags: bannedbooks, books, coryd, podcasts, technopeasants
|
|
12:12 pm
[Link] |
Accessibility and democracy in Second Life
Kes: Note how the article on accessibility in Second Life unpacks assumptions about who is playing MMOs and thereby adding some more questions to the connection between online personae and identity, particularly in relation to feeling included within or excluded from communities. These questions are becoming more important as other sorts of social interactions, including education and job recruiting, move into Second Life. Another article which frames the social rules of MMOs is
Cory Doctorow's latest InfoWeek column, which asks the
question, "Is it possible to have a democratic online game?"
http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199100026
Soaring Beyond Physical Challenges in Virtual Worlds
By Tom Peters and Lori Bell
Computers in Libraries
04/15/07 4:00 AM PT
For the subpopulation with mobility and dexterity challenges, "Second Life"
is a very interesting world indeed. There is a group of people in "Second
Life," for example, who have experienced strokes in real life. While in
their "first life" they often experience mobility challenges, in "Second
Life" their avatars can fly, walk, jump and communicate via facial
expressions with ease.
Recently, 3-D online multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) have become very
popular. In these online worlds, users have avatars (digital surrogates)
that move around within the virtual world, interact with others and the
virtual environment, build things, etc. The Wikipedia article on MUVEs
lists "Second Life", There.com, "Activeworlds" and "Neverwinter Nights" as
the most popular existing MUVEs. Within the related universe of MMORPGs
(massively multiplayer online role-playing games), "World of Warcraft" has
more than 8 million users.
During the past year, the number of registered avatars in "Second Life" has
mushroomed from a few hundred thousand to well over 3.3 million, and the
number of avatars active in-world in the past 60 days exceeds 1 million.
Clearly, many people are spending time in MUVEs.
Because MUVEs are so popular, rumors swirl that several major new, improved
MUVEs will be launched soon. In a sense, all of the avatars currently in
"Second Life" soon may be "MUVEin' on up to the East Side" to experience
some brave, better virtual world.
Questioning Accessibility
Whenever any computer or information technology becomes popular, we ask the
following basic question: Is this new technology accessible? Too often, game
developers and other vendors do not think of accessibility when designing
and building a product. What sorts of accessibility challenges and
opportunities does this new technology pose? It is important to examine both
sides of this coin -- the challenges and the opportunities. When it comes to
accessibility, new technologies are not necessarily all bad and
exclusionary.
To begin examining these basic accessibility questions, let's consider the
users of the new technology. Because the prevailing wisdom appears to be
that we live in a youth-oriented culture, often we assume that it must be
the "young'uns" who are taking a shine to any popular new technology.
Surely, we assume, the early adopters and the first wave of popular users
must be young people, with a possible sub-assumption that young males are
driving the bus.
( continued below cut )
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: WAAF
Tags: accessibility, coryd, disability, games
|
|
12:21 pm
[Link] |
Chronicle of Higher Ed profiles Cory Doctorow's USC course on copyright law
From Cory Doctorow's mailing list, also note these links
Internet Archive repository for Cory's USC course:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=doctorow%20pwned
Feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/UscComm499Pwned
Podcast subscribe link:
pcast://feeds.feedburner.com/UscComm499Pwned
The Chronicle of Higher Education just published a profile of me and my USC undergrad course, Pwned. It's a great piece! My pal Siva Vaidhyanathan has liberated it from the Chronicle's paywall and posted it on his blog.
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/004093.html
block quote start
> Mr. Doctorow has little taste for what he calls the "maximalist" view of intellectual property — the notion that copyright is something to be enforced
strictly rather than something that should strive to be as invisible and as flexible as possible — and the subtitle of his course is meant as a bit of
a provocation. "Is everyone on campus a copyright criminal?" the syllabus asks, alluding to the overwhelming majority of college students who have swapped
music, movies, and software on peer-to-peer networks. If the answer is yes, he suggests, then something has clearly gone wrong.
> With his new course, Mr. Doctorow has joined the growing ranks of scholars preaching that copyright law needs a makeover. Professors like Lawrence Lessig,
of Stanford University; Siva Vaidhyanathan, of New York University; and Edward W. Felten, of Princeton University, have taught courses that sought to poke
holes in traditional views of copyright. But while those professors made their names in large part through academic books and research projects, Mr. Doctorow
has taken a decidedly different route. He doesn't hold a college degree, and he earned his reputation not through scholarly work but through a blog.
block quote end
Tags: accessibility, copyright, coryd, drm, ebooks, education
|
|
04:28 pm
[Link] |
Cory Doctorow's USC lectures on copyright available as podcasts
Kes: Home sick with a fever instead of the MIT conference, but I wanted to post this announcement from Cory about his USC lectures. Back to Ibuprophen [sp?] and o.j.
I've just posted the first six lectures from my undergrad class at the
University of Southern California: "Pwned: Is Everyone on Campus a
Copyright Criminal?" The lectures were recorded by Garrett Sergeant, a
volunteer who is a local director/producer/videographer, and we'll be
putting up new lectures as they're available. The whole thing is
available as a podcast feed, or you can download them from the Internet
Archive, where they're available as Oggs, MP3s, streams and so on.
Feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/UscComm499Pwned
Podcast subscribe link:
pcast://feeds.feedburner.com/UscComm499Pwned
Internet Archive repository:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=doctorow%20pwned
Garrett Sergeant:
http://www.garrettsergeant.com/
--
Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
latest collection: craphound.com/overclocked
latest novel: craphound.com/someone
blog: boingboing.net
vanity: craphound.com
podcast: feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast
second novel: craphound.com/est
collection: craphound.com/place
novel: craphound.com/down
Join my mailing list and find out about upcoming books, stories,
articles and appearances:
http://www.ctyme.com/mailman/listinfo/doctorow
READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your
employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from
any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service,
shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure,
non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have
entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and
assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and
privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release
me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
_______________________________________________
You are subscribed as:
kestrell@mit.edu
To be removed from this list send an email to
Doctorow-request@ctyme.com
with the subject "unsubscribe" and you will be removed.
Or - click on this:
mailto:Doctorow-request@ctyme.com?subject=unsubscribe
To change your options:
http://mailman.ctyme.com/options/doctorow/kestrell%40mit.edu
Doctorow mailing list
Doctorow@ctyme.com
http://mailman.ctyme.com/listinfo/doctorow
Current Mood:  blah
Current Music: www.wers.org Teenage Wasteland
Tags: copyright, coryd, drm
|
|
11:46 am
[Link] |
No time to read? DailyLit offers books by email
From Cory Doctorow's mailing list:
The folks at DailyLit have just converted my novel Down and Out in the
Magic Kingdom to an email-based serial. Sign up for the free service,
specify how often you'd like a little chunk emailed to you, and then sit
back and read by email, on your schedule.
Down and Out by email:
http://www.dailylit.com/books/down-and-out-in-the-magic-kingdom
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom:
http://craphound.com/down
Daily Lit:
http://www.dailylit.com
Tags: books, coryd, ebooks
|
|
05:42 pm
[Link] |
Cory Doctorow to speak at Google Unbound, NYC, Jan. 18
Posted by Cory Doctorow to his mailing list )note that Ubuntu is the Linux OS which is being developed along with Orca, an open source screen reader):
Google Unbound, January 18, New York Public Library, 8AM-5PM: This is
Google's conference on the state of the publishing industry and what's
going on with the Internet and publishing. I'm speaking alongside of
everyone from Tim O'Reilly to Chris Anderson to Stephen "Freakonomics"
Dubner, along with a bunch of execs from the publishing industry. As far
as I can tell, registration is open, and it looks like they feed you and
liquor you up, too.
FreeCulture NYU, January 19, 5PM: I'm speaking at this public event
co-sponsored by FreeCulture NYU and the NYU Association for Computing
Machinery, on "State of the Copyfight 2007: Looking up, not out of the
woods yet." No free food at the this one, I think, but probably a better
crowd if you need some help configuring Ubuntu.
Hope to see you!
Google Unbound details:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/unbound/index.html
FreeCulture NYU details:
http://www.freeculturenyu.org/2007/01/03/january-19th-2007-5pm-cory-doctorow/
--
Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
latest novel: craphound.com/someone
blog: boingboing.net
vanity: craphound.com
podcast: feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast
second novel: craphound.com/est
collection: craphound.com/place
novel: craphound.com/down
Join my mailing list and find out about upcoming books, stories,
articles and appearances:
http://www.ctyme.com/mailman/listinfo/doctorow
READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your
employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from
any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service,
shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure,
non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have
entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and
assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and
privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release
me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
_______________________________________________
You are subscribed as:
kestrell@mit.edu
To be removed from this list send an email to
Doctorow-request@ctyme.com
with the subject "unsubscribe" and you will be removed.
Or - click on this:
mailto:Doctorow-request@ctyme.com?subject=unsubscribe
To change your options:
http://mailman.ctyme.com/options/doctorow/kestrell%40mit.edu
Doctorow mailing list
Doctorow@ctyme.com
http://mailman.ctyme.com/listinfo/doctorow
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: www.wers.org
Tags: coryd, ebooks, etexts, opensource
|
|
01:39 pm
[Link] |
Forbes issue on the future of books
From Cory Doctorow (refer to end of post for links):
Forbes has a new special issue on the future of books, and I have a lead
op-ed in the issue, called "Giving It Away."
> The thing about an e-book is that it's a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life.
Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation--
( continued below cut )
Current Mood: bookish
Tags: books, coryd, ebooks
|
|
11:01 am
[Link] |
Scott McCloud at MIT, Cory Doctorow interview from MIT/CMS
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) alexx_kay and I went to hear Scott McCloud speak at MIT yesterday. The event was organized by Comparative Media Studies, the program I just graduated from. Scott's presentation was lively, and I enjoyed the fact that, as in his book _Understanding Comics_ (which I think is one of the best examinations of narrative in recent years), his discussion of visual media also informs textual narrative, especially what he has to say about pacing and point of view as an expression of time and space in story.
Additionally, it was really wonderful to see his daughters participating in the presentation, and I realized how tired I get of teachers and media commentators claiming "kids nowadays" can't read, think, or express themselves creatively. Ironically, despite daughter Winter's challenge that the MIT population was smart about computers, couldn't someone figure out Sky's trouble with her new computer, the answer turned out to be "No," and Sky's own presentation of the "Winterviews" was cut short due to technical difficulties.
However, you can see and hear Sky and Winter's presentations, and further follow the McCloud tour, through their LJ community ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) mccloudtour .
Also had a chance to speak to Henry, and he mentioned the LJ feed to his blog has been fixed. I guess it is, because this is what I just got from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) henryjenkins LJ feed,
namely, information on the exemplar created from the Cory Doctorow interview I did with Cory back in Feb.
[Cory Doctorow as Exemplar
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/09/cory_doctorow_as_exemplar.html
[beginquote]
Throughout the fall term, I am going to be sharing with readers more of the work we have been doing for the MacArthur Foundation on new media literacies,
building up to the release of a significant new white paper in late October which makes the case for a new set of social skills and cultural competencies
which we need to be incorporating into American education. We are already hard at work putting these ideas into practice, developing curricular activities
and supporting materials that will help teachers and after school programs respond in more meaningful ways to the challenges and opportunities of the new
participatory culture.
One of our core projects is the development of an exemplar library. When we spoke with teachers and after school programs, it was clear that they recognized
that their students were interested in new forms of cultural production that are enabled by new media technologies and new forms of cultural distribution
supported by the web. They knew that their students were fans, bloggers, and gamers. But they faced a number of issues: they had no standards by which
to evaluate work produced in these new and emerging media; they didn't know enough themselves to give good advice to student media makers; the students
lacked role models to help them understand future opportunities in this space; and the students were facing ethical issues that their teachers and parents
didn't really understand.
We decided to respond to these challenges by producing a library of short digital films focused around media-makers and the craft and ethical choices they
face in producing and distributing their work. For each media maker, we may produce 5-10 short (4-5 minute) video segments addressing different points
in their creative process. A teacher or after school program might show one or more of those segments to kick off a discussion about media production processes.
They may decide to work horizontally -- fleshing out one form of media making -- or vertically -- looking at storyboarding or interviewing techniques across
a range of artists and media. These videos will be accompanied by supporting materials -- vocabulary sheets, charts showing the various tools the artists
use, and potential production activities that can be brought into the classroom. We also imagine that as students get engaged with the videos they will
seek out more content on their own via our website and thus dig deeper into the whole world of media production than can be accomplished within the constraints
of the school day.
[endquote]
Tags: cms, comics, coryd
|
|
12:04 pm
[Link] |
Cory Doctorow interview/favorite music
Kes: On Wed. I was walking to the Media Lab and bumped into one of the people who helped me plan Cory's visit to MIT, and she said one of the librarians was excited to find Cory visiting MIT, and that she found out he was on campus because she picked up his streaming iTunes. Now for something from Cory.
From Cory:
Last month in Boston, I recorded an interview with William Kuhman of
MIT Radio's Dinnertime Sampler. William cut together a show with the
interview and a bunch of my all-time favorite music, and MIT's made
it available as a streaming cast (sucks, I know) for 30 days (worse
luck still). But it's still a lot of fun and maybe someone will
hijack the stream and turn it into an MP3 and stick a torrent up
somewhere!
http://wmbr.org/m3u/Dinnertime_Sampler_20060301_1800.m3u
Current Mood: productive
Tags: coryd, music
|
|
01:46 pm
[Link] |
Cory talk still on for 6:30 at Bartos
We've confirmed that Cory's flight is in the air and that his arrival time at Logan is 5:18. A friend is going to pick him up and get him to Bartos. I plan on being there trying to amuse the crowd. Darn, I forgot my juggling balls...
Tags: coryd
|
08:30 am
[Link] |
Cory still scheduled to appear at MIT, one hour delay
After two flight cancellations, Cory managed to find a seat on a flight getting into Logan at 4:55. I'll try to keep people posted regarding any further info. Here is a post from Cory with more about various Cory-related events happening this week.
A couple days ago, I emailed about my schedule in Boston -- talks at
MIT, Harvard, Olin College and Boskone, the northeastern regional
science fiction convention. The organizers of Boskone have just
alerted me to another event I'm scheduled to do there:
I'll be hosting a "Kaffeeklatsch" at the con on Sunday, 19 March,
from 10AM-11AM. These are small, informal coffee-and-cake roundtables
where we just talk about whatever's on your mind. The signup for the
Kaffeeklatsch will be at the con, and space is limited, so if you're
interested, be sure to put your name down as early as possible.
Boston appearances schedule:
http://craphound.com/000594.html
Boskone:
http://www.nesfa.org/boskone/
Tags: coryd
|
|