Reading in an Age of Change is a collaboration between Meanjin and Overland, two of Australia’s finest literary journals, that seeks to drive rather than simply react to this debate. Throughout 2010, editors Sophie Cunningham and Jeff Sparrow will host and publish a series of events and articles that tackle the impact of digital media, shifting intellectual property rights and economic change. Speakers and guests involve some of our foremost thinkers from both Australia and overseas, including McKenzie Wark, Chris Meade, Cory Doctorow and Kate Eltham. The project will instigate a broad and varied public conversation on the future of reading, and shed some light on literary culture in years to come.
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Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used to be taken out when you borrowed? Or the pages of date stamps glued one on top of the other, dating back to 1984, 1973 or beyond? Well, those days of sharing ageing library books are gone, and not merely because the printed text is being outshone by its digital sibling. HarperCollins announced to libraries last week, via the digital distributor OverDrive, that they were limiting the lifespan of their ebooks to 26 checkouts.
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Posted at Thursday 03 Mar
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
There are
63 comments
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I have two confessions. One: this is a rant. Two: I hate those preposterous, project-detracting analytical gimmicks that whisper hollow affirmations about your creative endeavours. ‘Roll, up, roll up and test your words. See what gender your writing betrays you as! Learn which famous writers you can only hope to imitate!’ said the calculating computer.
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Posted at Friday 25 Feb
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
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6 comments
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When the motto ‘We are all Egyptian now’ flew around the Twitterverse, it was because people felt involved in the struggle, closely following events through Twitter, Facebook and the streaming of independent media, like Al Jazeera. Observers were relating in a way that they did not, say, with the Tibetan struggle, or the struggle for independence in West Papua. People may have cared equally about these struggles, but the majority did not experience them in a real-time way, with footage and eyewitness accounts to boot.
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Posted at Tuesday 22 Feb
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
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4 comments
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‘This joint project aims to create a constructive dialogue on how we, and future generations, will read. It will explore the challenges and opportunities facing literary culture in the twenty-first century – from digital publishing to copyright, from globalisation to the changing nature of reading. We will explore the new literary realities facing readers, writers and publishers, and reflect on and intervene into the changing nature of reading, writing and publishing.’ So what has Meanland both achieved and debated in the course of 2010?
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Posted at Tuesday 21 Dec
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
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16 comments
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Talking 'bout Jonathan Safran Foer, WikiLeaks and electronic reading in Australia.
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Posted at Friday 03 Dec
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
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8 comments
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The last Meanland session for 2010 was ‘Reading Without Privacy’. Hosted by The Wheeler Centre and chaired by Michael Williams, the session was a wide-ranging conversation about the use, application and consequences of the embracement of social media, particularly twitter, with writer, blogger and critic Alison Croggon; ABC Drum editor Jonathan Green; writer and editor Sophie Cunningham; and writer and editor Jeff Sparrow.
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Posted at Tuesday 30 Nov
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
There are
54 comments
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In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith expressed her discomfort with social media, most particularly Facebook, and the harm she believes it has caused to a generation’s worth of communication. Smith is without a doubt a great writer – persuasive, sharp and erudite, but, like many critics of the whole social media phenomenon, I can’t help but feel that she is looking at the issue from the wrong way round, comparing apples to oranges and finding them lacking, so to speak.
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Posted at Friday 12 Nov
by
Jessica Au.
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9 comments
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Announcing a very exciting Meanland event – and the last for 2010 – Reading Without Privacy.
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Posted at Thursday 11 Nov
by
Jessica Au.
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4 comments
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Peter Craven made a grave prognosis in his recent defence of the cultural worth of Meanjin: ‘If Meanjin is taken online, it will cease effectively to exist.’ The question, however, was never, ‘is Meanjin going to go digital?’ Its electronic archives, dynamic blog and influential online presence – as well as the Meanland project, an exploration into the future of reading, writing and publishing in the digital age – suggest it already has.
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Posted at Wednesday 10 Nov
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
There are
38 comments
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Ever since I read Jacob Lambert’s piece at The Millions last week, The Paper-Reader’s Dilemma, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of a casual proliferation in electronic reading. How the transition might overtake us without our permission, without, in fact, us even realising.
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Posted at Friday 05 Nov
by
Jacinda Woodhead.
There are
8 comments
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