Reading in an age of change:
a collaborative project by
Meanjin and
Overland.
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.
Courtesy of the geniuses at SlowTV, we have the footage of the Cory Doctorow Meanland-MWF ‘Big Ideas’ lecture: Copyright vs Creativity. Due to the size, it's separated in to two parts. Prepare to be riveted. …read more »
Publishing wunderkind James Bridle with his latest mindblowing project – a 12-volume historiography of the Iraq War on Wikipedia, Carlin Romano on the place of the book within future academia and Andrew Pettegree posits that the publishing industry – along with the printing press – was an invention. …read more »
Martin Hughes and Zoe Dattner interviewed Richard Nash at the Wheeler Centre and replayed the interview on RRR’s Max Headroom on 22 July 2010. Due to the miracle of modern technology, I listened to it the other day. Richard Nash described print-books as ‘talismanic things’ that were passed between loved ones with the same emotional sensibility and heirloom potential as ‘a piece of jewellery’. …read more »
Cory Doctorow spoke in Melbourne on Thursday night as part of the Meanland and Melbourne Writers Festival ‘Big Ideas’ lecture series. For those unable to attend, I have transcribed below as much as I could from my indecipherable notes on the lecture, ‘Copyright vs creativity’. …read more »
You may remember Cory Doctorow from such popular, madcap adventures as Boing Boing. Or one of his many, many books, including his latest, Little Brother. Or the Makers revolution (no, I do not mean his novel by the same name). Well, he's coming to Melbourne tomorrow night. …read more »
For years now, Cory Doctorow has been something of the go-to guy for all things digital. His blog, craphound.com, and external website, boingboing, give a fair idea of what he’s all about – gaming, DIY, distribution, technology, sci-fi, pop culture and, of course, copyright. It would probably be too simplistic to say that he’s outright against it, but he is certainly a big campaigner for experimentation, and for rewriting the rulebook. …read more »
How does YouTube, with its infinite number of daily uploads, regulate such a flood of data? How does it balance the needs of its audience against the interests of bigger film and music corporations? …read more »
Wired calls the death of the web; Tim O'Reilly questions it; another writer points out that 'everything' has died in the past few decades; there is debate about poetry and the electronic form and the BBC has a new archive of old interviews with writers. All this and more. …read more »
So you, the reader, want to save independent publishing in Australia? Go forth and buy a book. Be daring: buy an armful. The truly intrepid might add a subscription, or several, to one of Australia’s exceptional literary journals – a commitment to the health of the Australian literary scene, if you will. …read more »
But in Australia, as far as the election goes, the online environment – from Twitter brawls to polling analysis – leaves the newspaper for dead. While the Age, the Australian et al do eventually catch-up, the online community’s already been there, dissected it and thrown the funeral. …read more »