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.
What is this eReader I’ve been hearing so much about and will it bring meaning to my life? An eReader is a device designed to read digital books and publications, or digital texts, more commonly referred to as eBooks. …read more »
The SXSW Interactive Festival is the preeminent industry-event for ‘uber-geeks and digital creatives who push the cutting edge of technological change.’ Designers, web designers, content developers, gamers, bloggers and new media entrepreneurs are but a few of the interested parties flocking to the festival, considered ‘a launching pad’ for innovation. Here's what you missed at the 2010 festival. …read more »
With ebooks, linearity is a liability. Heft is unhelpful. Books sometimes, not always, but discernably, are not books. For reference publishers, the future shift is much more dramatic than it is for common fiction, opinion and narrative writing. Don't pander to them, don't try to quell their anxiety by pretending their books are still books. …read more »
If we accept that a large part of the future of publishing lies on screen, then the presentation of content will become increasingly important. We don’t usually think of ebooks or websites as objects of beauty, yet why not? Just because something occurs on screen doesn’t make it any less sensory or moving, although granted the experience differs from that of print. …read more »
A video of the first Meanland panel – Margaret Simons, Marieke Hardy, Peter Craven, Sherman Young – talking about reading in a time of change. …read more »
How do we ascribe value to a book, and how is this changed when the book is electronic? Books are interactive objects ‘made to be held’ and shared, which does not translate to an electronic copy. Not to devalue ebooks, which still involve the same labour and expertise that goes into producing a book. …read more »
Monocle is an ebook reader. It works in modern web browsers, using standard technologies. It runs in desktop browsers and on mobile devices. It's awesome in Safari and Chrome (the browsers used on iPhone OS and Android devices), increasingly awesome in Firefox, and workable in more standards-fearing browsers like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. …read more »
If you missed Meanland's first panel at the Wheeler Centre, here we are, in all our dubious glory, televised. …read more »
To open the Meanland blog, I’ll borrow the words of Overland editor Jeff Sparrow as he launched Reading in a Time of Change last Thursday at the Wheeler Centre with guests Sherman Young, Margaret Simons, Marieke Hardy and Peter Craven – today, we are using a level of technology that our grandparents would have found simply magical. …read more »