Free (audio) Culture

Via Lessig: It seems that bloggers are organizing a free audio version of his new book, Free Culture. A list of who's recording what is up at AKMA (with several chapters already available for download), and if I could spare the time from dissertation writing, I'd haul out my microphone and pitch in.

"When the Best Give Up"

On the recent exodus of academic bloggers:

Something's happening in the blogosphere, a shift, a reorientation, a great loss...In the past two or three days, several pillars of academic blogging have posted notice that they're leaving not only the academic blogosphere, but academia, itself. This includes the stalwart Invisible Adjunct, the gentle Household Opera, the hilariously bitter Academic Game, and perhaps even the sharply pointed Critical Mass. Their leaving follows an earlier exit by the insightful Frogs and Ravens, although she still blogs (and knits). Does it mean anything that they're all women, given the already horrific shortage of women in tenured positions? I grieve.

What am I to say about this? All these bloggers made an indelible mark on the world with their posts, and, after moving out of my office at the university, I can honestly say that they eased my way through the adjustment period. What's difficult about their leaving, from my perspective, is that they all seem so incredibly talented. Why is there no room for them in academia? Why can't they find space? If you read their blogs, you'll see why, I suppose, and I support what they are saying. However, this kind of wholesale exit must leave an intellectual gap in the academic universe somehow, somewhere. When the best and the brightest decide to give up on the system, what does that say about the state of that system today?

I don't have much to add, except "Yeah. What (s)he said"...

Writing is hard...

So, after a good day and a half of writing, revising, discarding, rewriting, shutting my laptop in frustration, pondering, tossing and turning, writing some more, discarding some more and generally just trying to get the thoughts careening around in my head to calm down long enough to focus, I think I've finally got the first sentences of my dissertation set:

"I was born in 1976, less than a year after the Sony Betamax consumer videocassette recorder first appeared in American stores, and a VCR has sat atop my television set for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a world of videotapes and took for granted easy access to thousands of movies, each available for a few dollars and a quick trip to one of my two favorite places in town, the local video store."

You wouldn't think that this would be so hard, really, but in the past 24 hours I've worked through and discarded a baker's dozen ways of structuring my introduction, none of which worked, which meant that I didn't know how to start the introduction since I didn't know where it was going. I'm only finally satisfied with the above sentences because I know exctly what they set up, where they're going to take the introduction, and the introduction as a whole only works because I know exactly what I'm trying to set up in the dissertation itself...it's like putting the top level on an elaborate house of cards, which will only be stable if every card in the lower levels is precisely placed.

Or, maybe I'm really tired and not thinking straight, in which case this isn't going to make nearly as much sense when I wake up. Right now, I'm going to sleep for a bit...

Ouch...

The best summary I've seen of yesterday's political events:

Okay, students of the White House, what did we learn yesterday?

1) Senior administration officials can make remarks on a not-for-attribution basis to the press -- but the White House can later decide to make the attribution public if it can help discredit said senior administration official-turned-whistle-blower.

2) When you're a special assistant to the president, your job is to tell the press the truth -- but only the parts that reflect well on the president.

3) When you're the national security adviser, it's really important for the public to understand your position so you give lots of interviews to the press -- but you can't answer questions under oath before a legislatively-chartered body because that would be a violation of the Constitution.

4) It's not okay to suggest the president has credibility problems -- unless you're the president, and you're at a black-tie correspondents dinner, and you're being really, really funny.

If you're not reading Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing every morning, you really should be.

It seems so clear this way

Just came across a photo I took after my last big brainstorming session with my advisor Ron about my dissertation (click it for a larger version):

Essentially, I've written a several-hundred page version of what's on that blackboard. To be frank, it's quite possible that I could have made the argument more straightforwardly and succinctly on the blackboard than in several hundred pages, but I can't very well walk into a defense with a blackboard and say "Here you go."

Though it would be quite fun to see what would happen if I did...

The business of writing...

Outstanding post by Kevin over on Where There's Smoke :

Your readers-- past, present and future--are busy people with families, careers and lives. They have a zillion forms of entertainment to choose from other than your book. You wanna get to the top of their reading pile? Why not put a little godamn effort into getting out there and promoting yourself? Musicians go on tour. Actors do junkets for their shows, artists drink crappy wine and make small talk at galleries. It is hight of arrogance that writers think they somehow get a bye from all of this because it either makes them uncomfortable or because their art is practiced in solitude.

Read the whole thing - on one hand, it's a great reaction to a Salon article that criticizes the state of modern publishing without offering any constructive ideas on how an author can improve his or her situation.

On a deeper level, however, many of Kevin's suggestions point to a concept I was flogging a while back (and which I'm meaning, once I have time to write something not about the video industry between 1975 and 1990, to start flogging once again): the shift in media consumption from buying a product to paying an artist (see my posts on Buying vs. Tipping). Many of these suggestions, from a mailing list to public speaking, aren't just about marketing a given book, but are fundamentally about marketing yourself as a writer. Kev gets this on a deep level, and his Virtual Book Tour is an example of such promotion in practice, leveraging new technology to introduce the writer to a broader audience of readers.

Invisible Adjunct adjuncts (and blogs) no more...

I'm surprised by how much this post saddens me:

A few months ago, I made a vow to myself that this would be my last semester as an invisible adjunct. Since I've failed to secure a full-time position in my final attempt at the academic job market, what this means, of course, is that I made a vow to leave the academy. Six more weeks of teaching, and I head for the nearest exit.

Though I must inevitably feel a sense of loss and sadness, it's thanks to this blog and its readers that I don't feel the kind of life-twisting bitterness that I might otherwise have experienced. I'll take with me, among other things, a knowledge of XHTML (which I never thought I could learn!), an undiminished passion for the Scottish Enlightenment, and a heightened sense of life's possibilities.

In the meantime, I've decided to give up the blog.

If you're not familiar with her site, Invisible Adjunct has created the single best resource for graduate students and young scholars concerned with the pragmatics of the academic job market, and a remarkable community has taken shape in her comments. Hers was one of the first blogs that I read regularly, and while I'm glad that she's moving on from the limbo of the adjunct-track, hers is a voice that wil be missed.

In the comments of the post, Jeremy Hunsinger asks:

are you going to archive invisibleadjunct somewhere orther than archive.org? it would be a shame to lose this bit of history to netrot.

I'd actually go a step further, and encourage IA to pass the torch to another anonymous blogger, in essence transforming the "Invisible Adjunct" brand into something larger than one person. I don't mean to say that IA herself is replaceable, but that someone else in the academic trenches might be able to pick up her themes and run with them in his or her own way. If it's good enough for Gizmodo or Gawker, it might be worthwhile for this far more important site...

Nothing to see here...

Quite literally, in fact. It's not so much that I have no time to blog, it's more that my brain simply can't take the thought of spending more time typing words on a screen when I've just spent hours upon hours wrestling with my dissertation.

I'm eagerly looking forward about three weeks to when I can write smart things here again - in the meantime, please just watch the magic numbers on the right-hand sidebar roll steadily upwards...

Jay-Z and Videogames...

filed under "Things on which to follow up once I've finished my dissertation":

Dangermouse, the Jay-Z Construction Set and the Videogame Content Creation Model

I would hope that, in the near future, artists and publishers will see the value of releasing not only polished works, but the bits and parts used to create a work, including those parts that were rejected.

This is good not only for fanboy obsessives, but could serve to train people's musical ears, helping them hear the difference between different mixes of music. It would obviously be a boon to unexperienced musicians who could learn much from the choices other musicians and producers make. DJs would certainly have more opportunity to creatively add to the originals with this sort of access. And, likely, such efforts would help identify new talent.

Combine this with a system that permits "recipe" mixes as I've written about before (A History Palette for Music and The Grey Album - No Copying Necessary) and there is no danger of the artists and producers losing money. Indeed, such a model has already been quite successful in another media - videogames...

[via Anne Galloway]