Comments on words / myth / ampers & virgule: 500 billion channels and nothing on

Kali,

What makes you think I'm not still wr...

2008-02-19T17:51:00.000-05:00

Kali,

What makes you think I'm not still writing?

Wow. I really enjoy your blog. I really wish you...

2008-02-19T17:47:00.000-05:00

Wow. I really enjoy your blog. I really wish you were still writing :)

Carolyn,

Thanks for your comment (you, too,...

2006-05-14T18:03:00.000-04:00

Carolyn,

Thanks for your comment (you, too, Bruce).

I agree with most of what you wrote. I have a quibble with one point, though.

I think the world has always had only a tiny minority of people who "give a damn about reading or learning or finding information." The thing is, though, those people are pretty uniformly distributed throughout the world's population. So I do think that wide availability of information is a democratizing force. Just look at what the shrinking of the world, first with telephone, then with fax, then with email, then with the Web, then with the blogosphere, has already accomplished for liberation movements worldwide. Look at globalization and outsourcing, too. (I'm not suggesting these developments are all seen as positive by everyone; I'm just looking at how the world has shrunk in the last hundred years.)

So I think people around the world will be affected and a lot of them will benefit, just as others will be hurt, to be sure.

All I'm saying is that it is not a non-event. You're right that it's a myth they will all benefit. But not because they will all be unaffected.

What I found excellent about Kelly's article was i...

2006-05-14T17:15:00.000-04:00

What I found excellent about Kelly's article was its thorough overview of the copyright and business-model issues. I hadn't been following the Google thing closely so didn't understand what people were arguing about, and now I do.

The quality management elements, however, are conspicuously absent. And the editorial role is only one unaddressed facet. My friend who originally sent me the article said, "...basic problem is OCR. Searching for 'thc' in Google Print yields brazillions of hits, where clearly 'the' was the word scanned, but yielded 'thc' to OCR."

That's pretty scary. I had already been wondering about how durable -- and vulnerable -- the digital storage medium is.

Then there's the question of how people will be able to protect their intellectual property under the new reality.

Then there's what I consider pure myth: that all the people around the world with poor access to books will benefit, since the same people also have poor access to computers and a huge percentage of them don't give a damn about reading or learning or finding information.

I don't think the printed book will ever go away entirely but its mass availability and price will probably be affected. Things might even come full circle and books become a high-value item again, with editors becoming esteemed, well-paid professionals!

I agree entirely but the people involved probably ...

2006-05-14T14:49:00.000-04:00

I agree entirely but the people involved probably have no idea what an
editor does anyway. To them, an editor is yet another member of the
establishment trying to squash their creativity. What infuriates me is this
feeling that everyone's opinion has equal weight on every topic. As it
stands, poor writing, spelling and editing all serve as valuable makers of
crap.

Bruce