NMF: Find Ideas Here – August 16-22

“Tech Stories: find ideas here” is a weekly post that aims to collect articles relevant to the future of New Media Fiction. Articles are collected from across the web and tend to focus on resources, ideas or trends that I feel may have a tangential or concrete impact on narrative fiction and the shape it may take.

Forget Ads In Books, Lit-Lovers Face An Even More Hideous Prospect

I have to say that this strikes me as one of those “good problems,” not the “bad.” Information, as my friend Josh Anish has always said, “wants to be free.” It’s why people go to Barnes and Noble and put books in their bags rather than pay for them. In this case, like the music industry, the publishing industry has struggled to monetize their products in the age of the Internet. Rather than ads appearing on the page being read, I’d suggest they come at the end of chapters, which will, inevitably, encourage writers to compose shorter chapters, which is, of course, what readers seem to prefer. An ad at the end of a chapter may very well be the best way to earn money off of books and it also necessarily suggests that books must be presented in digital formats with the ability to provide links to other sites and applications. This small bit of interactivity may also encourage other forms of narrative and even allow for product placement in books themselves. It’s a new world!

In recent months it’s been impossible to open a newspaper or magazine without being drenched by a tidal wave of “waaaaah”s and “woah”s and “oh my God we’re all doomed”s from those of us who make our living selling words. If it’s not newspapers – the fall of advertising! the rise of paywalls! the death of columnists! the birth of citizen journalists! – then it’s magazines – no more long-form writing! the iPad! – or movies – piracy! Netflix! – or cable news – Twitter! YouTube!

This week it’s books (again), and a stark warning from the Wall Street Journal’s Ron Adner and William Vincent to anyone who prefers literature unsullied by full-page ads for SUVs and tobacco.

For the Class of 2014, No E-Mail or Wristwatches

Holy shit! This is great!

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren’t afraid of immigration…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized pointing to their wrists as a request for the time of day.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

Lady Java Video Marks Exact Point Where Geek Culture Jumped The Shark

Geek culture strikes me as an interesting concept, if not an interesting truth. With movies such as the Social Network coming to a theater near you and the promise of one focused on Google, geek culture is a real thing. It’s also become the dream and aspiration, so far as professions are concerned, of many of today’s youth. We no longer want to be astronauts. Instead, we want to create our own tech companies. Why is this here? There are new characters, and the technologies they create will drastically impact the art we produce.

Tech Stories for week ending 8/15

“Tech Stories: find ideas here” is a weekly post that aims to collect articles relevant to the future of New Media Fiction. Articles are collected from across the web and tend to focus on resources, ideas or trends that I feel may have a tangential or concrete impact on narrative fiction and the shape it may.

If It’s On The Internet, It Must Be True (via TechCrunch)

I love this story. It was too good to be true when I read about HPOA, even heard people discussing it at the office. But, it seems to me, this is a new form of story telling. The point? To drive traffic to a site, which makes sense. If the art of telling stories is to continue, someone has to get paid.

This past week, formerly unknown actress Elyse Porterfield fooled millions playing Jenny, the fired Dry Erase girl, in a clever hoax. Right now, I guarantee other pranksters are dreaming up new schemes to fool you again. And journalists, who at one time were tasked with protecting the public from such lies, no longer have the same power to block them.

Peer Index Is “Worth Watching” (via Business Insider)

I love this idea and I fucking HATE this idea. One of the few interesting things about the web is that it provides a platform for opinion and conversation. Suggesting that some are better than others creates an atmosphere in which credible opinion can be relegated (by an algorithm) to the “opinion” folder. As a teacher, I love the idea that students can get help figuring out what information on the web is, perhaps, considered relevant and guided by academic or some other discipline. Mostly, I hate the idea because it creates a hierarchy.

The idea is to use the world of social media (blogs, twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc) to determine who are the “authorities and opinion formers” on the web.

Memory Inception: Three Keys To Creating A Great User Experience For Your Product (via TechCrunch)

Just a damn good way to see things. This is good advice for stories and the type of product New Media Fiction must offer to find relevance on the web. The web is great, but mostly its for gossip and shopping. If fiction is to succed on the web, it must offer an experience like this.

Ever read a great book? What do you remember about it? Maybe a few dramatic moments, some wild story twists, and most definitely the ending. Your product is just like a book. You’re telling a story to your customers and they’ll remember only a select few moments from what you tell them. What are these moments? Can you use these moments to plant a memory in a customer’s mind?

Long Tweet Is Long: Bug Let You Go Way Over 140 (via TechCrunch)

This gets me fired up. I love it when people break the rules. I also hate it. Part of what makes Twitter interesting are its rules. What changes when they’re broken?

Japanese Twitter user @sskhybrid tweeted out the following 2,135 character tweet, which was inevitably retweeted by more than 100 people… The 140 character limit is basically the definition of Twitter. It’ll be interesting to watch what, if anything, changes now that you can go way longer . In any case I’m really looking forward toAnnotations.

The $99 Kindle – Why e-readers will soon cost less than $100.  (via Slate)

The cost of entry will be insignificant soon. The great thing about e-ink based eReaders are that they do not require much in the way of horsepower and bells and whistles. However, I still believe that they promise a service they do not offer. People who read on a Kindle expect the device to do more, to behave differently than a book, which is why the next article on McSweeny’s is so funny and accurate.

Late last month, Amazon unveiled a new version of its Kindle e-book reader that, like every new Kindle, is thinner, lighter, and smaller than the previous one.  It’s also the cheapest Kindle ever—the new Wi-Fi version sells for just $139.

AFTER A THOROUGH BATTERY OF TESTS WE CAN NOW RECOMMEND “THE NEWSPAPER” AS THE BEST E-READER ON THE MARKET (via McSweeney)

For the past three weeks our team of engineers has analyzed the most popular e-readers on the market in order to confer our annual “Editor’s Choice” Award…

Each device had its strengths. For some it was speed; for others it was capacity. Some were better with shorter articles; others with longer works. And cost, as always, was a factor. But in the end, one e-reader stood out.

The Newspaper.

Slate’s iPad App Strives For Simplicity (via Gizmodo)

I’m fascinated by what “look” narrative fiction should take on the web, almost as much as I want to know what types of behaviors it will encourag. This then, is just a look at one option.

Web magazine Slate has rolled out their official iPad app (I heard you like slates so I put Slate on your slate, etc), featuring the publication’s blogs, videos, and articles and focusing on readability in lieu of bells and whistles.

Flattr opens to the public, now anybody can ‘Like’ a site with real money

Websites hosting narrative fiction may find a tool such as Flattr useful, as it may provide a chance for a non-traditional revenue stream.

Flattr, the micropayment startup founded by ex-Pirate Bay associates, has opened to the public today. No longer will you need an invite in order to add the Flattr button to your web site as a publisher or to give support to the sites you visit with real money.

Because it BLOWS MY MIND

University of Calgary succeeds in building a neurochip out of silicon, human brain cells

Scientists at the University of Calgary have teamed up with the National Research Council Canada to put a network of human brain cells on a microchip — in effect creating a (tiny) brain on a chip.

Tools

A ROCK-SOLID DEFAULT FOR HTML5 AWESOME.

HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass’s base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.

After more than two years in iterative development, you get the best of the best practices baked in: cross-browser normalization, performance optimizations, even optional features like cross-domain ajax and flash. A starter apache .htaccess config file hooks you the eff up with caching rules and preps your site to serve HTML5 video, use @font-face, and get your gzip zipple on.

5 Cross-Platform Mobile Development Tools You Should Try (via Mashable)

As mobile OSes — especially iPhone and Android — wax and wane, the pressing question remains: How do you choose which mobile devices to develop for and which devices to omit from your roadmap?

Tech Stories: Find Ideas Here

Why Demand Media (And Similar Models) Will Succeed

The above link takes a look at what the hell a “content farm” is and how its become profitable. I found this one interesting only in the sense that a content farm, using  books in the public domain, might act as a great way to direct traffic to a site that also supports works by new authors. If anyone is game for this kind of site building, let me know. I have more ideas.

Here’s a line from the article:

The discussion around scalable content generation platforms (or “content farms” as critics of those models prefer to call them) is back in full swing.

Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years

I hate you Bill Gates, but you’re probably right. In truth, this isn’t the boldest of predictions, what it neglects to consider is inspiration and drive — two things often inspired in us by other students and interesting professors. As the web (and even movie trailers, and commercials) become increasingly interactive (that is, input leads to feedback), I feel education, unlike porn, will continue to look like a dusty book rather than an industry interested in providing its users with content that utilizes new technologies to more effectively deliver its product, which is, in this case, stuff you should know.

Bill Gates just might be the world’s most famous college dropout (sorry, Kanye), but lest you think he’s changed his mind about the educational establishment, he’s got a few words of reassurance for you. As the closing speaker of the Techonomy 2010 conference, Bill dished out his vision of how learning will evolve over the next few years, stating his belief that no single university will be able to match the internet when it comes to providing the learning resources a student needs.

You can count the number of books in the world on 25,972,976 hands

Holy crap! Numbers are cool and this is crazy. Thanks Google. Also, Google knows way too much and knows way too many ways to get more of it. They frighten me more  each day.

New Media Fiction: Tech Stories for the Week Ending 7/30/2010

Fuck you ebooks

Here are a couple stories I found interesting this week.

Traditional Publishers Release Enhanced E-books for iPhone and iPad

“Scribner and Simon & Schuster Digital have released what they are calling their first-ever “enhanced e-book,” Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, via Apple’s iBookstore application.”

This is nothing new, but what is interesting is the filetype used to create this enhanced ebook. Typically, the epub format has been limited, but people are beginning to use HTML, CSS, and even JAVA in ePub documents, which makes sense, as the language itself is basically a variation of HTML. Although Java is not yet officially supported, it’s interesting to see what may come from the open source ePub file. Perhaps people will begin thinking more concretely about this filetype inorder to deliver more advanced content.

The Mashable article also ponders what an enhanced book may mean for the future of books. Although Lauren Indvik doesn’t delve too deeply, she’s talking about what this Blog loves talking about, which is exciting.

At This NFL Stadium You Can Watch Replays On Your Phone [Sports]

from Gizmodo by Kyle VanHemert

“When it opens this fall, the New Meadowlands Stadium will be the NFL’s most state of the art facility. That means queuing up replays on demand on your smartphone (or just checking how long the concession lines are)…”

Amazing, right? Our mobile phones are an adjunct for experience, a way to enhance what we experience. Augmented reality apps and opportunities to take with us the luxuries of our home entertainment centers will, perhaps,

NMF: Tech Stories for the Week Ending July 23

Each week, I’ll copy and paste links to stories that I think discuss, directly or indirectly, the future of narrative fiction. This week I pasted news on self-monitoring reading habits, iPad novels, the last five years in social media, and an intriguing new iPad app called flipboard.

Click below to find the links.

Here’s Your Hard Copy of the Internet

The Web has created a new set of behaviors and expectations for users. These behaviors and expectations have come to define the Web and all forms of electronic media that are produced for personal computers, whether they are iPads, Kindles, desktops, or notebooks (aka laptops). That is, the Web has defined the ways in which we behave behind a personal device with a screen — whether we are connected to the Web or not.

The Web fucking changed everything, especially the way we see the world and the way we behave in it. This epistemological shift is the topic of conversations that have been ongoing for some time. J.David Bolter’s Turing’s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age seems especially prescient now, so much so that new readers may find it boring because of its fantastical predictions (for 1986) — predictions that were so dead on they seem obvious and hardly worth study. What he predicted was wide spread use of computers in everyday life, believing that when the computer eventually found its way into every home that it would change us. It has.

This brings us to an interesting place in an interesting time. Old media struggles to survive, knows that it must embrace the content platforms of the future. Yet, it does so irresponsibly, and – for the most part – thoughtlessly.

Yep, the digital novel is upon us – mainstream style

I for one am fascinated by the effect of new media tools on traditional narrative fiction. As more and more people begin to consume digital content, the idea of a digital novel will seem less odd. That begins today.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ryu Murakami is releasing his next novel as an iPad only artifact. I can’t wait to read it.

Don’t confuse him with Haruki Murakami(who we REALLY want to see tackle this medium). Instead, know that he is responsible for the inception of Audition, which was adapted into a feature film by Takashi Miike.

The publishing industry is all fucked up, and writers aren’t seeing much return on their works. This digital distribution system, I hope, will also ensure that writers het a chance to pocket a bit more cash from their works, but not all of them will get write-ups in the WSJ, which begs the question: How will these works be advertised? Obviously, new media – for example, twitter and Facebook – will play a huge role. But outside of how often the name of these works and links to them are scattered over the Internet, the artist/writer will most likely come to the same conclusion that corporations are coming to when tackling the web of Internet advertising. I suspect we will begin to see a cross breading between the artifact and its marketing. The film Cloverfield and others come to mind. What we may see is a deeper integration between the artifact and its promotion, which makes sense. Advertising is the great art of our time. What is a book? It is a product with soul. It’s advertising will need to be the same.

Read some of my thoughts on Old Spice’s advertising strategy here.

Semiotics, fucking with fiction via the web

If semiotics is the generalization of linguistics, defining and encompassing all signs and symbols as they are expressed through various mediums, then the web is the perfection of the shift from linguistic based content to content created through all mediums.

Semiotics establishes a broader set of tools to communicate with, changing our understanding of what language is used to accomplish. Encompassing all forms of expression, whether they are sensory or semantic, semiotics explains a growing taste for and yet a removal from traditional narratives.

To be clear, what I’m suggesting is that the Internet, and its ability to provide access to various content, has become so successful that those using it continue to crave more and more. Although, their cravings are bottomless, their stomachs are not. They must make choices, decide when to stop consuming and when to move on to the next meal. Our behavior and tolerance for long works is diminished not because we are lazy, but because we crave so much. And yet, perhaps we do not crave the content we consume. Perhaps, we crave the opportunity to consume, valuing the medium we access above the content it provides.

Representations of New Media Fiction: Google, Parisians, and User as Character!

The first stories I can remember hearing were those from my grandfather. He said, “Hey kiddo, go grab me a beer, and I’ll tell you a story about Lon Koontz.” I was stunned. My name was Lon Koontz. Who could exist but me? So, I ran through their mobile home to the fridge in desert-hot Arizona and grabbed the man his beer. After a few stories about my great grandfather, he said, “Hey kiddo, go grab me a beer.” Despite the fact that the story had ended and I had already paid for his story by agreeing to grab him the first beer, I went running. I was sold on the product my grandfather was selling. That product was, of course, my grandfather. The dude kicked ass. Here’s a picture:

Before we look too deeply into my psyche and the associations I make (person as product) know that one of the reasons I loved my grandfather was because of the stories he told. I also loved him because he gave me the keys to his car when I was 13 years old and he was a cowboy!

I suspect this paradigm, stories for goods and services, has been true for some time; perhaps it goes back as far as the first words man used to barter goods. “I kill calf two hour ago. Fresh. Guarantee.” What came first the story or the pitch? What came first the story as entertainment or the story as advertisement? I’m not sure what came first advertising or fiction, but I assume they were born at the same moment or were born close enough together to earn the distinction as twins.

I bring this up only because I wish to suggest that advertising is as much a story telling driven line of work as is the labor required of traditional narrative fiction.

Making Users Out of Readers: or Taking Advantage of Web Tools for the Creation of New Literary Forms

In 1996, The Atlantic Online sent Ralph Lombreglia a “Cyber Lit Quiz.” He passed.

Wen Stephenson started the email exchange (something perhaps novel at the time) with this question: “Do you sense that there’s a crisis in our literary culture? And if so, or if there’s just the perception of a crisis, how much of it has to do with new digital, interactive media? Have the Web and other digital media become scapegoats?”

It’s easy enough to peel away the layers of history here. The term “Web 2.0” shows up in 2004, when Tim O’Reilly organized the “Web 2.0 Conference.” The new name didn’t imply a change in the structure of the Web, rather it marked the moment when the Web had grown up. Web applications were born and allowed for diverse new methods of interactivity, including information sharing, interoperability, design, and collaboration. The hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, and blogs that grew in this new space have effectively changed the way we communicate forever. Although the Web may not have changed, the uses we discovered for it had suddenly, and irrevocably changed us. The epistemological shift that occurred as a result has affected every aspect of our society and how we integrate ourselves into it because the Web became another interactive space, something closer to our “real” lives, and, therefore, infinitely richer than any other medium to come before it. This interactivity produces for us a second life, another space to explore what it means to be human, even if the circumstances of that life are conceptually and practically new.