Books

Big Blog – No Cash

In discussions on the role of blogs (with journalists, freelance writers, lawyers etc) I tend to argue that the biggest change is that there is all of a sudden a large group of people who are prepared to write for free. Many of these writers are really bad and not worth reading. But it is easy enough to find a group of blogs/writers, which suit your interests and tastes. Therefore a great deal of the sources of literature and analysis of affairs comes from passionate amateurs â?? as opposed to the ranks of paid experts.

In attempts to prove my point I often enjoy pointing out that I blog for free to an unknown audience. Sometimes that audience engages me in discussion, comments my writing or questions my intelligence. This feedback is always nice (even the latter).

Recently I was questioned (not online) about my statement that I blog for free since I have in the left column of this blog a list of books and if you were to click on them and then buy the books from Amazon chances are that I will get a kickback.

Have I therefore lost my amateur status?

The books are there because these are the books that I at present find most interesting they are randomly chosen from my collection at Librarything. The idea is to give the visitor and list of additional reading and provide readers with some random colour.

Since I said kickbacks you naturally ask: â??Tell us about the money!â?? To which I reply here is a copy of my earnings under 2005 (the duration of this experiment thus far).

The -7 refers to books which have been returned. So my connection with capitalism has brought me less than a penny a day. This amount is too small to be paid by Amazon â?? so I do write for free after allâ?¦

Or maybe it’s just because I don’t have a big enough blog?

Posted on by mklang

Best non-fiction book

Wait a moment…

You can’t just vote the best non-fiction book. Lots of people will be upset, annoyed, miffed and feel generally left out. For my part I feel ignored since I missed the whole event.

The Royal Institution in London have voted Primo Levi’s memoir of life as a Jew in Mussolini’s Italy, named “The Periodic Table” the best non-fiction book ever written.

The shortlist

Primo Levi The Periodic Table
Konrad Lorenz King Solomon’s Ring
Tom Stoppard Arcadia
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene

Other nominations

James Watson The Double Helix
Bertolt Brecht The Life of Galileo
Peter Medawar Pluto’s Republic
Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle
Stephen Pinker The Blank Slate
Oliver Sacks A Leg to Stand On

(via Guardian Online)

Posted on by mklang

Populism Tomorrow

Tomorrow I shall be trying something new. My university has a popular science event where researchers present an interesting aspect of their research to the public in 15 minutes at a local bookstore.

So tomorrow I shall be presenting the Swedish file sharing situation. This will include (1) what file sharing is (2) why it annoys people (3) the police raid on The Pirate Bay this summer, and (4) recent court cases.

All in 15 minutes with no props!

So if you are not busy during your lunch hour why not drop by Wettergrens bookstore on Västra hamngatan in Göteborg at 12.30.

The title of the talk is â??File-sharing: the battle between pirates and policeâ?? â?? what can I say? I have a broad populist streak.

Posted on by mklang

Darwinian Evolution Online

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin are to be found online â?? for free. So OK you are hard to please and you have seen books online before. But wait! This site offers more. You can even download Charles Darwin audio books â?? for free.

An amazing collection of Darwinâ??s works are available in MP3 hits like the â??Fertilisation of Orchidsâ?? (1862) to the â??On the Origin of Speciesâ?? (1859) all iPod ready.

This site contains every Darwin publication as well as many of his handwritten manuscripts. All told there are more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, descriptions of Darwin’s Beagle specimens and important works for understanding Darwin’s context. Free audio mp3 versions of his works are also available.

The site was launched on 19 October this year and is amazing. It is a testimony to the victory of content over web-design.

(via Markmedia)

Posted on by mklang

Rereading Rilke

Very rarely do I reread books. I return to academic literature to confirm or to find. But I donâ??t reread. Fiction is even more seldom. Occasionally I search for something I remember. But I donâ??t reread.

One of the factors is time. But thatâ??s a sell out. We find the time to do things that are important. Things we want to do we solve, but for things we donâ??t want to do we find excuses. So it boils done to interest. With an endless sea of things to read yet undiscovered and piles of books around me that are yet to be consumed â?? returning is less appealing. In this manner I am fickle. I return to authors but not to books. I return to blogs but not to posts.

There are some rare exceptions to this behaviour (it is hardly a rule). Reading for comic relief brings me to return to favourites like Asterix, Tintin, and Calvin & Hobbes. But then there is the real exception. Since I discovered the collection, many years ago, I return every half-decade to Rilkeâ??s â??Letters to a Young Poetâ??.

The letters are from Rilke to a young struggling poet. In the first letter Rilke replies to the struggling poets request for advice on writing poetry:

No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple â??I must,â?? then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

The book I have is a slim cream coloured hardback volume with an exclusive feel. You can read the texts online but then you will lose some of their value.

Posted on by mklang

Read Book Change World

Do you have a guilty conscious about books you should have read? I do. Most of the time I can ignore this little voice but every so often the voice shouts too loud to be ignored.

One book which I thought I should read when it came out in 2000 was Monbiotâ??s â??The Age of Consent: A manifesto for a new world orderâ?? but somehow I always had other stuff to do.

Then I began reading Monbiotâ??s writing online. He posts some (all?) of his newspaper articles online a short while after they have appeared in the newspapers. His â??Children of the Machineâ?? (2006) is an insightful understanding of how RFID technology will slowly come to be accepted and to control us.

Anyway I bought his Age of Consent and I was not disappointed. Here is a man who writes about the complicated hypocrisies of world economics in a manner that is understandable, entertaining and at the same time provoking.

His final goal is to provoke the reader into action. But he is aware that he must move the reader from ignorance, to understanding, to agreement before he gets anyone to act.

Some short quotes:

We must accept that democracy will always be something of a mess. Attempting to tidy it up too much could mean subordinating diversity to universalism and the individual consciousness to the general will to such an extent that we may establish the preconditions not for freedom but for captivity. We must leave gaps between the building blocks, in case we accidentally build a wall. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 115)

Throughout this manifesto, I have sought to suggest ways in which we can use the strengths of our opponents to our advantage, and it seems to me that the roaming hunger of corporations is another asset we can turn to our account. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p)

â?¦the curtailment of the world-eating mathematically impossible system we call capitalism, and its replacement with a benign and viable means of economic exchangeâ?¦ (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 238)

I end this with the same words with which he ends his book:

Well? What are you waiting for?

Posted on by mklang

Free Software & Microsoft Sales Reps

Due to a colleague calling in sick I jumped in and gave a short presentation on Free Software & Open Standards to IT technicians at my university. Following my presentation two salesmen from Microsoft presented the corporate visions of the future and a short demo of the coming Vista and Office software.

The first salesman after hearing my presentation insisted on talking about how “Free Software” microsoft was. Since they were involved in several projects intended to define open standards this made, according to him, Microsoft – Free Software.

Should someone tell Balmer?

I bit my tongue when he spoke about all this and about trusted computing. It was all too much. He was so positive that the inconsistencies were only embarrasing.
He also was lyrical about schools without books and the fact that many university students are not able to use basic excel – something he felt the university should teach them. So I shut up while he praised the dumming down of universities.

I will get him during the break… Or maybe not… it’s just too embarassing to listen to.

Posted on by mklang

Whats Cooking? Norms Based Property Regimes

Somehow, somewhere along the line our society has decided that certain types of intellectual endeavour were worth protecting and encouraging. Not all types. Just some. Through brilliant social positioning and political lobbying these intellectual endeavours have achieved the status of property. (For more on this read No Trespassing â?? Eva Hemmungs Wirtén).

Stop! Think! Property. Property is usually considered amongst the human rights. The focus on property right occasionally risked upsetting the balance of rights and encroaching on other rights. This led Martin Luther King to write:

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Despite the fact that intellectual property protection as we understand it today is not as old as many believe, we have managed to raise it to an eternal value. This is to say we believe that this is the way that it always has been. Implicit with this idea comes the follow-up thought that changing this is not worth the effort.

The interesting thing is that there are many types of knowledge that is not protected by intellectual property. Some of these are not valuable but others are extremely valuable.

A personâ??s honour is something that may be painstakingly built up over a lifetime within the community group. Whether this person is a diamond trader or part of a criminal organisation this is a valuable commodity, which is unprotected. Defamation law attempts to cover certain parts â?? but this protection has nowhere near the far-reaching effects of intellectual property.

A farmerâ??s knowledge over the terrain and weather, a craftsmanâ??s knowledge of tools and materials and a teachers experience are all valuable commodities in the daily life of these people.

My current favourite example comes from an article by Emmanuelle Fauchart and Eric von Hippel (his books are available online free) about the value of the knowledge of French chefs. Especially in their struggle to gain and maintain Michelin stars.

A star in the Michelin Guide is a valuable commodity. It makes and breaks restaurants and the career of chefs. It has also been the source of some scandals (wikipedia).

The question the article poses is why when the commodity is so valuable donâ??t chefs copy each other? Rather than innovate and surpass their competitors why not emulate? There is no law, no intellectual property in food dishes. Despite the fact that they are highly creative. The answer, according to Fauchart and von Hippel lies in â??norms basedâ?? intellectual property systems.

What we see is regulation by advanced group norms that allow the group to:

â?¦specify the nature and extent of rights that a group member can assert to intellectual property. They also include procedures for the claiming of intellectual property rights, and community-accepted types of sanctions for violators.

This is a thought-provoking article. We need more work in this vein to be able to show that the present intellectual property regime is far from being the only game in town.

Posted on by mklang

Broadcast & Podcast Rights

This is straight from Cory Doctrow at Boing Boing – not even going to edit it. Copyright is under fire from almost every angle imagineable. This is about the aweful Broadcast Treaty.

The Broadcast Treaty is an attempt to force the world’s governments to give a new right to broadcasters, a right to control the use of works they don’t own. The Broadcast Right will allow broadcasters to stop you from copying or re-using the programs they transmit, even if those programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed or composed of uncopyrightable facts.

Fair use doesn’t apply to the broadcast right. It will have its own rules for fair use, separate from copyright. You’ll have to pay your lawyer twice, once to make sure you’ve got a fair copyright use, and again to make sure you’ve got a fair broadcast right use. And you might get sued twice — once for violating copyright and again for broadcast right violations.

Worse yet, they want this to apply to the Internet. A few US corporations — Microsoft, Yahoo — have hijacked the US position on the Broadcast Treaty and now the US is using every trick in the book to get the world’s governments (who roundly reject the idea) to create a “webcasting right” at the same time as the broadcast right.

This is deadly to podcasters. The webcasting right will break podcasters’ ability to quote and re-use each others’ work (even CC-licensed works), and other video found on the net. It will allow podcast-hosting companies like Yahoo to tell people how they can use your podcasts, even if you want to permit retransmissions. And it will hurt organizations that are tying to find novel ways to use podcasts, like

The webcasting stuff has been “narrowed” to try to make it apply only to “professional” webcasts and not podcasts, but this is a short-sighted view of the future of podcasting. The term podcasting was only coined 20-some months ago. The idea that we can predict what a podcast will look like tomorrow is ridiculous — it’s like designing a copyright for printed books ten seconds before the photocopier comes along and changes everything.

Luckily, the webcasting stuff is on the ropes. Mark Cuban, who founded Yahoo’s Broadcast.com, has signed onto an open letter from 20 technology organizations that reject the webcasting right. Last week, dozens of companies, libraries and public interest groups signed an open letter rejecting the treaty altogether.

Now it’s the podcasters’ turn. EFF has created an open letter on behalf of podcasters everywhere, rejecting the webcasting right. WIPO is supposed to be making treaties that protect creators. We podcasters are the Internet’s native creators. WIPO has no business trying to break the Internet so that it is better-suited to the business-models of yesterday’s broadcasters.

If you are a podcaster — or better yet, a podcasting organization — sign onto this letter now! It will be presented Monday morning to the WIPO committee that’s creating the Broadcast Treaty in Geneva. This is your best-ever chance to be heard. Link

Posted on by mklang

I Nailed Yesterday

Yesterday was an amazing day. The printers delivered 75 copies of my thesis as quickly as they could. They were so quick that when I opened the box the books were still warm â?? so now I know what â??hot of the pressesâ?? really means.

I took 51 books with me to the main university library. In return for 50 of my books I got a receipt. I took the last book with me to find the Dean of my faculty. He kindly interrupted a meeting to sign my book. Without his signature I cannot continue the process.

So with a signed copy of my thesis I returned to the office packed up my stuff, handed out a few copies to friends and colleagues before rushing home. From there the family followed me to the main university building to a notice board where I presented myself, my thesis and the documentation that I was allowed to proceed.

The women in charge gave me a hammer and nail which I used to hammer my thesis to the notice board. It was a very satisfying experience.

The process of hammering your thesis is the traditional form of publicising that the thesis has been made public. This is done three weeks before the actual defence so that unknown opponents have a chance to arrive at the defence armed to the teeth… Naturally the act of nailing is not as important as it used to be since the real publication of the date and time is done digitally. But it remains a very satisfying experience for the PhD student.

Update: I am officially on the list of upcoming defences.

Posted on by mklang