Have A Read Of These

Here are a few articles I enjoyed this week. You never know, maybe you might as well.

  • ‘What Big Media Can Learn From the New York Public Library’, from The Atlantic.

    Quite a lot, actually. The NYPL is doing some truly amazing things online, totally changing and reinventing the way it interacts with its users. In fact, it doesn’t regard them as users but curators and creators in their own right.

  • Users, even in a library, can no longer be shushed.

  • ‘Expletives Not Deleted’, from The New Yorker.

    Armando Ianucci profile. I’m enjoying what I’ve seen of ‘Veep’ so far, even without an obvious Malcolm Tucker character.

  • ‘Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!’, from The Daily Beast.

    A sweary Stephen King cuts through the nonsense in the taxation debate. A pleasure to read.

    Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America.

  • ‘The Pirate Bay copyright crackdown is unsustainable’, from The Guardian.

    Whilst it is amusing to watch ‘big media’ flounder around attempting to save their broken business model, this is slippery slope territory. Of course, moderately tech-savvy folks will be able to get around most ham-fisted blocking attempts that governments attempt to impose upon ISPs, but this does open the door to abuse. My concern is that many legislators and many judges have shown that they just don’t understand how the Internet works, and how it delivers the benefits that it undoubtedly does.

    Copyright cannot be allowed to be treated as a more fundamental right than free expression, or a more important issue than a free and open internet.

  • ‘Amazon aren’t destroying publishing, they’re reshaping it’, from The Guardian.

    Good piece on Amazon, Google and Apple as content gatekeepers, and the stagnation rather than innovation this encourages.

  • ‘How to Write about Africa’, from Granta.

    As Homer Simpson said, “it’s funny because it’s true”. In this case it’s also more than a little sad.

Whilst you’re reading those, I recommend wrapping your ears around this. Requires tolerance of repetitive electronic music for maximum enjoyment. Also, the Red Hot Chili Peppers put in an unwelcome but thankfully reasonably brief appearance. You have been thoroughly warned.