Wednesday 2 September 2009

read this

Especially if you write, but even if you don't.

The Google book deal is something I keep meaning to try to get my head round, especially given my not particularly famous stance on e- as the inevitable direction of a lot of reading, and now there really isn't time, and I bet that's what everyone thinks. It's the same is facebook and privacy, which it isn't like at all: something profoundly transformative that happens with not bad intentions and done by mostly people who have never had anything particularly wrong happen to them and who go about it without imagining the worst-case scenario. I am simplifying radically.

I'm glad Nick Harkaway has simplified it less radically, and I profoundly agree with him. Also, read his book. It's really good.

3 comments:

Marie said...

More on the same, from the BBC, and equally unenthusiastic:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8233324.stm

Jenny Davidson said...

Cannot get my head around it - it is when my ID as reader comes through much more strongly than writer, all I want is to be able to access every book in the world from a remote location on an electronic device, I do not care if anybody ever pays me any money for reading mine!

ON a happier & saner note - the shirt is gorgeous! I am going to wear it to whatever scant # of hipster occasions I attend - I feel certain it will garner admiration...

(What I really want is a copy of the book - I think I have to order it from Amazon UK, or is it available v. soon in US also?!?)

Robert Hudson said...

That's the thing - it's all benefits really to start with. But what happens when you sign big principles away for the sake of convenience? Can you get them back easily? (I do not know the answer to these hyperbolically expressed questions, but they are real ones.)

Excellent on the shirt front. When I have a website, there will be pictures of them in, as you say, many and various hipster contexts. I have had enough interest to consider a second run. Also: mugs.

And yes, I think that is how to get the book, gallingly. There are hopes for American publication, but nothing in place as yet, so not imminent.