Apple announced a new version of iBooks for iPad on Thursday, focusing on how it can deliver inexpensive textbooks to students. It's being pushed as a revolution in education, but does the same update have applicability outside of the classroom?
Aside from the (often gimmicky) interactive widgets and other benefits of electronic books, they offer "current" as another advantage of electronic books. The main idea here, in the context of textbooks, is that a new edition can be distributed inexpensively, without the need to buy a new 5-pound $300 book every year. I see potential for another use: episodic fiction.
Serial publishing is not new. When advances in technology and economy allowed magazines to be widely distributed in the 19th century, it was popular for authors to release long works in short segments. As magazines shifted their focus away from episodic fiction and television replaced that niche, the idea of a serialized work of text started to die (with occasional exceptions, like Stephen King's The Green Mile). Today, we're facing more leaps in technology and in the economics of distribution that, I think, have potential to bring serial fiction back.
Imagine this: you hear about an author releasing a story with an intriguing premise. You download the first "episode," then every, say, Wednesday, you get a notification alerting you that a new episode is out. Either for a small fee per episode (99 cents seems fair) or a flat "season pass," you get new content every Wednesday for a few months, automatically updated and waiting for you when you open iBooks.
I'm not sure if this is how iBooks currently works (the new textbook stuff, as usual, locks out Canadians), but they seem to be going in that direction with the "books as apps" model. It's not unique to Apple, either; the same thing could easily be implemented on any other e-reader with minor tweaks. It's been attempted, but Apple's app model demonstrates how streamlined it could be1. And in a generation that often prefers TV to movies and Twitter to blogs, maybe we're ready for bite-sized fiction's big comeback.
Would you buy a book that updates itself with new content every week? Really, I'm asking, because I have a few stories in the file drawer, and I'm seriously considering experimenting to try turning these tumultuous times into something awesome.
1 Note that Apple's new updates come with a giant catch: a ridiculous license agreement. The main problem is that if you use iBooks Author to create a work, you can only sell that work through iTunes. It's equivalent to buying a guitar, then finding an attached note saying you can only sell your music through Gibson's store. Ridiculous. Hopefully this gets changed, or people realize simple workarounds (change one word in the file using different software; tada! All-new work that can be sold wherever you want).
When London Ontario's mayor, Joe Fontana, revealed an unofficial theme song for the city, reactions were, to put it kindly, not positive.
If you haven't seen it, here (fast forward to 1:19:30) is the awkward unveiling that would be right at home on one of the "so uncomfortable it's funny" sitcoms like The Office or Party Down or Parks and Recreation.
The problem with the song is that it fails to fulfil its intended purpose of getting people pumped about the city of London. Like, listen to the music; it sounds like it could've come out in the era of the London Tigers (perhaps because Jim Chapman penned the hilariously violent "Tear 'Em Up Tigers" theme song as well). "Stuck in 1990" doesn't exactly scream "exciting modern city."
Then there are the lyrics. Let's go through them:
Imagine a city where the river runs through it
Ok Jim, lemme give it a try. Closing my eyes...imagining...oh look, it's half the cities in the world! Having access to a source of water doesn't differentiate our city. Couldn't you have at least mentioned the forks of the river?
Imagine a city where dreams can come true
Imagine your future how you want it to be
Imagine a city full of unicorns and glitter and Care Bears!
In London, the city of opportunity Imagine a factory where none was before
As opposed to a factory built on the ruins of another factory? Regardless, it's hard to imagine a more mundane feature than a factory. Except...
Imagine an office, imagine a store
Wait, wait. Stop. You're telling me London has an office and a store? Here, let me add some more lyrics that'll jazz up this little ditty:
Imagine a building.
Imagine this sandwich.
Imagine some cardboard.
[Blah blah more lyrics that are so general and meaningless that they could apply to any city, or really, any topic at all]
One of London's image problems is a perception of blandness, and the mayor shoving this auditory pablum into our ears only confirms that perception.
The chorus sums it up:
The closer you look, the more that you see, that London is the city of opportunity!
Translation: if you squint really hard and look closely, there might be potential for something to happen in London, sometime. "Opportunity" is a future-facing thing. While having a future is all well and good, in the context of this musical tour through Humdrum City, it implies that we're a town sitting around waiting around for its big opportunity to do anything relevant.
See here's the thing: we can do better than this. I'm not gonna say "anyone could write this song," because I certainly couldn't. However, I've seen plenty of genuine creativity in this city. Art that goes beyond platitudes and clichés. Even the responses to this jingle, like the dubstep remix, Baptized in Blood's metal cover, and Jason's Downfall parody, are more fresh and in touch with reality than the original.
The song has had the ironic effect of showcasing some of London's talent and enthusiasm through their negative reactions to it. We wouldn't be complaining about it if we didn't love this city—and not just for its "opportunities," but for what it is now. You don't have to look too close to see that.
I use Last.fm to keep track of all the music I listen to, and every year I like to look back and see which music I listened to most, then post the top 10 here for all to see and judge.
I've bolded ten albums throughout these lists. Call these my consciously chosen top 10, if I was going by something other than the number of times I've played them.
Before getting to the top 10, here are some honourable mentions that didn't crack the top ten. I'd totally recommend giving these a listen if you were into music.
The Black Keys - El Camino
Born Gold - Bodysongs
Cake - Showroom of Compassion
Cut Copy - Zonoscope
David Guetta - Nothing But the Beat
The Dears - Degeneration Street
The Decemberists - The King is Dead, and Long Live the King
Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams
Florence and the Machine - Ceremonials
Justice - Audio, Video, Disco
Kanye West and Jay Z - Watch the Throne
Ladytron - Gravity the Seducer
Man Man - Life Fantastic
Neon Indian - Era Extrana
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (self-titled)
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
The Rapture - In the Grace of Your Love
Rihanna - Talk That Talk
Tycho - Dive
Washed Out - Within and Without
Zola Jesus - Conatus
And now, the top ten:
10. Lights - Siberia
It may be hard to see past the Biebs when it comes to Canadian pop music, but Lights manages to shine through. Her second album avoids being more of the same, with a sound that borrows some of the griminess of dubstep without sounding like she's trying too hard (see #3 on this list), but avoiding the grime of cheap sleazy lyrics (again, see #3 on this list).
I hadn't paid much attention to MUTEMATH before 2011, despite their insistence on ALWAYS SHOUTING THEIR NAME. Their new bluesy, perhaps soulful sound managed to hook me. I couldn't stop listening to Odd Soul.
8. The Antlers - Burst Apart
It's not exactly a feel-good album, but Burst Apart pokes the same "happy to be sad" buttons as bands like Portishead. If you couldn't tell by the title, "Putting the Dog to Sleep" ends it in a place so depressing it almost circles back to funny.
7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
I tried turning The Pains of Being Pure at Heart into an acronym - TPBPH - then saying it out loud. Try it out, it's hilarious. TPBPH. Teepeebeepee. LOL. Anyway, good album.
6. Mister Heavenly - Out of Love
I've expressed doubt about supergroups before, but the unholy union of Islands' Nicholas Thorburn, Man Man's Honus Honus, and Modest Mouse's Joe Plummer is a possible exception. It starts with Bronx Sniper, which could almost be mistaken for an Islands song. But then Honus's gravelly vocals kick in, complementing and transforming the sound into something unique. Is this "doom-wop" any better than the members' individual projects? Probably not, but it's still worth sticking in your ear holes.
5. M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
M83 made #1 on my 2008 list, and this long-awaited follow-up is just as worthy. Its impact still relies heavily on being soaked in nostalgia, but it's now taken to a more epic scale, bringing in every genre, instrument, and cliche you can think of. It could've been a mess, but there is a certain feeling that holds on through all 22 tracks. This album is a dream come true and you should hurry up and listen to it.
4. Mother Mother - Eureka
Meh. I probably wouldn't have chosen to put this in my top ten, but there it is. Mother Mother has their own sound, and Eureka is a more Mother-Mother-ish album than any before. It almost borders on self-parody, with the cheesy little-girl voices and forced quirkiness. Like, in The Stand, "everyone's f---ed an they don't even know" is censored throughout, until the end, when he finally blurts out "fucked," then laughs as if it's the most edgy, uproarious trick to hit music since Get the Funk Out. Oh you. If the music itself wasn't so damn catchy, I could maybe hit the stop button.
Errr. Whatever. Like I said last year, I'm no longer reluctant to admit that I listen to a lot of painfully mainstream music. And as far as mainstream goes, Britney does it well. The first half of Femme Fatale is some of the best dance-pop I heard this year. Its thrills come cheap—the breakdown in Hold It Against Me is a blatant grab at dubstep's exploding popularity, and the album's lyrics scream "omg sex! Look how much sex is here!"—but still, it works. There are even moments that could be considered clever, like in the weirdly moving ode to breakup sex, Inside Out, when Britney moans "hit me one more time," then "you're the only one who ever drove me crazy," jamming her past hits into a new context. The last few songs lose steam, but there are a few that I can't help but listen to over and over, so Britney's handlers done good.
2. The Sounds - Something to Die For
I was only vaguely familiar with this Swedish band before this year, but then my girlfriend sent Something to Die For over, thinking I would like it. She knows me well. I'm a sucker for music inspired by the 80s, and on this album The Sounds embrace the synth-pop aspect of that decade. The lyrics aren't exactly deep, or entirely comprehensible English ("something is worth to die for"???), but that hardly matters when you're bobbing your head and longing to bounce on a pogo ball.
1. Lady GaGa - Born This Way
Oh how things have changed. Lady GaGa won the only "worst album of the year" award I've ever given out, back in 2008, for The Fame. Yet things haven't really changed much, because she still makes catchy but vapid songs that get stuck in your head and your iPod. I was hoping for more from Born This Way. With GaGa pushing the boundaries in her videos and fashion choices, and Fame Monster going in some new directions musically, Born This Way could have taken it to the next level. Yet we're left with more of the same: some irresistible but by-the-numbers pop songs, with lyrics that are too literal and obvious to drum up any meaningful controversy (you're in love with Judas?! Oooh, scandalous!). But it's 17+ tracks, few of which are boring, so I guess I listened to more songs from this album than any other.
Criticism aside, Yoü and I is one of the best pop songs of the year, and comes with one of the best videos of the year:
There's the list. Oooh, and here's a pretty visualization from LastGraph:
Did I miss any music that you jammed in your ears this year? Let me know.
The Hunger Games tells the story of a teen girl living in a future, post-post-apocalyptic world, where an obviously-evil government keeps the people in line by throwing a handful of them into a televised fight to the death in an outdoor arena once a year. Although it doesn't happen right away (more on that later), it's pretty easy to guess that she gets involved in the titular Hunger Games.
The concept may sound like a sci-fi trope, but Collins does a good job of painting a world that feels unique despite borrowing pieces from other stories in its genres. The first third or so of the book is mostly setup for the inevitable beginning of the Games. It could've been boring, knowing the story is taking its time to begin, but it's interesting enough due to the colourful character development, world-building, and writing style.
Then the action kicks into gear, and something odd happens. The writing quality drops immediately the moment the Hunger Games actually begin. It's as if the latter two-thirds were written by another author (or an author who wrote the first chapters years after the latter ones). What begins as straightforward YA-level prose begins sounding like a teenager's blog. Rambling tangents come back with "anyway", ellipses replace proper punctuation, and there are outright typos. I half-expected sentences to start ending in "lol."
It's not too distracting, and makes some sense given the first-person narrator's age, but the fluctuation in style was a bit jarring.
Anyway, the story itself is about what you'd expect given the premise. There is some mild satire of reality television and some mild violence (but this ain't no Battle Royale). Some unexpected twists have impact, but some expected showdowns are a letdown. Maybe it's a further subtle bit of satire to have some of the major plot points happen "off camera," but it's anticlimactic storytelling. Despite my pickiness, it's a good story that's often hard to put down, and anyone who's up with the premise would enjoy it. I'm looking forward to the movie.
This was also the first book I read on a Kindle. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it was a joy being able to sit under a tree in the sunshine (yeah, took me a while to get around to this review) with the tiny Kindle in one hand, flipping pages with the push of a button. On the other, when I wanted to skim the book while writing this review, I couldn't. And what if I wanted to come back to it in 10 years? If technology changes too much, or Amazon bites the bullet, or I get another company's incompatible device, my DRM-infected e-book is lost.
I'll probably only use the Kindle for cheap books I'll never want to read again (Hunger Games fits that bill). In other words, my feelings haven't changed since I wrote this: Vote for Books: Screens vs. Real Paper. Go print that out and read it.
I don't complain much, but when I do, it's usually about technology. I have an unfortunate combination of bad luck and high standards when it comes to gadgets. Literally, whenever I buy anything with greater complexity than lettuce, it has some flaw, either minor and only noticeable to my hyper-critical eye1 or a major defects2. At least nothing has outright exploded, though not everyone is so lucky (see: iPhone spontaneously combusts aboard flight). It's tempting to become a cynical old ass, shaking my wooden stick (not a microchip in it!) and grumbling about how quality control has gone down the stinker and nothing works like it should. I've certainly given into that temptation a few times.
But think of it this way:
We are a bunch of animals. We were crafted by nature to root around in the dirt, find food, then go home and fuck. Yet we've taken some of that dirt and, with nothing more than our grubby hands and abnormally large brains, we've made tubes of steel that can fly us through the air. We've burned sand until we have a slab of glass that allows us to have food delivered to us by poking at it. "Technology" isn't some mysterious black toaster that pops out perfect gleaming gadgets. We're literally grabbing whatever imperfect raw materials we find lying around the planet, and sticking them into arrangements that accomplish things no other animal can fathom.
Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But the people crafting our gadgets (and crafting the machines that craft our gadgets) are not magicians. They are humans, animals, maybe a bit smarter than you or I, but only by a little bit. They're working with limited time and limited resources. They get tired. Sometimes the best they can do is try pretty hard, and hope it's good enough.
Thinking of it this way, it's odd to complain.
Maybe a dead pixel on my phone's screen "shouldn't" be there, but a bunch of strangers managed to get me 614,399 working pixels that beam all of humanity's accomplishments directly into my eyes. I can probably live with it. I can probably manage to enjoy everything that works despite the small parts that don't.
There are exceptions; technologies that are defective by design (e.g., DRM, planned obsolescence) are inexcusable. The average gadget works pretty well though, and although it's not terrible to strive for perfection, I also need a moment to shut up and revel in the the awesomeness of the imperfect magic people have managed to weave.
1 E.g., backlight bleed on my iPad 2, suboptimal battery life on my Kindle, phosphor trails on my TV.
2 E.g., cutting out audio on my iPhone 4S, a computer with a display that occasionally turns to grey fuzz, six dead Xbox 360s.
London's leadership is now officially the the douchiestin Canada. Last night, after a warning Tuesday morning, police descended on Victoria Park to steal the tents of the people who had been living there for the last two weeks. They were within their rights to do this, since there is a bylaw asking people not to put up tents in city parks. However, let's look at the actual warning that cited this bylaw:
Notice all those "unless authorized" exceptions. Hey, here's an idea to prevent people from breaking the law: authorize them to be there so it's no longer illegal. Apparently "we demand people giving us money for sunglasses, gangsta blankets, and overpriced meat" is good enough to skirt the bylaw (see: Sunfest, Ribfest, every other fest there in the summer). But "we demand a better future for our children"? GTFO!
The bottom line is that there were a bunch of tents sitting in one corner of a park, occupied by people who didn't hurt anyone (I walk through there every day, and it was more fun and felt more safe than it did before). Someone—maybe the mayor, maybe the police, maybe a combo—made the conscious decision to evict them from the park based on an optional bylaw. That decision was probably motivated by personal beliefs more than following any guidelines. That's not being a firm decision maker, being tough on crime, or being a good leader. No, failing to tolerate people you personally disagree with, that's simply being a giant asshole.
On the other hand:
The occupy movement is failing. It's clear from the general public's reaction to London's assholery that most people don't know, nor care, what the protestors are protesting. When the point is to raise awareness, to have not done so after months of occupying, that's a failure.
Signs, well-meaning people, and infographics attempt to explain the purpose of the protests. But they either contradict each other (or reality), are too vague to be meaningful, or complain about a problem without offering a solution.
Be mad.
The main focus has been the disparity between the wealthiest 1% of the population, who control a lot of the country's wealth, and the other 99% of the population, who don't. Ok. That's bad I guess. But how should things be different? The financial crisis in the United States is another focus. Banks fucked up and ruined the economy. That's bad. Yep. But it already happened, in another country with crappier laws, so how should things be different here, now?
It'd be nice to see a list of problems, with potential solutions offered by experts in the field.
E.g., to me it seems the problem isn't the 1% / 99% disparity itself, but how it got there. There are some giant assholes who make conscious decisions to scam or screw over other people to gain massive amounts of money. Many of the 1% have gotten their wealth through immoral or illegal means. The banking crisis is one result of this.
The solution, then, isn't some vague call to "close the gap". Rather, the solution is to stop people from gaining money at the expense of others. Find the people—not a vague type of person, but the exact, specific people—who are rich because they are assholes. Arrest them if possible. If not, bring in an expert to study them. Find out what laws and loopholes allow them to thrive, then change them.
Or something. The key is that the rich/poor disparity is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. "We are the 99%" isn't even pointing out a problem, let alone offering a solution. "Raise minimum sentences on white-collar crimes so that we 99% stop getting screwed by the criminals among the 1% and rewarding the worst side of human nature" is a less catchy slogan, but now you've got me listening, and a direction for taking action.
To sum up: I don't necessarily agree with the occupiers' muddled messages, but as long as they're expressing them peacefully, I fully support them being free to do so.
For the past two years, I've been on the board of the London Short Film Showcase. One thing I've been doing is running contests on Facebook and Twitter to promote the event (next Saturday at 7pm! Come!). On Friday, I posted this pair of tweets:
I figured a few local people would enter, which would get people talking about the event and raising awareness, but also having fun with a creative hash tag game. It became much bigger than that.
For an hour or so, I was afraid that I'd get zero entries. A few people directly involved with the Showcase participated, but that was about it. Then some local people entered. A few of them didn't get it at first, because my < 140 description wasn't great; they described an existing movie in one short sentence, instead of saying how a movie could be shorter (which is a good idea too, and a contest we ran last year).
But then more and more people from London got what I was going for, and began to participate. They followed the formula from my dumb examples, by tweeting descriptions of movies with a shortening alteration to the plot.
E.g.,
"Boat misses iceberg." (@twitch)
"Space police find the droids they were looking for." (@eplatero)
"Guy drinks too much. Takes Advil and drinks water. Gets married. No hangover." (@chadder87)
Eventually, people from outside of London began participating. It became harder and harder to keep track of "entries" in our contest.
I posted an entry of my own, twisting the formula to spice it up a bit: "I think I've heard enough, Sam."
Either following suite, or because it was a natural evolution of the idea, more and more people began expressing the same #shorterfilms idea in this new way.
E.g.,
"It *is* a tumor." (@nachofiesta)
"Hey, these ARE the droids we're looking for!" (@FatherShaggy)
"Dude, there's my car." (@memachine)
#shorterfilms spread, and it evolved. Shorter film titles were another variation ("Schindler's Post-It Note"; @daveeech). Then, a few hours after it started, it was the second-most tweeted about thing in Canada, if trending topics are to be trusted.
So that's how a trending topic can start. I always wondered. Did #youcanthaveswag originate in a similar way?
As with most trending topics, by the end of the day, most of the entries were repeats or really bad, and some of the tweets were "wtf I dont understand teh #shorterfilms".
It was so cool to be involved with a "viral" trend right from the beginning to see how it evolved from a confusing contest to a country-wide sensation, with several mutations, then devolved right back to where it started before abruptly cutting off altogether. I've always been fascinated by how ideas spread, and Twitter gives a visibility into this process that was previously impossible.
Oh, and as an illustration of the difference between Twitter and Facebook: the same contest run on Facebook had five entries. Putting stuff on Facebook is like putting cold butter on toast; it doesn't spread.
So, that's how to be trendy. I now consider myself a social media expert. If you want to hire me for millions of dollars to promote your own crap, you should do that.
