The End of Big – a wake-up call #EOB

“Here Comes Everybody” wrote Clay Shirky, tech evangelist, five years ago. He’s a cheerleader for the radical empowerment offered by the internet  - new voices, direct access, more ideas, a swirl of intellectual and political ferment. 

Here comes another book on the impact of the internet which takes the next step.  Nicco Mele’s “The End of Big” pithily summarises the impact of what he terms “radical connectivity – our breathtaking ability to send vast amounts of data instantly, constantly and globally.”

But from the preview extracts I’ve read, it poses sobering questions about what happens next, when Big Institutions get undercut. You know the drill. Free blogs undercut paid news. Online protest, old-fashioned politics. Music sharing, record labels.  You Tube uploads, the film studios. 3D printing, traditional supply chains. And so on.  As Nicco Mele puts it, “radical connectivity is toxic to conventional power structures”.

But if and when the big guys have gone…  Mele asks us to look harder at what we will lose.  ”We can’t fetishize technology and say ‘to hell with our institutions’ without suffering terrible consequences.” 

A broken neck and a brilliant memoir. #Half-Life

When you first meet Joshua Prager, you see his stick. Then you see the smile, the warmth in his face, and the light in his eyes. And the stick doesn’t matter.

But in his memoir, of course it does. It symbolises another life entirely from the one he meant to lead.  

What good is Twitter? A report worth reading by @nadjasnews

“Social media cannot be outsourced to a web team. It’s every reporter’s job.” How and why is the subject of “What Good is Twitter?” – an academic report from Austrian business correspondent Nadja Hahn @nadjasnews. I don’t know her, but I like her style.

Will Pink Floyd ever reunite? And more.

A few days ago I revisited The Dark Side of the Moon by sitting down with drummer Nick Mason in his North London workspace – home to drum-kits, posters celebrating “24 heures du Mans” through the years, and a full size racing Ferrari…

Listen Here

High fives

Quick thought.  I just read Jill Ruddock‘s “high-five” rules for good health (via an Evening Standard piece on health reform). Her book, “The Second Half of Your Life”, is aimed at women, but the memo works all round.

- Keep in touch with family and friends.

- Think of others.

- Cultivate a passion.

- Exercise

- Eat well

It reminds me of  Anthony Clare’s Seven Steps to Happiness.

Who cares if cliches are cliches, if they keep you going stronger for longer?

When it’s not good to be followed

I love talking on Twitter. I love being followed on Twitter. But I’m realising that more doesn’t always mean better.  Which is why I’ve just cut my numbers.  

Am I behind the curve here? I wonder how many of you already act to filter out fake follows.  

I noticed on Tuesday that something odd was going on.

Is it really so bad to be American? On “Time to Start Thinking”.

Is it really so bad to be American? 

“Faith in America’s promise is at the heart of America’s story”. 

There’s not much evidence of that faith in Edward Luce’s epic analysis of “America and the Spectre of Decline”.  But as the title has it, “Time to Start Thinking”.  Right now, Obama and the Republicans aren’t thinking, but fighting over the looming fiscal cliff.  Luce urges them to the long view. By 2020, China might overtake the USA as the world’s biggest economy.  

It’s an excellent read: clear, crisp, packed full of original interviews.  It matters, because as Luce quotes Samuel Huntingdon, America “can only be a disappointment because it is also a hope”.

The book focusses on three key disappointments –  in manufacturing, innovation, and education. 

The Growth of the Virtual Campus

It’s come for the journalist. It’s come for the publisher. Now it’s coming for the lecturer too – the bracing blast of online competition is sweeping through the campus.

Is nothing sacred in the world of those who deal in words?

Of course not. Good thing too.

I took a class with Clay Shirky at Harvard which riffed on his classic book on the internet revolution, “Here Comes Everybody”.

He’s one of those thinkers whose essays land like a stone in still water – setting off ripples every which way. I particularly enjoyed his latest blogpost for personal reasons. I’ve had the great luck to go to Oxford and Harvard, but the single best course I ever did was the Arts Foundation at the Open University.

A dozen summer books

All those words drunk deep along with dusty sunshine, on the red tile verandah of a whitewashed house.

“.. Grasshoppers rattling like dry paper in hot weeds…”

I sat outside each morning to feel the sunlight slide round the side of the house and watch a slinky litter of kittens play in the almond trees below.

“… They were people running from the past, who didn’t look back at much if they could help it, and whose whole life always lay somewhere in the offing…”

Our Virtual Bookclub

The headlines are gloomy.  The newspaper industry is contracting; print publishing is suffering at the hands of Amazon’s low prices and the e-book alternative.  There is a justified pessimism about the traditional mechanisms of delivery.

And it’s thrown up very big questions.  What about the appetite for news and the appetite for reading?  What’s the impact of our expectation, in the early 21st century,  that it’s not just comment but content that comes free?

The gloomy wisdom, again, is that serious Reithian news provision is suffering. It costs money to staff foreign bureaux, to cover town halls, to mount a lengthy investigation. It’s easier to offer news-lite, news you can use, news that shades into light entertainment. And as for reading, some of the most remarkable growth is in the softer options, like teen reads for adults,  and guilty pleasures, like Fifty Shades of Grey on your Kindle on the tube.

But what do we make of the silver lining? These comments are purely anecdotal, no science.  I’m just enjoying the new enthusiasm about reading that seems to have been sparked by our new ability to share.

All the world’s a virtual bookclub. And anyone can start a conversation.

A blogpost book review gets an echo – whether it’s picked up by algorithm or another blogger with a human face.

Hashtags on twitter can create a global bookclub that forms and disperses within hours, like a literary flashmob.

A recommendation brings rewards: if at the end of a Kindle read, I post an appreciative tweet, a fellow-reader’s find often bounces right back – “if you liked that, you’ll love this” – or “try this one, it’s much better!”

Here are just three of my  online discoveries; I’d like to know yours.

A hashtag - #Fridayreads. 

A website – Brainpickings. 

And a weekly email from The Browser. 

They’ve made my reading broader, more prolific, more fun. And so far, they’re all free. Though I’ve enjoyed The Browser’s eclectic offerings of long reads so much, I’ve just responded to their polite invitation to become a subscriber for more.

It’s as if we’re all wandering within an enormous virtual bookshop, not as strangers wrapped up inside our own heads, but neighbours immersed in a hum of civilised conversation.

If you love to read – and like to make connections – this is one way in which you’ll never be lonely again.

I’m not ignoring the hard part – the harnessing of that enthusiasm to a willingness to pay the price which keeps authors (and journalists) in business.  I’m trying to see the bigger picture.

Could the rise of apps like The Browser lead to the end of my local library, or make it more likely that my child will get the library habit?  Does a rising tide float all boats? Or am I failing to see what’s struggling to survive : not waving, but drowning?