News

Martian Chronicles, Part 03

Here's part three of the podcast of my story in progress, MARTIAN CHRONICLES, being written for Jonathan Strahan's YA Mars book, LIFE ON MARS.

MP3 Link

Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund auctioning off tuckerizations in forthcoming sf works, including one of mine

The Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund is a venerable institution that sends sf fans from North America to Europe and vice-versa, to bridge the world's fandoms (there are other funds that bring together fans from other parts of the world). Frank Wu, Anne KG Murphy and Brian Gray are fundraising for this year's fund, and they've solicited many writers -- Charlie Stross, Nalo Hopkinson, David Brin, Elizabeth Bear, Julie Czerneda and Mary Robinette Kowal and me! -- to donate "tuckerizations" in forthcoming works for a charity auction. Tuckerizing is the inclusion of a real person's name in a fictional piece (previous tuckerizations from charity auctions in my novels include General Graeme Sutherland in Little Brother, Suzanne Church in Makers, and Connor Prikkel in the forthcoming For the Win; my god-daughter Ada has also been tuckerized in my story "I, Robot" and in Makers).

TAFF is also auctioning off a first edition of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (!), and John Hersey's "Hiroshima."

It's a great cause, and great prizes that make killer gifts (how cool would it be for a kid to grow up with her name on a character in a wonderful novel?)

TAFF updatery!

(Thanks, Frank!)

WSJ on being a career activist

Nice, short profile in today's Wall St Journal about pursuing a career in the nonprofit sector:

For those who are interested in doing the same, he stresses the importance of volunteering for a cause first. "Your best bet is to join up with a cause pro bono or part time," he says. "You have to be realistic and see the value of each experience."

Among the various types of nonprofits, some of the most visible are community-based organizations that provide direct services such as Meals on Wheels, job-placement assistance and child care. Others are concerned with arts and culture, advocacy and social policy, scientific research or international outreach.

How do you go about targeting a nonprofit with which to work? Mr. Doctorow recommends approaching organizations as a donor would and looking carefully at their statistics. "Find out their ideology, how they pay their executives, how they administer their funds and how they handle crises," he says.

If your hope is to procure a full-time job, your odds will be better if you select a larger nonprofit. Staff roles at these organizations include the executive director, the director of development (fund raising), the director of programming and the director of marketing.

Data-viz for the text of Anda’s Game

John did a wicked-cool set of data-visualizations of the text of my story Anda's Game: "I picked terms for the trees that were relevant to the themes of the story - gold, for in-game items and Fahrenheit, which is a clan in the story."

Guardian column: Peter Mandelson is putting the Analogue Economy first

My latest Guardian column looks at Peter Mandelson's new "Digital Economy Bill," a sweeping piece of proposed British legislation that would give Mandelson broad powers to act as the Pirate-Finder General, with the implausible aim of reducing UK file-sharing by 70 percent in one year.

Mandelson argues that Britain's Digital Economy will be based on the contrafactual premise of a steady decrease in computer speed, drive capacity, technical competence, network versatility and network ubiquity. Of course, the real digital economy is in those British companies that figure out how to thrive whether or not copying occurs – companies that use networks to reduce their costs, reach larger customer bases, and provide services whose demand and profitability grow with network use, companies such as Last.fm or Moo.com.

These companies' businesses are inconceivable without the net, but they also risk being collateral damage in Mandelson's war on the British internet. Just increasing the liability for copyright infringement (and creating a duty to police user-submitted files for infringement) could bankrupt either company overnight. How would Moo sell business cards with your personal photos on them if they could be sued into oblivion should those photos turn out to infringe copyright?

Mandelson is standing up for the Analogue Economy, the economy premised on the no-longer-technically-true idea that copying is hard. Companies based on the outdated notion of inherent difficulty of copying must change or they will die. Because copying isn't hard. Copying isn't going to get harder. This moment, right now, 2009, this is as hard as copying will be for the rest of recorded history. Next year, copying will be easier. And the year after that. And the year after that.

Why does Mandelson favour the Analogue Economy over the Digital?

Why does Mandelson favour the Analogue Economy over the Digital?

The Guardian

To Go Boldly, WITH A LITTLE HELP plan on Starship Sofa podcast

The lovely folks at the Starship Sofa podcast recorded audio versions of my recent short story To Go Boldly (published in The New Space Opera 2), as well as the Publishers Weekly article describing my forthcoming short story collection With a Little Help.

MP3 Link

Wide-ranging interview with the Command Line podcast

Last week I sat down for an interview with the excellent Command Line podcast at Philcon and recorded a long talk on sundry subjects ranging from politics to creativity to all my forthcoming projects.

MP3 Link

How Wikipedia uses facts-about-facts to do the impossible

My latest Make: column, "Shortcut to Omniscience," talks about the cognitive shift that Wikipedians undergo in order to collaboratively write an encyclopedia, and how that kind of fundamental, subtle change enables networked groups of people to do things that were previously considered impossible.

Here's the thing about expertise: it's hard to define. It may be
possible for a small group of relatively homogenous people to agree on
who is and isn't an expert, but getting millions of people to do so is
practically impossible. The Britannica uses a learned editorial board to
decide who will write its entries and who will review them.

Wikipedia turns this on its head by saying, essentially, *Anyone can
write our entries but those entries should consist of material cited
from reliable sources.* While the Britannica says, *These facts are
true*, Wikipedia says, *It is true that these facts were reported by
these sources*. The Britannica contains facts, Wikipedia contains facts
about facts.

Shortcut to Omniscience

Shortcut to Omniscience

Make:

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