The very last episode of TVOntario’s Search Engine’s just went out (MP3), and I’m honored to say that it’s an interview with me. I started out with Search Engine when it was a broadcast on CBC radio, and I’ve been pleased to appear on the show several times since it moved to TVO. Host Jesse Brown is thinking hard about what he’ll do next, and he’s created a mailing list for people who want to know where he lands. He promises he’ll send exactly one message to the list and then destroy it.
Monthly Archives::
June 2012
Here’s a podcast of my recent Guardian column, Google admits that Plato’s cave doesn’t exist:
Google’s official communiques tell the world that SEO isn’t necessary – so long as you “make great content”, you’ll get higher rankings. The implication is that Google has discovered a mathematical model of relevance, a way of measuring some objective criteria that allows a computer to score and compare the relevance of different web-pages.
But there is no such mathematics. Relevance is a subjective attribute. The satisfaction you experience in regards to a search-results page is generated by your mind, and it reflects the internal state of your neurons just as much as it reflects the external reality of the results.
A magazine’s editor-in-chief looks at her table of contents as it is being formed through the month, moving things around, commissioning new items, deleting things and shifting others to greater prominence.
The judgments she makes are aesthetic ones. They reflect her distinctive expertise and vision for the publication, a vision and expertise that is honed from month to month by feedback from readers and colleagues, sales figures, public review, and pageviews in the online edition. Magazines rise and fall based on their e-i-cs, and a change in leadership can utterly transform the experience of reading the magazine.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes “Beer Jewelry” and “Odd Musical Furniture.” He often “meditates while reading cookbooks.”
I did a series of interviews with Intel Futurist Brian David Johnson, as part of my involvement in The Tomorrow Project, which resulted in my writing Knights of the Rainbow Table. Here they are!
Supreet Kaur made this delightful C# remix of a pivotal scene in Makers, as part of the coursework for a Game Design degree in London. The remix scored an A+ — congrats, Supreet!
Supreet Kaur made this delightful C# remix of a pivotal scene in Makers, as part of the coursework for a Game Design degree in London. The remix scored an A+ — congrats, Supreet!
Nemo Folkitz has graciously undertaken a German fan-translation of my short-short story Printcrime. The PDF is here, and the text is below.
more
My latest Guardian column is “Disorganised but effective: how technology lowers transaction costs,” a piece about a new kind of group that has been enabled by the Internet — a group with no formal structure that can still get stuff done, like Occupy and Anonymous.
The things that one person can do define what is “human”. The things that transcend the limits of an individual – building a skyscraper, governing a nation, laying a telecommunications network, writing an operating system – are the realm of the super-human.
The most profound social revolutions in human history have arisen whenever a technology comes along that lowers transaction costs. Technologies that makes it cheaper to work together lower the tax on super-human powers.
Language (which allowed for explicit communication), writing (which allowed for record-keeping), literacy (which allowed for communication at a distance and through time) and all the way up to assembly lines, telegraphs, telephones, cryptography (which lowers transaction costs by reducing the amount of energy you have to expend to keep attackers out of your coordination efforts), computers, networks, mobile phones and beyond.
Decreasing transaction costs means that the powerful can do more. If you’ve already organised a state or criminal enterprise or church with you at the top, it means that you’ve figured out how to harvest and distribute resources effectively enough to maintain your institutional stability.
Disorganised but effective: how technology lowers transaction costs
Click for the huge, full version
I recently turned in the manuscript for Homeland, the sequel to my 2008 YA novel Little Brother. Tor’s going to be bringing it out next February, 2013. I’ve got two more books coming in the meantime: Rapture of the Nerds (with Charlie Stross) and Pirate Cinema (a YA novel). (All three will be CC licensed)
I am absolutely delighted with this cover — a matched set with the cover for Little Brother!
Click for the huge, full version
I recently turned in the manuscript for Homeland, the sequel to my 2008 YA novel Little Brother. Tor’s going to be bringing it out next February, 2013. I’ve got two more books coming in the meantime: Rapture of the Nerds (with Charlie Stross) and Pirate Cinema (a YA novel). (All three will be CC licensed)
I am absolutely delighted with this cover — a matched set with the cover for Little Brother!
