Links for 23-10-2007
Snooping on school-kids redux, in praise of the purple cow, authors and markets and jackets (oh my!), the MPAA took my haxxor away, Gaviotas – the Colombian economic miracle village …
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1 – Microchip gives staff the lowdown on pupils
“The devices are used to monitor pupils’ movements and register their arrival in class on the teacher’s computer. Supply teachers can also be alerted if a student is likely to misbehave.” Understandable, perhaps, but still extremely wrong.
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“What does a future world of photovoltaic material look like? How do smart walls, “Watt Torrent” power-sharing networks, and electric hyperbikes sound to you?” Cascio puts on his thinking cap.
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3 – Everything in the music industry is up! (except those plastic discs)
“… it’s a big mistake to equate the major labels and their plastic disc business with the industry as a whole. Indeed, when you stand back and look at all of music, things don’t look so bad at all.” Indeed.
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4 – In Praise of the Purple Cow
“The world is full of boring stuff — brown cows — which is why so few people pay attention. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service.” Seth Godin.
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5 – Marrying authors to their market
“The science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) genre is as complex and diverse as fiction itself, and often, for a publisher in this market, finding new ways to appeal to the correct audience can be a challenge of epic proportions.”
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6 – Exclusive: I Was a Hacker for the MPAA
“Promises of Hollywood fame and fortune persuaded a young hacker to betray former associates in the BitTorrent scene to Tinseltown’s anti-piracy lobby, according to the hacker.” Might make a good movie, this one! lol
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7 – Russia’s Space City Frozen in Time
“Rockets still pierce the heavens in a halo of smoke during launches, and engineers and military men still crack open bottles of vodka to celebrate a successful launch. What has changed are the passengers.”
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8 – This village could save the planet
“How two men plan to extend the ecological miracle that is Gaviotas, Colombia, across the rest of the Third World.” This could be amazing, if nothing goes wrong.
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9 – 7 Can’t-Miss Ways To Kick-Start The Writing Habit
“Write ‘crap’ without feeling guilty … Professional writers write even when nothing but crap comes out because they know that it’s part of the journey to getting the real gems.”
October 28th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Hi Paul–
A belated thanks for the link to CNN’s Gaviotas article. It reminded me of my story “Transcendence Express” in a lot of ways.
Getting back to your review ( http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/magazine-review-hub-issue-2-winter-2007/ ) of that story, you mentioned that:
“My only complaint would be that there is a lack of opposition and conflict to Liona’s plans; circumstance and bad luck provide a few stumbling blocks, but the reader would have more sympathy with her if there were another character actively working to prevent her mission from succeeding.”
To which I refrained from commenting, because it is usually quite bad form for an author to criticise a review of his story. Now, since you posted the link to the Gaviotas article (I wasn’t aware of Gaviotas when I wrote the story, BTW), I would like to say that what Liona set up was only just the very *beginning* of the changes to come.
It took the people in Gaviotas three decades to achieve what they did, and it will take quite some time to *implement* the ideas that Liona’s class are firing off, as well. That’s why she’s doing it with *young* people.
I didn’t want to use the old ‘protagonist-overcomes-antagonist’ plot, not only because it’s so old hat, but mostly because the *real* enemies to overcome are poverty, barren lands and other environmental, physical and social circumstances. In my viewpoint these are much more formidable than — say — a given opponent like a local warlord, an evil imperialist, or some such.
As it is, Liona has only sown the seeds of change, and then leaves when she thinks the foothold is secure enough, to sow those seeds elsewhere.
The *real* change, with all its pitfalls and obstacles, is still to come, and I may indeed write a sequel that starts to tackle that: I have the rough ideas and plot for it, but lack time.
Anyway, thanks again for the link!