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They Tell "Stories"

At least since HyperCard debuted in the late 80s people have been talking about how electronic media enable “new forms of storytelling.” That phrase (along with “non-linear”) has introduced so much plotless tech-wanking, so much storytelling that wasn’t so much new as simply unbearable, that I tend to become hyper critical whenever I hear it.

That was my knives-out attitude when I visited “We Tell Stories,” a Penguin UK-sponsored site that riffs on classic novels with “new forms of story.” So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be… not entirely awful. Some of it was OK.

The site presents six pieces (or will when it’s done — the sixth comes out next week), each in a different format. The first, 21 Steps, I quite enjoyed. It’s nice and linear, like a story should be. So linear that it’s told via the info bubbles on a Google Map. This worked much better than I expected, though by the middle I felt like I was watching from the Goodyear Blimp.

Slice is told through two fake intertwined blogs. I’m so up to my eyeballs in what I think are real blogs that this just seemed like more of the same; I couldn’t really tell the difference between it and the tripe you come across on LiveJournal et. al. every day.

There wasn’t much new about the rest of them. Your Place and Mine was written live, which struck me as coming from the Automatic Writing/Spontaneous Prose tradition. Though to be fair, writing with an audience is an interesting idea, the full effect of which I couldn’t judge, since I missed the show, as it were. The writing itself is about as good as you might expect live, unedited writing to be.

Fairy Tales is a mad lib, plain and simple. And Hard Times is a Harper’s Index ripoff, but not as smart, or funny.

The lead designer of We Tell Stories said in Boing Boing that the best is yet to come: Mohsin Hamid is the author of the April 22nd installment, which might be worth checking out. As is 21 Steps, at least for a chapter or two. The rest? Read a book. Advice Penguin probably doesn’t mind.

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Who owns quodpot?

I’ve been following the court battle between J. K . Rowling/Warner Brothers and the owner of The Harry Potter Lexicon with mixed feelings. My first thought was that the idea that words can be owned by anyone is ridiculous.

But when the words in question are all original works, it changes the equation. And the fact that Rowling has hitherto been so open and supportive of Potter fans and some derivative works puts her in a different category than your typical litigious big media company. I’m inclined to think she should be the final arbiter of who presents Potter content, in any form.

The nearest analogy I can think of is the Star Wars universe, which contains books, movies, and many other derivative works, and which is tightly controlled by Lucas and his minions.

This raises the question of who owns all the content on Wordie. I never bothered to write terms of service, because they just seem dumb. No one reads them, and in the few instances of abuse that have arisen, I’ve used technical solutions, like blocking IP addresses, rather than legal ones. I did consider having a TOS which, in the small print, gave all rights to all content to Bill Shatner, or perhaps Abe Vigoda, and may do that retroactively. Thoughts?

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Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Someday maybe I’ll write another (or my first?) thoughtful post, full of original ideas explicated at length. But for now… more bookshelves! Presenting… the Elastico, by Arianna Vivenzio. Not suitable for the OED, but a shelf’s worth of Aubrey/Maturin novels would probably look swell.

Sadly, this appears to be a design study (go here and click on ‘projects,’ then ‘furniture’), and not for sale. Though you could probably make your own out of a truck’s fan belt.

Many thanks to Nancy for the link.

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Uroko House: Bookcase Bedroom

Like an architectural version of a text within a text, it’s the Bookcase Bedroom, aka the Uroko House. Appears to have been built inside a loft somewhere in Japan. I love that someone did this, but I think I’d want to build it against a wall with a window. Must be dark in there.

This photo-stealing site shows the building sequence nicely, but the original flickr set provides more photos. Thanks to pyeplant for the link.

Ok, Errata is now officially a blog about bookcases.

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Library Carts As Bookcases

Our new apartment, unlike our old, doesn’t have built-in bookcases. We were trying to decide between making or buying a bunch of plain vanilla wooden bookcases when kad had a stroke of genius: library carts, aka book trucks. Librarians use them to reshelve books, but no reason they can’t be the shelves.

We ordered a few standard-issue flat shelf carts from Vernon Library Supplies, though they’re also available with slanted shelves and in various other configurations. In addition to Vernon, School Outfitters and Brodart also have a bunch of different models.

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New Revision Schedule for the OED

The OED has made a major change to the way it issues online updates and revisions.

Historically OED updates have been released in sequential alphabetical blocks. The December 2007 update, for instance, ran from purpress to quit shilling. The March 2008 update operates on a different model. Rather than a alphabetical block, it consists of words with “significant lexical productivity” and words which will “benefit from immediate review within the dictionary.” In other words, it’s based on relevance, rather than alphabetical order.

Future updates, according to the OED, will alternate between the old and the new model, with the June 2008 update continuing the alphabetical revision from quits, and the September 2008 update switching back to relevance.

This strikes me an eminently sensible. It allow the OED to be (somewhat) timely, while also continuing the systematic alphabetical review of the entire dictionary. Way to go, OED.