Meanland essays now online
JA
July 28
Four great Meanland essays are now available online for your longform reading leisure.
McKenzie Wark writes on publishing A Hacker Manifesto and the beginnings of a copygift economy:
I wrote a book once about intellectual property. Basically, I’m against it. As I wrote in this book, called ‘A Hacker Manifesto’: ‘Information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains.’ The digital—an age-old property of information—is an idea whose time has finally come. The relation between digitally encoded information and the material in which you find it—the page, the screen, the disc, the drive—is now perfectly arbitrary. Pretty much the same information could be on this page or that disc or that website. A weird ontological property of information, something in its very being, is now fully active in the world—and causing all kinds of trouble. Not least for authors. Not least for me.
Books as physical objects are easily controlled—they need to be printed, sold and shipped. And the entire book industry is based on that premise of control, extracting revenue at key gateways. Replacing the physical object takes away the existing means to exercise that control, allowing disruptive new possibilities—and non-incumbent players are often better equipped to take advantage of those than traditional stakeholders. Resistance to the introduction of e-books is as much about the struggle for business survival as any romantic notions of ink and paper.
Emmett Stinson gives us the lowdown on book piracy and associated myths:
Debates over piracy usually focus on the validity of current law, the ethics of accessing copyrighted goods illegally, or the virtues of open source, copyleft, creative commons or similar ‘free’ notions of intellectual property.1 At the heart of the argument, however, lies a purely technological issue: the nature of digital data. The chief benefit of digitised information is that it can be easily and virtually instantaneously duplicated. Ethical and legal condemnations of copyright pirates often miss this point: the pirates are simply utilising the inherent qualities of digital technology. As McKenzie Wark has aptly noted, ‘In its reproducibility, the digital is always neither theft nor property, unless the artifice of the law makes it so.’
Margaret Simons examines all that is exciting and frightening about reading in a digital era:
Once upon a time teenagers dominated the household telephone talking with their friends. Now the phone is silent and Facebook is their constant companion. My children are both reading and writing – and even participating in the invention of a new language, as they lol and soz and rofl away. They write their own narratives, with no time or distance between author and audience. And, for better or worse, their words live on, a permanent record of who they were and what they said during the long, hot summer of 2009.
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Comments
14 Nov 11 at 17:26
For Immediate Release Hares & Hyenas celebrates 20 years with 20 events for Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival (15 Jan to 5 Feb 2012) On 23 December 2011, Hares & Hyenas celebrates 20 years as an iconic Australian bookshop. During its lifetime to date it has been nomadic, with shops in South Yarra (1991– 2006), Fitzroy (1993–97), Collingwood (1997–99) and now back in Fitzroy (since 2006), where it has opened a café with plans for a bar opening in the new year. The shop has witnessed and responded to major upheavals in the publishing and bookselling worlds, with a massive rise in gay, lesbian and transgender publishing in the 1990s, booms and busts in economic spheres, as publishing houses opened and closed, and a raft of booksellers falling foul of the whims of the book-buying public. Through it all, the shop has not only maintained its market share of queer bookselling in Australia, but has continued to support and develop literary culture, presenting over 350 literary events and hundreds of writers in its 20-year history. It has watched as writers it has presented at the beginning of their careers have gone on to become recognised for their work nationally, and sometimes internationally. With queer bookshops closing all over the world, Hares & Hyenas is not only one of the longest running shops in the world, it is also rightly considered to be one the finest. Its collection is particularly strong in its breadth of transgender, youth, education, sexuality, gender and theory titles. It is proud of the depth of back titles, sourcing books from independent and mainstream publishers from across the world. Its website is one of the world’s best queer book sites. For several years during the mid to late 1990s, Hares & Hyenas produced the literary magazine, Screaming Hyena, with 13 editions distributed across Australia, the US and Canada. Hares & Hyenas celebrates it 20 years of developing queer literary culture with 20 readings, events and performances for the 2012 Midsumma Festival. It features writers, artists and performers from its entire history, and a range of new writers from across the country. Featuring a range of book launches, readings and performances, highlights include the return of landmark or long running events from the past including Rapid Fire, Novel Conversations and Julie Peters’ I Dream Therefore I Am, alongside more recent additions Bi & Poly, Word is Out Poetry Slam, the Deaf and Disaibility event Quippings, and new events around themes of Melbourne, life stories, youth, Aboriginal authors, sex and gender diverse, slash fiction, sex writing, multimedia and two nights devoted to works in progress. Special performance nights include programming by bryan Andy, Bumpy Favel, Kath Duncan, Urszula Dawkins, Jules Wilkinson, Crusader Hillis and Rowland Thomson. Guest artists include Joan Nestle, Kim Westwood, Andrea Goldsmith, Christos Tsiolkas, Geoffrey Knight, Benjamin Law, Steve Dow, Kelly Gardiner, Benn Bennett, Noel Tovey, Jack Charles, Inez Baranay, Moira Finucane, Jackie Smith, Sally Goldner, Jesse Blackadder, Maude Davey, Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Margaret Vandeleur, Merrilee Moss, Tom Cho, Neal Drinnan and Sophie Cunningham. For interviews with owners, writers or curators, or images and event details please contact: Rowland Thomson or Crusader Hillis | tel (03) 9495 6589 | mob 0425 791 204 | email wordisout@hares-hyenas.com.au |
...06 Mar 12 at 11:10
I am seeking the edition and number of Nonie Sharp’s review/commentary on Brian Keon-Cohen’s ‘Mabo in the Courts’ (ASP) I cannot find it inVol 70 No 4 – which is where yr website seems to suggest it IS. I’d be obliged for some help here! RO'G.
...06 Mar 12 at 11:15
Hi Rosemary, Nonie’s piece is only published online, and isn’t in any hardcopy edition of Meanjin, so this is the only place to find it! Hope that clears up the confusion,
Zora
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