Interesting articles I have been reading

1. Social network users have twice as many friends online as in real life: "In wider society, the ways in which friendships are formed and nurtured is changing with people recognising that they can develop deep, meaningful connections with others that they've never met, and may never meet."


2. The web allows stories to be spun in new ways: 'The simple truth about the book in the 21st century is that this is a golden age of reading and writing. As Umberto Eco puts it in his latest publication, This is Not the End of the Book (Secker Harvill), "the computer returns us to Gutenberg's galaxy; from now on, everyone has to read".'


3. Adam Curtis: Have computers taken away our power? 'If you think machines have liberated us, think again, says film-maker Adam Curtis. Instead we have lost our vision.' -- I'm looking forward to his new TV series on the matter.


4. Love in Literature: What do we talk about when we talk about love? Early poets reached for the sun and stars to describe their beloveds, while novelists have struggled to convey their 'wretched ordinariness'

A Life in Writing: Jennifer Egan

A life in writing: Jennifer Egan [Emma Brockes, The Guardian, Sat 7 May 2011]

'I really wanted to write a chaper in epic verse, because I thought epic verse and PowerPoint in one novel, come on. Irresistible!'


I am currently finishing off Look At Me and I am about to embark on A Visit from the Goon Squad next. Really enjoying reading her books and her style.

Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal – review

• • Tom Chatfield
  • The Observer, Sunday 1 May 2011

An American games guru makes a persuasive case for investing in the virtual world if we want to improve the real one


'We crave, she argues, "satisfying work" that allows us to be "optimistic about our own chances for success"; that involves "social connection"; and that allows us to feel "curiosity, awe and wonder".

This craving goes beyond simple definitions of happiness, moreover: it can also help us to work collectively, to maintain optimism against the odds, and to remember that we are part of something larger than ourselves.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/01/reality-broken-jane-mcgonigal-games

What effect has the internet had on finding love?

Online dating has become big business over the last decade. But does this mean we're looking for love in a different way?

• Aleks Krotoski
• The Observer, Sunday 1 May 2011

our proclivity for sharing personal things with virtual strangers – whether because of a heightened sense of anonymity or reduced social presence – leads to intensely electric interactions. These "hyper-personal" relationships, as Whitty describes them, can create problems for people already in a committed pair. "Online seduction is just a click away," says Professor Ben-Ze'ev. Great for cheap thrills, but potentially destructive for long-term relationships.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/01/online-dating-untangling-the-web

Even some of the most respected commentators in the land thought in 1997 that the internet was just a passing phase.

'Although barely more than a decade ago, the time she describes seems like another era, a forgotten world of boozy lunches and capacious expense accounts. ("We could have taught those MPs a thing or two about fiddling expenses," McAfee says, only half joking.) She thinks it is harder for us to remember relatively recent history than things that happened far longer ago. "I mean, can we imagine a world now without universal mobile phones? Can you remember trying to put coins into a call box? It wasn't so very long ago that there was no email. The changes have been so swift and they were mainly unforeseen. Even some of the most respected commentators in the land thought in 1997 that the internet was just a passing phase."'

Annalena McAfee: 'I see myself as a recovering journalist' in The Observer today.

Also, James Gleick's latest book The Information sounds interesting. It looks at the history of information, the work of Claude Shannon (maths man, came up with the term 'bit') and the state of play today with 'the torrent of data and information that now engulfs us'.


For more of that sort of thing, read The internet at 40.

Thought For The Day

'Writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock' - Ann Beatie (via Francesca Rhydderch & The Paris Review)




Update:

This week I have mostly been reading books and taking long thinking walks, going to art galleries and scribbling things down in notebooks. I took a pile of books out of Cardiff Central Library. Books like

You Are Not A Gadget. A Manifesto. - Jaron Lanier
The Cult of the Amateur. How blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the rest of today's user-generated media are killing our culture and economy - Andrew Keen (which of course I shall blog about)
Cyburbia. The Dangerous Idea That's Changing How we Live and Who we Are. - James Harkin
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. - Jonathan Zittrain
The Shallows. How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember - Nicholas Carrhis

Can you guess what it is yet? This novel?

I've also read some other books. Books that include Cherry by Matt Thorne, The Rough Guide to the Future (because all these big non-fiction books seemed daunting, and this was an easy read introduction/revision of what I know about predictions for future technology),  Against The Machine by Lee Siegal, some cyberpunk because I'm interested in how we probably now live in a cyberpunk era, and some other stuff including newspapers and the Sunday Times winning short story. I read an article on David Foster Wallace was really interesting also, especially in light of this Guardian article on what writers leave behind in a digital age. Thoughts have been spinning around my head about how nothing is deleted on the internet and what that means for society and the individual, the longevity of the artist, life, death and what it means to be human. Nothing too big, paranoia inducing or existential then. Excellent. I'm going to sleep well writing this, I just know it.

PS. Talking of David Foster Wallace, his widow is interviewed in today's Observer.

I would like to thank the Academi...

...or rather the newly branded shiny fabulous people that are behind Literature Wales and the fabulous panel members for Literature Wales Writers’ Bursaries 2011-12: Katie Gramich (Chair), Catrin Beard, Catherine Fisher, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Amanda Hopkinson and Idris Reynolds. Thanks very much all.

Yes the clever people at Literature Wales have awarded me money to take time off from all the other pay-the-rent journalism, PR etc. work I do to immerse myself in writing The Novel. My very first novel. I shall be posting updates of what I am reading and thinking about and how all the writing process is going or not going here. 


Otherwise, in social networking and journalism terms I shall be much quieter than usual for a spell. You will still see me performing here and there but otherwise enjoy the peace.