Short Video: Disconnect to Connect

Here is a short "commercial" from Thailand, titled "Disconnect to Connect."

It highlights our collective addition to gadgets, and then points the way to the joy of human-to-human (H2H) genuine interactions and experience.

http://www.wimp.com/disconnectconnect/


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Are The New Gadgets Cutting-Edge Tools or Dangerous Distractions ?

This article from the New York Times highlights the raging battle between the Internet and the Book.
Most young people today are choosing the Internet, and the many gadgets that access the Net.

The great problem of our era is the problem of education and technology:
How can use our advanced communication technology for education, enjoyment, personal growth and a deep connection with others --
instead of burying ourselves in the lonely emptiness of cyberspace ?


The image in this post is from the WikiMedia commons, here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Addicttv.jpg

and reproduced with a CopyLeft license.

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Video: Tim O'Reilly Talks at Publishing Point

O'reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly gives a talk, on Publishing Point, about publishing, technology and innovation. Watch the first of 7 parts here; the other parts are easily accessed from the right-hand menu.

http://publishingpoint.ning.com/video/in-conversation-with-tim


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Just Published: 50 Benefits of Ebooks (2010 Edition)

50Benefits of Ebooks: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution has just been published in a revised and expanded edition by Zorba Press. The PDF and EPUB editions are available now; in the next weeks Zorba will release the paperback edition and other ebook formats including .AZW (for the Kindle) and an EPUB for the iPad sold at the iTunes iBookstore.


Learn more or buy the book at the Zorba site:
http://www.zorba.us/?page_id=142


50 Benefits of Ebooks
A Thinking Person’s Guide to The Digital Reading Revolution
Edition: October 2010
by Michael Pastore
Published by Zorba Press, ISBN: 978-0-927379-17-5
Companion blog site: www.EpublishingTimes.com
Paperback, 368 pages, Indexed, $ 20
Ebook versions (PDF, .AZW, and EPUB): $ 3.99

A revised and expanded book about ebooks, published today, is packed with information about how to understand, and enjoy, the digital reading revolution. The book, soon to be released as a 368-page paperback, is first being released in ebook editions — which contain all the same information as the paperback — yet sell for less than four dollars.

50 Benefits of Ebooks is a lively introduction to the brave new worlds of ebooks and electronic publishing. This revised edition (at 66,000 words) is 25% larger than the September 2009 edition, and contains ten new chapters. The ebook is priced at $ 3.99.

Written for a wide audience — from ebook newcomers to ebook experts — in 36 lively chapters, the book explores five essential aspects of ebook reading, writing and publishing:

A. Benefits of Ebooks and Paper Books
B. Reading Ebooks
C. Ebooks for Authors and Publishers
D. The Value of Reading; and
E. The Education of An Ebooklover (resources)

Ebook newcomers will find all the basics here. And ebook experts can debate and debunk the author’s wild predictions for the rosy and thorny future of ebooks, by reading the essay, “Reading the Future: Ten Tremendous Trends in 2011.” Authors will discover tips, tricks and resources for ebook publishing; and library professionals will enjoy the book’s glossary, index, links to leading-edge ebook sites, and sections about how and why ebooks are good for libraries.

A new chapter included in this edition is Pastore's essay The Depths: How Ebooks Can Fix Your Concentration, Increase Your Intelligence and Renew Your Distracted Brain.

“Ebooks are changing everything,” says author Michael Pastore. “We are now at the dawn of a seismic shift in the way that books are published, distributed, read — and even written. And the epublishing industry is changing so quickly and dramatically, even an updated edition of this book, published yearly, can hardly keep up. ”

One of the most significant benefits of ebooks is ecological: Ebooks are good for our environment. Pastore writes:

“How many trees are used to produce one week’s worth of paper in a Sunday New York Times newspaper? … One weekly issue of the New York Times consumes 75,000 trees. … One year of Sunday papers produced by the New York Times is responsible for the destruction and consumption of more than 3,900,000 trees.”

At the book’s companion website, the author urges: “Don’t buy the paperback. The 368-page paperback edition is $ 20, while the ebook version cost 4 dollars, saves trees, and contains all the same content as the paperback — except the paper!”

The ebook editions will be released in three formats: PDF, AZW and EPUB. The PDF format is primarily designed for reading on desktop and laptop computers. The AZW format is for the Amazon Kindle. The new EPUB format is primarily for iPads, iPhones, iPods, and a number of PDAs and many ereading devices. “The EPUB format is the next big thing,” says Pastore. “It’s quickly becoming the industry standard, capable of being read on more and more software programs and hardware devices.”

Pastore is a strong proponent for the new EPUB standard for ebooks; and an equally strong opponent of DRM (Digital Rights Management), which he claims is a disservice to ebook consumers. He writes: “Ebooks were never meant to be hidden like the lost city of Atlantis, buried like the treasures of Monte Cristo, or guarded like the gold in Fort Knox.”

The author loves paper books, and hopes that they are never completely replaced by their electronic progeny. But Pastore is optimistic about the future of ebooks. He writes: “Every day, ebooks are growing in use, in sales, and in significance. After a dozen false starts over the past ten years, the Digital Reading Revolution is here at last.”

To buy the new book or ebook, readers can visit the the Zorba Press website for the book's web page:
http://www.zorba.us/?page_id=142

Release Schedule:

Available Now: ebook in PDF (from the Publisher's website)

Available Now: ebook in EPUB (from the Publisher's website)

Available Now: ebook in EPUB (for the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone) from the iTunes iBookStore

October 21: ebook in AZW for the Kindle

November 1: paperback (368 pages; 66,000 words; 6"x9")

About the Author, Michael Pastore

Michael Pastore is the editorial director of Zorba Press. He is the author of more than 20 books: novels and non-fiction works on various themes. His articles and essays have appeared in dozens of publications nationwide. He edits the blogs EpublishersWeekly (.com), and actively supports the causes of reading great books, independent publishing, and Amercia’s transition to a sustainable society. Currently he lives, cycles, reads and writes in Ithaca, New York.

About Zorba Press

A small, independent publisher in Ithaca, New York, Zorba publishes works by Michael Pastore, and a number of other authors including Dorothee Krahn, Rae Foley, Alicia Dattner, Lisette Rimer, Dr. Thanasis Maskaleris, and renowned author and film-maker, Michael Tobias.

For more information, contact Victoria Weise via this email: ebook AT care2.com

#

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Ebook Stress Test — How Healthy Is Your Ebook ?

Ebook Stress Test —
How Healthy Is Your Ebook ?

[Author's note: This is an expanded and revised version of an article that I posted in December 2009. &mdashMP]

Not all ebooks are created equal. There is much debate about ebook prices; there should be more discussion about ebook value. A healthy ebook is worth much more than a feature-reduced ebook. Locked by DRM, an ebook in the EPUB format can be read on a device made by one company only (or at most, on a small number of devices). An EPUB ebook with no DRM can be read on almost every device.

Before you buy an ebook, use this simple guide to evaluate the quality of the "ebosystem" — the ebook ecosystem. This includes two essential parts: the ebook (the digital file itself), and the ebook reading system of your choice: iPad, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony Reader, iPhone, cell phone, Calibre, WattPad, Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), Google Editions, reading on the web via BookWorm, and many more.

This guide is designed to be customized. You can (and should) add your own questions (and delete mine), based on the ebook's features that are important to you. ("Is the ebook free from geographical restrictions?" is a question that might matter very much to persons living outside the USA.)

You can give different weight to the questions that matter most to you. For example, if "no DRM" is very important to you, give 50 points instead of 10 for ebooks that are DRM-free.

The purpose of this guide is to educate consumers (and, unfortunately, publishers) about good and not-so-good practices in ebook publishing.


For example, the University of Michigan Press recently announced an ebook "rental" program (http://www.press.umich.edu/ebooks/index.jsp). Here are their prices for one of their books, titled "The End of History" (which answers the question of when I would rent an ebook instead of buying one):

—Buy (a Paperback): $ 29.95
—Buy (a PDF ebook with DRM, Adobe Digital Editions): $ 28.95
—Rent for 180 Days (a PDF ebook with DRM, Adobe Digital Editions): $ 22.00
—Rent for 30 Days: (a PDF ebook with DRM, Adobe Digital Editions): $ 12.00

This is what I would call a "not-so-good" publishing practice: the buyer does not get good value. (In addition to the time limit, the rental ebooks have restrictions on printing, whereas the purchased ebooks allow unlimited printing.) I would happily buy this ebook if it were offered as an unencrypted EPUB for $ 9.99 or less.

Early in my philosophy training, I was taught a basic principle: "Can does not imply ought." Because we possess the technological capability to do something, does not necessarily mean that it is good and useful to do it. In theory, it is a clever trick to build a "time bomb" into the ebook that makes it self-destruct (unable to be read) after any time period that you choose; in practice, this is a very foolish idea. The "rental ebook" is nothing more than a euphemism for the "perishable ebook." Healthy ebooks endure.

Take the Stress Test For A Healthy Ebook

In the sample questions below:
Score 10 points for each YES.
Score 0 points for each NO.

If the answer is not a clear "Yes" or "No", then you can assign partial points, from 1 point to 9 points,.

One reason to give more than 0 points for a "NO" answer: if the ebook is not in the EPUB format, but can be easily converted into the EPUB format, then that score might be upgraded from a 0 to a 9.

The higher the point total, the healthier the ebook. Like Lemuel Gulliver bound by the 6-inch-tall Lilliputians, the healthy ebook is not tied down by publishers' restrictions. Therefore the healthy ebook offers more flexibility and more benefits to ebook buyers and readers.

1. Is EPUB the ebook's format ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

2. Does the ebook have no DRM ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

3. Can the ebook be read aloud ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

4. Can the ebook be shared ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

5. Is the ebook's price $ 9.99 or less ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

6. Is it a non-shoppable ebook (a "shoppable ebook" contains links inside that encourage readers to click and buy various items) ? Does the ebook contain advertisements? Is the story filled with "weldons" (paid product placements) ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

7. Is the ebook optimized for study, allowing students to print, highlight text, process text (cut, copy, paste) and add bookmarks and annotations ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

8. Is the ebook available for purchase only, not for rent ? (If purchased, it must not contain an expiration date).
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

9. Has the ebook been efficiently edited ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

10. Is the ebook well-designed ?
10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 0

Add your own questions, and create your own criteria for evaluating the health of your ebooks and ebook ecosystems.

—Michael Pastore is a novelist, and the author and/or editor of a number of non-fiction books including The Zorba Anthology of Love Stories, and 50 Benefits of Ebooks: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution. A new (2010) edition of 50 Benefits of Ebooks will be released by Zorba Press on September 8, 2010.

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A Protest Against the Commercialization of Ebooks

Acolorful advertisement at the top of the New York Times (online) today asks us to click to read "The First Shoppable Children's Storybook."

I hope it is also the last.

In an ebook, the marriage of videos and commerce creates a monstrous mutation, not a genuine reading experience that should bring delight and wisdom. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.

I am not against videos in ebooks (although they should not be called "books"); I am not against commerce, done with balance and integrity. But these two things together, inside a book for kids -- takes us backward into a world obsessed by consumerism and overconsumption, an approach to life that has been the cause of so many of our present troubles and crises.

You can read the ebook online, and then judge for yourself:

http://www.ralphlauren.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=4357818&camp=KidsStorybook_NYTimes

Technology can be used to enhance our lives, or to diminish them — here is an example of an ebook that I could happily do without.

— Michael Pastore, author
50 Benefits of Ebooks


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The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (book review)

The Shallows:
What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
by Nicholas Carr
Published by W.W. Norton
Hardcover, 276 pages, June 2010
ISBN: 978-0393072228

It takes great courage, as well as insight, to stand up against prevailing practices, to shout or whisper to the fad-following crowd that the way we are living is unhealthy for us.

More than 50 years ago, Aldous Huxley, interviewed by a cigarette-smoking Mike Wallace, warned:


“We must not be caught by surprise by advances in technology.”

Other eloquent warnings about technology's dangerous side effects have come to us from the works of Lewis Mumford, Erich Fromm, Neil Postman, Sven Birkerts, Mark Slouka, Theodore Roszak, and Bill Joy. A famous debate about this issue, "What Are We Doing Online", (from a 1995 edition of Harper's Magazine), thoughtfully explores the Internet's benefits and harms.

The latest voice speaking against the sacred cow of our technologies comes from Nicholas Carr, in his extraordinary book "The Shallows." Carr is not a Luddite; he uses technology capably, and acknowledges his appreciation of the Net. Carr, however, is concerned that there are losses along with the gains. Thanks to the Internet — the most sophisticated and useful tool for communications ever invented — we are losing our ability to concentrate and to think deeply. Carr cites indisputable evidence to show that the passive activity of using the Internet for short, skimming searches and shallow reading, is creating measurable changes in the structure and development of our brains.

Musing on the classic passage by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose calm reflections were interrupted by the strident noise from a passing locomotive, Carr writes:
"The problem today is that we're losing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we're in perpetual locomotion."

Like Neil Postman in Technopoly, Carr shapes his book not to point to solutions, but to illuminate the problems -- and he has done this work expertly. Despite his confessions that his powers of attention have been diminished by the Net, Carr's book is always thoughtful, and often captivating and profound. He cites Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL the computer shows more feelings than the human characters. Carr's concerns, that begin with the loss of our powers of attention and concentration, conclude with worries that too much Internet and too little reflection may lead to a loss of our humanness.

We need computers, we need the Internet, we need quick access to the latest information — but we need it in the right amounts. All told, The Shallows is a superb starting point for the kinds of face-to-face discussions that might help us to break our collective addiction to screens, and to renew our interest in the slower, more personal, and more profound realms of our inner lives.

—Michael Pastore, Epublishers Weekly
Author of
50 Benefits of Ebooks:
A Thinking Person's Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution.

Story Links

Get a sample of Carr's book by reading his essay in the Atlantic:
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

Carr's Blog Rough Type ... http://www.roughtype.com/

What Are We Doing Online?
Ironically, this fascinating and deservedly-famous debate (which first appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1995) is not easily findable online -- the link from Kevin Kelly's website is now broken.

Aldous Huxley interviewed by Mike Wallace in the early 1960s:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/huxley_aldous.html


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The Incredible Parking Ticket

From Australia comes this very funny story about
a parking ticket: read to the end -- the victim's letter, and the
response from the Melbourne police department.

Read the story from the Huffington Post.

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Apple iPad Reads Ebooks With An App Called iBooks

Steve Jobs demonstates how to read ebooks on Apple's new iPad. The ebook reading software is called iBooks.

Jobs said that when the iPad launches, it will sell ebooks from five of the largest publishers, "and we're going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the world starting this afternoon."






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Stress Test for a Healthy Ebook

Important Note:
To read later version of this article — expanded and updated — click here.



All ebooks are not created equal.

How healthy is your ebook? ... Is your ebook free, flexible, strong (long lasting) and brimming with useful features? ... Or is your ebook feature-challenged, a hapless prisoner of one specific device, format, or content protection system?

There is much debate about ebook pricing; there should be much more talk about ebook value. A free and healthy ebook is worth much more than a feature-reduced ebook.

Take the Stress Test for a Healthy Ebook

Here is a simple stress test: apply this test to any ebook that you are planning to buy. Please note that this "point system" is arbitrary: some features are more important than others. You can customize this test, add new questions, and assign any point values that you like.

For each of the following questions, award:

10 points for the answer: "Yes / Full"
5 points for the answer: "Partial / Limited"
0 points for the answer: "No"

Using this scheme, 100 points is the highest and best-possible score.

1. Can you read the ebook in many ways, and on many different devices?

2. Can the ebook be read aloud to you, in a computer-generated voice?

3. Can you print the ebook?

4. Can the ebook be shared with a friend or family member?

5. Can you highlight text in the ebook?

6. Can you "process" text: cut, copy, paste, annotate?

7. Can you convert the ebook to different formats?

8. Does the ebook NEVER compromise your privacy, by including your social security number or credit card number in the ebook?

9. Can you re-sell the ebook, assuming that you are willing to give up your copy of it?

10. Once you have purchased the ebook, is it impossible for the seller to take it away from you?

Speaking round-aboutly about love and freedom, a poet once sang:
"If something is truly yours, nobody can take it away from you."

—Michael Pastore

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Loneliness (book review)

Loneliness
Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection
by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick
Paperback 317 pages, $ $ 17.95
August 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-33528-6

Ashley Montagu, who died in November ten years ago, explained to his students and lecture audiences an insight that has proven to be not only very true, but very wise. Montagu said that the inspirations of creative individuals — poets, authors, artists, philosophers — are eventually confirmed by science. For example, when a poet such as Edmond Rostand makes his hero, Cyrano de Bergerac, shout:

I need to fight whole armies all alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;
I feel too strong to war with mortals —
BRING ME GIANTS!

This extraordinary courage that love inspires is glimpsed by the poet; years later the scientist can tell us that strong emotions, such as love, produce powerful physiological changes in the human body and brain.

That is the first theme of the book Loneliness: loneliness, like sleep shortages, impacts not only our emotions, but our physical health and well-being. More than 60 million Americans suffer seriously from this epidemic condition. In addition to a thorough and well-documented diagnosis, the book provides solutions that are within the reach of almost everyone.

I never imagined that a book about loneliness could be so entertaining: almost like the good cheer of the famous foot-stomping folk song, "The Ship Titanic". These pages contain many bursts of humor, and many memorable passages. It will be a long time before I forget the astounding saga of Phineas Gage; even longer before I forget the book's description about how a female chimp (page 211) ingeniously made peace between two belligerent males.

The book proposes that there are three keys to happiness: Social connections; Household income; and Age. Surprisingly — and this may be the most controversial of the book's claims, — "people get happier as they grow older."

Maximizing genuine relationships, while minimizing conflicts, is a strategy for personal and professional success. What is the cure for loneliness? ... Develop strong social connections.

From the book (page 223):

As I've suggested through dozens of examples, when we feel isolated we also feel embattled, which leads to less robust health, less enjoyment in life, and less of an ability to collaborate to find winning solutions. When we feel satisfied with our social connections, we feel safe. When we feel safe, we can think more creatively. We also anticipate and more often experience positive emotions, which, aside from their long-term physiological benefits, provide immediate and persistent psychological uplift. That boost in mood affects our subsequent behavior toward others, which, in turn, affects how others behave toward us — which, once again, encourages creative collaboration. Cause and effect cycle back and forth, and the positives continue to ripple outward in a widening circle.

This roadmap to a long and healthy life is corroborated in a book about longevity, The Blue Zones; and also in a number of my own books about child maintenance, where I have called this process, the Positive Affirmation Cycle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "Society is poison but solitude is fatal." Loneliness does not address Emerson's concerns, echoed in works by Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom), and Philip Slater (The Pursuit of Loneliness). What shall we do when the society around us is destructive or "inauthentic", and we are confronted with two unpleasant choices: join the masses in their folly, or remain alone?

Nevertheless, the book Loneliness by Cacioppo and Patrick, is filled with such a superabundance of subtle humor, excellent scholarship, and practical advice, it stands alone as one of the most valuable books in print about its all-important theme.

For more information, visit the book's companion website: Science of Loneliness.

— Michael Pastore

Story Links

On December 1, 2009, many major publications released in-depth articles about the theme of loneliness. Here are more resources about this theme.

Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1943748,00.html

U.S. News
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/12/01/one-is-the-loneliest-most-contagious-number.html

NY Times
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/why-loneliness-can-be-contagious/

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003846.html



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Can We Save the Dying Art of Conversation ?

Essay by Michael Pastore

My first lesson in the embarrassing art of conversation came from my grandfather, when I was ten years old. Noticing that I had less energy than usual — I was not running up and down his living room walls — he guessed the reason and then called me to his armchair.

"Have you talked with her?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I don't know what to say."

Smiling, the kind old man rubbed his white-whiskered chin.
"The secret of schmoozing is very simple. If you want to break the ice and make a great first impression, ask her about three things: family, food, and philosophy."

The next day, in the lunchroom, confident with this foolproof strategy, I amazed my friends as I sat down on the vacant bench beside Helen Goldstein, the prettiest girl in P.S. 123.

"Do you have a brother?" I asked.
"No!" she said.
"Do you like mashed bean sprouts?"
"No!" said Helen, with a disdainful pout.

Things were going well so far; I felt undiscouraged; after a moment's reflection I asked:
"If you had a brother, would you like mashed bean sprouts?"

As a mustardy cheese sandwich ricochetted off my sweatshirt, I sighed with the realization that I had failed, and failed completely. My guy friends greeted my humiliating retreat with a melange of wild laughter, high-fives, and admiration undying.

"Human understanding," wrote Michel de Montaigne, "is marvelously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. "

Montaigne, who loved reading, understood the incomparable value of a good talk face to face. But do we men and women of this technologically advanced age understand this as well? ... It seems as if we are spending more and more time in front of screens, sometimes passively watching, other times typing or tapping superficial first impressions clothed in fragmented sentences (or acronyms: ROFLMAO) which express less than the guttural grunts of a Neanderthal.

Why is it so rare to meet persons who are skilled conversationalists? ... A conversation is "a spoken interchange of thoughts and feelings," — and to converse we need not one gift but two: knowing how to speak, which is difficult enough, and the far more subtle skill: knowing how to listen.

How can we master the intricate art of conversation?

If conversation is an art that can be learned, then like any art, the learning of it requires courage, concentration, practice, patience, and making it an ultimate concern. This insight comes from Erich Fromm, who was writing about the art of loving. And it seems to me that one of the first principles of great conversation is not necessarily to love the other person (although that would be the best), but to approach the encounter gemutlichly, with a warm feeling — or at the minimum, with a sincere respectfulness.

The best way to learn is to learn by example, at the side of a brilliant-talking friend. Without that kind of living laboratory, you can turn to some of the better books about this popular theme. In the chattery galaxy of books on this subject — many (unfortunately) classified in the self-help section — two works stand out as guiding stars.


I would start with Theodore Zeldin and his book Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives. The book is less of a how-to guide, and more of a brilliant appreciation of the art. As in his other works, Zeldin grapples with the most complex questions and themes. This book's chapters include:

1) How every new era changes the subject of conversation
2) Why the conversation of love is moving in a new direction
3) What saves family conversation from being boring
4) Conversation in the workplace: why specialists are having to find a new way of talking
5) What technology can do to conversation
6) How conversation encourages the meeting of the minds
and a coda of stimulating questions, titled: Thirty-six topics of conversation.

Zeldin writes:

"Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards."

Anyone who finishes this book, and is not inspired to renew their conversations with new energy, originality, and genuineness, should take a vow of silence.

Zeldin's commitment to saving conversation from extinction goes well beyond the book, and beyond even Zeldin's Facebook fan club. Zeldin's foundation, The Oxford Muse, describes itself as "a foundation to stimulate courage and invention in personal, professional and cultural life."

Erich Fromm, at the end of one his important books, asked readers to write letters to him and tell him their ideas about how to save and to renew our culture. The Oxford Muse Foundation has similar goals about renewal; thanks to the Internet, this kind of project has a far greater chance of success.



Like Montaigne and Zeldin, Catherine Blyth (pictured at the top of this essay) believes in the timeless value of good conversation. At the end of The Art of Conversation: A Guided Tour of A Neglected Pleasure, Blyth writes:

"Conversation's finer points may be lost without our world tottering. Still, as communication, it is unimprovable. Of all arts the oldest and most captivating, it is also the easiest, free to all. As prices soar and time shrinks, and space compacts, it is one luxury that costs nothing. Protect it, prioritize it, and reap the wealth of a companionable, convivial life.
Let conversation bring you the world."

Blyth's book is filled with humorous anecdotes, historical snippets, wise musings, and practical advice. Advice about many topics including how to begin a conversation, what to talk about, humor, how to tell (detect) a lie; the language of love; flattery; ending the chat. In explaining how not to be bore, Blyth offers the "Shut-up Test":

Imagine you're a soft-boiling a modest egg,
Have you talked more than three minutes?
This better be a great dinosaur egg of a fascinating topic.
Stick to the point. If they want more, they'll ask.

Written with charming style, and always entertaining, Blyth's book artfully blends the theory and the practice about how to effectively and enjoyably converse.

After reading these excellent books, you will be well on your way to enlivening your conversations. But one question looms like the eavesdropping monster of Frankenstein: At that next party, how can we escape from boreus interminus — the mind-bending, mood-murdering, time-wasting total bore — the lonely and/or egomaniacal one who grips you like a swamp leech and won't let go?

Being European, both Zeldin and Blyth are too polite to employ a technique invented, practiced and perfected by us barbarians across the sea. It has been called by many names, one of which is "the Human Sacrifice." (It is mentioned in a book titled "The Art of Mingling", although I cannot recall if it originated there.) Something remotely similar to this method was used by Herakles, to pass the weighty sky back to the shoulders of the punished Titan, Atlas.

Here's how it works. When a bore hooks you and won't let go, you smile patiently, all the while waiting for the next person who will to come to pass. When this unsuspecting victim (the person to be sacrificed) passes near you, you touch his coat sleeve and then say: "Charlie, there is a fascinating person I want you to meet: this is [ fill in the name of the bore ]."

Grinning angelically, in one swift ballet-like motion, you take Charlie by the arm, move him in front of El Boro, and then walk slowly and steadily toward the cheese table, leaving the flabbergasted Charlie to manage the unflappable bore.

This technique, the human sacrifice, is heartless, machiavellian, uncivilized — and it works every time.

— Michael Pastore

Books Mentioned


Conversation
How Talk Can Change Our Lives
by Theodore Zeldin
Hidden Spring, May 2000
Hardcover, 112 pages, $ 12


The Art of Conversation
A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure
by Catherine Blyth
Gotham Books
Paperback, 304 pages, $ 15
Available December 29, 2009
(hardcover and ebook editions available now)


Story Links

The Oxford Muse Foundation
http://www.oxfordmuse.com/index.htm


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Ebook Readers on the Cover of the New Yorker

New Yorker covers, the best of them, are funny and timely, and often point to an uncomfortable truth about the way we live now. The November 2 issue of the The New Yorker magazine, which arrived at my house three days before Halloween, is another memorable one. Here we see a line of trick-or-treating children, waiting for candy, while the accompanying adults stand back, all reading ebooks on their new ebook reading devices.

Instead of interacting with their children, or with each other, these adults are mesmerized by the latest new thing: a classic case of right technology in the wrong situation. Now that we can use technology 24 hours every day, does not mean that we should.

What this New Yorker cover does prove, to me at least, is that ebooks are here, and that this is the begining of the digital reading revolution. Let's hope that we can all work together — readers, authors, and publishers — and this time make it work.




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Remember To Live! a Cautionary Essay by Michael Pastore

Happy New Year 2009, fellow human beings. May we all prosper this year, with health, and wealth, and loyal friends, and untold happiness.

Enclosed is a slice from a dizzying old life, and a glimpse of my cheerful new one. As Mr. Emerson so optimistically reminded us:
"We are very near to greatness; one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?"

Remember To Live!

by Michael Pastore

Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life,
when a glorious existence is possible for you?
-- Henry David Thoreau

Late! Late again!

Minutes before the deadline I send the two-megabyte file, and now -- mere moments after finishing an exhausting project -- I am reminded about an urgent meeting, thanks to ingenious life-planning software and its relentless symphony of emails, jingles, and beeps. The countdown timer reveals a fleeting 1200 seconds to prepare.

I laughed at the stress: It is more important to be well-dressed than on time. Glancing at the online calendar -- “Colleagues at the meeting: conservative” -- I remove my “Obama 2008” T-shirt and then turn it inside out to match the zeitgeist of my belligerent audience. In bold letters, the shirt’s front delivers the message: “My Messiah can beat up your Messiah.”

Swiftly now, I convert some pertinent articles from formats text to mp3 then move them to an audio player. These are read to me aloud, as I grab dinner (one energy bar) from a bookshelf filled with hundreds of these bars, sorted by the chewy decimal system: by protein-content, flavor and size. In one click, I pay three bills with online bill pay. Now to my wife’s phone message (“Do something about the leak in the bedroom ceiling, and water the plants.”) -- with hurried poise I place a potted philodendron underneath the leak. Still listening to the mp3ed articles, I snatch four ice cubes and drop them into clay pots to water my thirsty plants.

Timer tells me there is one minute, one precious minute, of time free. I toss some old books on top of a beautiful wooden desk in my living room, the desk which I call my “cemetery of dreams”. Here I deposit sacred heaps of notebooks, scraps of paper notes, someday books to read, CDs of music to listen to and languages to learn, photos of friends to contact, titles of books to write, quotations from classic novelists and philosophers, names of charities and causes to learn more about. All the impassioned projects I would tackle wholeheartedly, if some great cosmic power would eliminate the necessity for money and work.

Haunted am I by information in never-ending waves.

Crossing the doorway threshold I hear my computer beep-beep-beep the wild cry of an UNA: an urgent news alert. Is it another wasteful war? The immanent economic meltdown? Some indispensable innovation in one of the fields of my expertise? ... Thinking about my profession -- where to be uninformed is hara-kiri -- I rush indoors to the giant screen. The news alerts me to the fact that a gust of wind has blown a giant inflatable dog turd beyond the bounds of a Swiss art museum, where it flew 200 meters, broke some windows, and took down a power line. The work of art had been equipped with a bad-weather safety system, which of course had utterly failed to perform.

Walking, walking to the meeting, I watch a squirrel make a breathtaking leap between two tall trees. The motto of Goethe strikes me: “Remember to Live.” You see, every day during my working hours (which is almost all my waking hours), I entertain the faraway feeling that I have forgotten something. Something essential for me to understand.

I turn off the audio player in the middle of an article about trends in electronic publishing. An old man is walking -- slower than snail --- in the middle of the street, bent in half like the Greek letter gamma. He drops his cane; and when I pick up the cane and hand it back to him he shakes his head and says: “You work your life away. And then this.”

And then he squeezed my hand and I remembered.

****

Some years ago I traveled around the world with a backpack and a bike. I had been wondering what would happen to me if I turned off the incessant noise: the computer, the phone, the television, the advertising propaganda, the terabytes of trivial facts, nonsense, and news. I hoped to find cultures, peoples, and individuals who were living a more natural life, a life vastly different from our comfortable — and some might say vicarious, buy-crazy, over-refined — existence in the West. As a traveling Thoreau, I lived simply: sleeping under the stars, eating whatever I could forage or buy inexpensively from farmers or shops, and cycling or hiking to undeveloped places that the guidebooks would never recommend.

During this year-long journey there was only one time when I found precisely what I was looking for. I had gotten myself lost, thoroughly off the map, and had wandered into a small village in a valley between great mountains. On a dirt road, when I first approached the village, I saw enormous blue herons who made nests on top of telephone poles. As I wheeled past them they flew into the sky, flapping their wings awkwardly and ever-so-slowly, graceful reminders of a timeless world. From the pole-tops they would land on what first resembled pillars, thirty feet tall, like stacks of giant mudpies. Hundreds of these heaps surrounded me, all made of dung and straw: I soon learned that this was the preferred fuel for cooking and for heat.

Quickly I began to wonder about the people who welcomed the blue birds and created these practical and hilarious towers. The men in this village wore dark caps with gold sewing needles stuck inside, and spent much of their day yammering in the lone café, and no more than twenty hours per week working in their fields. Though the women worked constantly they laughed more, and seemed even happier than the men. Early in the mornings I would watch five of these women — sitting in a circle around a deep earthen pit — talking and working together to make the bread for the day, the same way their ancestors had worked for centuries before. The first woman started the fire in the bottom of the pit and kept it burning; the second woman mixed the flour and water; the third rolled this mixture into round balls; the fourth flattened the balls into thin circle-shaped doughs the size of a small pizza pie; the fifth placed the flat round dough on the sides of the pit then took it out at just the right moment when the bread was done. There was no word in their language for ‘leftovers’ — the bread and all the meals would be made fresh every day. These simple people believed that food, like life, needed always to be made new.

As the village guest, I was treated with grand hospitality and kinglike esteem. In a week I was able to learn enough of their language to explain where I was from, what my life in America was like, and why I was a-traveling. And after the explanation a young boy, perhaps ten years old, took me by the hand and told me that he wanted to show me something, and that this sight would be the best and most interesting attraction that I would find anywhere in his entire town.

He led me to his great-grandfather, an old man working in a field. The moment the old man saw me he removed his hat and placed his hand over his heart. He called to his family to make a feast for me, and to chop wood for my warm bath. By Western standards he had few reasons to be happy, and yet all the time I observed him, in all moments, he was radiant with joyfulness.

I stayed the night in his best room, and in the morning I loaded my bicycle, pointing the front wheel to the west. I described my destination (a large lake in the mountains); I explained that although I carried a map I had become entirely lost. With a great smile, he told me some words which I carefully wrote down -- it would be months later before I understood. “My son,” he said, placing an arm around my shoulder. “My son, listen to an old fool who in his whole life has learned one thing alone. No matter how far you’ve traveled on the wrong road, turn back.”

****

My summer of unending labor continued, and nothing eventful happened until a certain Tuesday in the Fall, the fourth day of November in the year 2008. Gripped by my computer screen, I watched the early election returns. Those of us who had suffered over the past eight years felt that this night could change the course of history. It would be a revolution, a genuine revolution, an expansion of consciousness in America and the entire world.

My wife played a piano version of Sarasate’s “Gypsy Airs” as I tallied electoral votes. I had wandered to my cemetery of dreams, and unconsciously began to sort the heap of papers into project piles. I picked up a biography of Goethe, where long ago I had bookmarked a page with the gem: “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

What would I do if I could paint my paradise and walk in? ... I would master the arts of loving and being kind. I would center my life about relationships: with family, neighbors, and friends. I would balance my life with Dr. Montagu’s prescription: “Health is the ability to love, to work, to play, and to think soundly.” I would use my encyclopedic knowledge and savvy about the latest technologies -- not to worship and improve technology itself -- to advance a sustainable lifestyle, a healthy planet, safe havens for all species, freedom, peace, justice, education, great books, and the creative arts. I would live more simply and wisely, and encourage others to do the same. Like Noah, I would start huge foolish projects, and not care a damn what other people might think.

“He’s winning,” I told my wife, after adding the prospective votes from Washington,Oregon, and California. “Let’s walk.”

The streets in our little town were quiet until an hour before midnight. Then, from the center of the town known as “the Commons”, we heard a cheer -- an enormous roar. What joyful freedom sounded in that colossal cheer! My wife squeezed my hand. Two young black teenagers, both female, came running down the street shouting “Obama! Obama! Obama!” Some Autumn leaves must have fallen from the trees into my eyes: how else could I explain my wet cheeks, now covered with streams and streams of tears?

And I tell you now, that despite all the obstacles our culture throws at us, and all the struggles our creative spirits must endure -- that night I promised myself I would remember. And act every day on that remembering, and begin my life anew. It would mean sacrifice: I would have less, I would be more.

There is so much good in all of us, so much kindness, so many noble dreams. I know now that Goethe meant: “Remember to live sincerely, passionately, intensely.” The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years or the most wealth, but the one with the richest experiences. To remember to live is one thing mainly: to remember to love.

This is our moment. This is our time.


====

Michael Pastore is the Editorial Director of Epublishers Weekly, and the the author of more than a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, including the forthcoming The Tao of Information: How to Simplify Your Life, Keep up with Technology, and Harvest the Internet’s Essential Facts and Ideas in 30 Minutes a Day. (Zorba Press, Spring 2009).

This essay is copyrighted. You may reprint it on your blog or website, if you give us the credit we deserve: add the tag, "From Epublishers Weekly."
To reprint this entire essay in a print publication, or in other electronic sources, contact us by email. Thanks. -- MP
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Charles Dickens — The Man Who Reinvented Christmas (essay by Michael Pastore)

Charles Dickens —
The Man Who Re-Invented Christmas

(c) by Michael Pastore

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
— C.D., A Christmas Carol (1843)

In the year 1812 (on February 7th), Charles John Huffam Dickens was born into a world not so very different from our own. War raged around the world: in that year the U.S. declared war against Britain; and Napoleon would march an army of 550,000 into Russia then limp back to Paris six months later with merely 20,000 men. In 1812, too, the arts were flourishing. Beethoven completed his 7th and 8th symphonies; Goethe finished his remarkable novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship; the Grimm brothers first gave us their now-famous fairy tales. And Lord Byron brought “Byronic unhappiness” into our lexicon when he published the first parts of his poem Childe Harold, about a man so bored and disgusted with English society that he tries to flee himself by roaming the European world.

What connects us most to the era of Mr. Dickens is that throughout those hard Victorian times his world was shocked by an unprecedented invasion of technology and rapid change. During 1782 to 1812 — in the 30 years before Dickens’s birth — England was pummeled by scores of inventions that transformed daily life: the steam engine, the oil burner, the threshing machine, the steam-powered rotary motor (which powered cotton-spinning factories), the nail-making machine, the flax machine the cotton gin, the preserving jar for foods, the first horse-drawn railroad, lithography, electricity from a cell, muskets with interchangeable parts, the submarine, iron trolley tracks, the steamboat, street lighting by gas, the isolation of morphine, and rockets introduced as military weapons. And perhaps something that might have better been left undiscovered: techniques for canning food.

The thirty years that followed (1813-1843), during Dickens’s growth to manhood, were no less inventive. Here the world acquires the steam locomotive, roads made from crushed stone, the kaleidoscope, the stethoscope, new chemical elements, the flat-bed cylinder press, electromagnetism, thermoelectricity, sound reproduction, iron railroad bridges, waterproof fabric, Portland cement, the galvanometer, Ohm’s Law, photography, the typewriter, matches, the telegraph, the reaping machine, the bicycle, rubber, hypnosis, ether for anesthesia, and scientific proof that the sperm is essential to fertilization.

Paradise, though not yet lost, grew more difficult to find, as the rural life was yielding to the burgeoning urban existence. Wisps of resistance to this new mechanized culture began in 1811,, when the Luddites in Northern England rebelled by destroying the new machines which whirled their jobs away. Resistance was futile. For better and for worse, the English world welcomed this Industrial Revolution which so much influenced Dickens’s life and literary work.

The life of Dickens! A dickens of a life! He enjoyed, we believe, a merry childhood, and like the young Goethe, one of Dickens’s favorite games was inventing dramas in a little puppet theater. But at age 12 (in 1824) his idyll was disrupted: his debt-crushed father and his entire family were locked into a London prison, and poor Charles was sent to work for six months in a factory.

Dare I say “fortunately,” a law passed in 1819 ordered that the maximum working day for juveniles in England could be no longer than 12 hours. Nevertheless, the factory-work experience traumatized Charles, and initiated his lifelong commitment to children and to the poor.

Released from slavery, young Dickens soon learned stenography, then worked as a reporter, then relished the blaze of literary fame that greeted his first two books Sketches By Boz (1836), and Pickwick Papers (1836-1837). Most of his novels initially appeared in installments in periodicals: the most affordable — and suspenseful — method for reaching the average working-class reader. Dickens wrote a number of Christmas fables, including A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), (1846), The Battle of LifeThe Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848). His major works include: Oliver Twist (1837-38), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), (1840-41), The Old Curiosity ShopBarnaby Rudge (1841), American Notes for General Circulation (1842), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), Pictures from Italy (1844), Dombey and Son (1846-48), David Copperfield (1849-50, his own favorite novel), Bleak House (1852-53), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), (1860), The Uncommercial TravelerGreat Expectations (1860-61), Our Mutual Friend (1864-65), and the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).

With each wonderful book his fame and fortune blossomed. The writer flourished, but the man behind the books lived a full but not always so happy life. Unlucky in young love, he was rejected by Maria Beadnell; and when twenty years later she agreed to a secret meeting, the famous author’s great expectations were dashed as he found her uninteresting and overplump. (The sobering reunion is described in Little Dorritt, under the guise of Arthur Clennam’s encounter with Flora.) In 1836 Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, who would mother his ten children. One year later his 17-year-old sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, died suddenly, and Dickens — who may have loved and desired her — grew hysterical with grief. By 1856 Dickens was prosperous enough to buy his dream house in the country. But two years later his wife left him, and scandal tweaked England’s ears when his sister-in-law Georgina remained in the household to take care of the kids. Gossip-critics tell that Dickens’s affair with a much younger actress, Ellen Ternan, satisfied neither her nor him.

Yet Dickens the writer never ceased to fill the world with laughter and good cheer. For Dickens had the mind that Baudelaire envied when he wrote: “Genius is childhood recaptured at will.” He not only retained his childlike genius, but these powers were focused and intensified because he used them for a higher purpose: to fight for the salvation of the children and the poor. In all his works, his humor and his fictional personalities remain with us. Why? His children characters come burdened with the troubles of adults; his adult protagonists are blessed with the exuberance of children. The themes blazing through his dozen dazzling novels, the whole of his humane philosophy, are all epitomized in the fabulous story A Christmas Carol.

Dickens composed A Christmas Carol in 1843, between mid-October and the end of November, in a mere six weeks. Unlike his serialized novels, he wrote this story all at once. The process moved him deeply: Dickens could not rest while he wrote this tale. In a letter to a friend he said that while writing the story he “wept and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking whereof he walked about the black streets of London fifteen and twenty miles many a night when all the sober folks had gone to bed.”

This classic Christmas story starts with Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean wretch, who feels no compassion for other people, and holds no interests in life except one: to accumulate more wealth.

Listen as the Ghost of Christmas Present heaps a sorrowful warning on the troubled head of Ebenezer Scrooge.

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with the freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked; and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless that writing be erased.”

It’s hard to tell if concern for others motivates our late-blooming hero, or if it’s fear which turns the trick. Scrooge worries about these immanent ignominies: his own solitary death, his neglected grave, his wasted life, and his eternal prospects — ala his colleague Marley — of wandering the Earth as a ghastly spirit, alone, tormented, with no opportunity to be relieved, remembered, or redeemed. At the climax of the story, filled with dread, hovering above the headstone he knows will be his own, Scrooge cries out to the unholy Ghost:

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

Scrooge transformed himself: Can we? ... The poor and the needy are still with us, all around us, helplessly sinking deeper into the economic mire. Dickens’s answer is remarkable. And Scrooge’s question remains the burning question of our burning times.

****

Michael Pastore is the Editorial Director of Epublishers Weekly, and the the author of more than a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, including the forthcoming The Tao of Information: How to Simplify Your Life, Keep up with Technology, and Harvest the Internet’s Essential Facts and Ideas in 30 Minutes a Day. (Zorba Press, Spring 2009). Pastore has recently edited a new paperback edition of A Christmas Carol — along with Dickens's other Christmas stories (Click here to learn more).

This essay is copyrighted. You may reprint it on your blog or website, if you give us the credit we deserve: add the tag, "From Epublishers Weekly."
To reprint this essay in a print publication, or in other electronic sources, contact us by email. Thanks. -- MP

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Distracted &mdash by Maggie Jackson (Book Review)

Distracted
The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
By Maggie Jackson
Hardcover, 327 pages, $ 25.95
Published by Prometheus Books, 2008

Is our planet Earth plummeting into another Dark Age, a mire of disintegration and self-destruction, lifeless and loveless, where not a spark of defiance fires the human soul, where no children laugh, no birds sing, and no swift shoes are flung at lamely-ducking presidents?

One expects this sensational warning in modern films. But when alarms are sounded from beyond Hollywood — from some our best and most sincere minds — it is time to face the problem and closely pay attention. Jane Jacobs (Dark Age Ahead), Jared Diamond (Collapse), Martin Rees (Our Final Hour), Charlene Spretnak (The Resurgence of the Real), and Albert Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) have all written non-fiction works warning us about unpleasant things in our possible or probable future. Distracted, by Maggie Jackson, is an important contribution to this growing genre. With clarity and compassion, Jackson explores the dangers of our hi-tech lifestyle, describing how and why our world is darkening, and providing some illuminating hints about what we might do to reverse the dangerous trends.


A much-quoted bumper-sticker in our town (popular in the pre-Obama era) reminds us:

“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”

Attention is the key, says Jackson: a lack of attention (distraction) is the essence of our problems, and our hope for the future depends on cultivating “a renaissance of attention.” Jackson explains psychologist Michael Posner’s a definition that divides attention into three “networks”: orienting, alerting, and the executive.

Jackson travels around the U.S.A. to observe people and to talk with researchers connected to her theme. All the while, she quotes many useful literary sources, old and new, including the greatly misunderstood play by Capek (R.U.R.); the eerily prescient science fiction story by E. M. Forster (The Machine Stops); and Mary Shelley's saga of a dysfunctional monster (Frankenstein). I have been studying this notion (ABC: Attention, Being fully in the present, Concentration) for more than a year, and I thought that I could not be surprised with information new to me. Happily, I was very wrong. Jackson introduced me to the French science fiction author, Albert Robida (1848 to 1926). Robida wrote a short story about the future (the year 1965); interviewed about his predictions, he said (and he is talking about us):

“Their every day will be caught in the wheels of a mechanized society to the point where I wonder how they will find the time to enjoy the most simple pleasures we had at our disposal: silence, calm, solitude. Having never known them, they shall not be able to miss them. As for me, I do — and I pity them.”

Robida wondered then, and — more than a century later — I am wondering now. But for pity there is no time. Quickly we must turn down the noise, simplify our lives, learn the art of attention, and cultivate our minds.

—Michael Pastore

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Hadron Collider Kaleidoscope: Is Humanity At Risk?

On September 10, 2008, the Hadron Collider (located in an underground tunnel in France and Switzerland) fired two protons that traveled 27 kilometers (17 miles). The protons were traveling clockwise; in a few months additional protons will be sent counterclockwise. The goal is to re-create the conditions immediately after the "Big Bang", an enormous explosion that created the Universe. If successful, scientists will see the astronomical equivalent of the missing link, the "god particle."

"Just be very careful that you do not misspell 'Hadron', by reversing the inner letters."

This project could be a miracle of friendly collaboration between international scientists, and the greatest technological experiment in human history. Or, it could be a playtoy for intellectuals, a vain exercise to swell the egos of researchers. Is there any proof of the latter theory? Just be very careful that you do not misspell "Hadron", by reversing the inner letters.

After the protons completed their journey, project leader Lyn Evans said: "My first thought was relief. This is a machine of enormous complexity. Things can go wrong at any time. But this morning has been a great start."

Asked whether this experiment could create any hazard to humanity, the chief spokesman for the project replied: "It's nonsense."

Yet, this is a machine of "enormous complexity." Projects of this scale should be coordinated and approved by an international body of scientists who are trained in a branch of philosophy that might be called "Technology Ethics." The goal would be to ensure that the technology is safe and humanizing, that the new technology has far more potential for good than harm.

There is no governing body, of course. But there are voices crying in the techno-wilderness. These voices (the saner among them) do not question progress (which is essential), they question the goals of scientific progress. Not everything that can be done, should be done. Not everything new is an improvement. We must make every reasonable effort to ensure that the light at the end of the tunnel is not the beam of an oncoming train.

One highly-regarded scientist who has asked us to pause and to reflect, is the Royal Astronomer of Great Britan, Martin Rees. His book (published in 2005 and reviewed below) advises us to be aware of dangers, consequences, and unintended effects.

Our Final Hour
A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century -- on Earth and Beyond
by Martin Rees
Published by Basic Books, Paperback, $ 15; Hardcover, $ 25

Reviewed by Michael Pastore

In the heart of his Journals, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) wrote these anxious words:

"Thank God men cannot yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. We are safe on that side for the present. It is for the very reason that. some do not care for these things [the natural world] that we need to combine to protect all from the vandalism of a few."

Even the prescient genius of Thoreau could not imagine how briefly we would saunter on that safe side. Had he lived to the age of 86, Thoreau would have seen the first manned flight in a power airplane, in 1903, by Orville and Wilbur Wright. Twelve years later, the German engineer Hugo Junkers constructed the first gas-engine airplane designed for war.

Technology advances breathlessly, with unexpected speed, never pausing to consider how the exciting discoveries of today will impact the quality of human life tomorrow. A new book that tackles this issue with balance, integrity and insight is Martin Rees's Our Final Hour.

If the author's name rings a bell, it might be for his one his earlier books, or it might be that you've been following the future on a website named Longbets. Check in to that site -- at http://www.longbets.org/predictions -- and you will see that Rees has made a prediction which tops the list, because it has generated the most response. Rees is willing to bet one thousand dollars that by the year 2020, "bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event."

Before reading Rees's book, I had five main areas concerns for the world's future: nuclear war; global warming and the resultant species extinction; overpopulation; the spread of AIDS; and the growing wealth gap between the very rich and the very poor.

"Although the odds of disaster are small, the risks are extremely high ... "

Our Final Hour explains and explores threats to survival which are less publicized and potentially more hazardous. The first threat -- which astonished me completely -- is the danger of experiments in particle physics. Scientists enjoy watching heavy atoms crash against each other, which breaks these atoms into smaller particles, and releases energy. Although the odds of disaster are small, the risks are extremely high: physicists have discussed that there is a possibility that these experiments could "rip the fabric of space itself" -- and create a vacuum that would suck in and destroy not only the Earth, but the entire galaxy. This explains the book's subtitle, how our technology threatens not only all Earthly life, but things beyond the Earth.

Another promising but perilous development -- the benefits of which have received loads of mawkish praise -- is known as nanotechnology. Atoms will be assembled into complex machines smaller than molecules, machines that might build things, replicate themselves, or travel inside the human body to perform microsurgery. Rees states that these devices "could have disastrous or even uncontrollable consequences if misapplied." Nanobots might replicate themselves unendingly, and devour everything in their paths. Something akin to the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles."

In the next decades, the most pressing of all dangers will be the threat of bioterror and bioerror. Rees argues that these threats are imminent because -- unlike detonating a nuclear warhead -- it takes only one deranged or incompetent person -- one person alone -- to create and release the lethal weapon (bio-organisms) that could kill millions.

The everyday news is providing even more strength for Rees's claims. After the book was published, an envelope containing ricin was found in the U.S. Senate, which closed the Senate for a day on February 4, 2004. Ricin can be concocted easily from castor oil seeds, with a recipe located on the Internet. Ingesting a mere ten micrograms of ricin is fatal.

Just six days later, on February 10, the New York Times printed a story about the U.S. government plans to spend 1.7 billion dollars to develop high-security "hot labs," to study and find antidotes for the world's deadliest germs and bio-weapons. Today, February 18, the news brings yet another example of technology gone awry. At an event designed to boast about Russia's military prowess -- a ballistic missile self-destructed a few seconds after being launched from a Russian submarine.

"The theme of this book," writes Rees, "is that humanity is more at risk than at any earlier phase in its history." And the heart of the work is the author's plea to create intelligent discussions about these issues, to question how to manage this new age abounding in knowledge, and rife with crackpots who would unthinkingly apply this knowledge to murder their enemies. Rees states that scientists alone should not be the ones to decide whether or not to pursue dangerous experiments: the general public must be educated to make informed decisions.

Our Final Hour is far more than another trumpet of approaching Doomsday, it is a wise and sane call for science and technology to serve humanity, not to enslave us. Science must advance not recklessly, but with the utmost caution, planning, and responsibility.

--Michael Pastore

== Story Links: Hadron Collider News (after this post was written) ==

Collider halted until next year
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7632408.stm


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The Internet and Its Discontents — Essay by Michael Pastore

The Internet and Its Discontents

“The unexamined online life is not worth living.”

(c) 2008 by Michael Pastore

"Remember to live!” was the motto of the German genius Goethe. What strange advice! At first glance it seems uselessly trite, almost like saying “Remember to breathe”. How could we possibly forget? …

Yet we do forget. And our most perceptive authors are always trying to remind us.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (in Ethan Brand ) describes a man who became a devil “the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep pace with his intellect.” Anton Chekhov (in his story The Man In A Case) explains why men miss the joy in life: “All sorts of things are done in the provinces through boredom, all sorts of unnecessary and nonsensical things! And that is because what is necessary is not done at all.” And I.B. Singer’s hermit-scholar, Dr. Fischelson (in The Spinoza of Market Street), in his devotion to the study of the philosopher Spinoza, seeks an abstruse world within, and thereby isolates himself from all but the most trivial human contact.

Long before our modern age — of television, computers, computer games, and the Internet — it was possible to ignore or to forget our humanness. The powerful seductions of Technology make it even easier to forget.

Does the Net that snares so many of our waking hours make us more human, or less? … Invented around 1972, at the end of the American counterculture, the Internet, and its most prominent brain-child, the World Wide Web (born in 1989), have been hailed — and rightfully so — as the greatest communication tools since the printing press. Despite its youth and inexperience, the Internet has already bestowed a cornucopia of benefits and blessings on humankind. These boons affect almost everyone, not merely the point-and-clique generation — who can always be found gaping at some kind of screen — surfing, texting, sexting, twittering and plurking.

Let us count the ways the Internet improves our lives.

1. Human rights are protected, and lives are saved. A woman raped in Pakistan, who surely would have been murdered for her crime of being a rape victim, is shielded from further violence and persecution, when the world hears and responds to her story via the Web.
2. Internet communities facilitate friendships and romance. A prospective spouse or hookup can quickly be found via the Internet, in spite of the quip of one cynical critic: “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
3. Scientific and scholarly research flourishes via long-distance collaboration.
4. Personal publishing proliferates: just when it seemed as if the crushing power of big print publishing would drown us under commercial propaganda, the Internet arose to give individuals a still small voice.
5. Strange cyberbedfellows unite for action. We can easily connect with like-minded individuals, and mobilize to do good work for the environment, or social and political causes and campaigns.
6. The Internet — along with YouTube, its wildest child — keeps our politicians and public servants a little less dishonest. YouTube may prove to be a terrific deterrent as high-ranking officials realize a simple truth of the digital age, first coined by Uncle Remus: “You can hide de fire, but what you gonna do wid de smoke?”
7. Email — faster than a letter, cheaper than a phone call, able to alert you to new messages with a bingle sound — allows us to effortlessly contact family and friends.
8. Terabytes of information are accessible to almost everyone.
9. The environment can be observed. One game preserve in China is completely monitored by cameras, so that its Giant Pandas can be watched on a website, by a small number of human staff — and experts in many locations — responsible for their survival.
10. Mundane tasks, such as shopping and bill-paying, are simplified — they consume fewer resources and less time.

The perils of using the Internet are no less tremendous than its benefits. A hacker with a laptop and Internet connection, sitting on a curb in Eastarmpit, Marzipanistan, could attack and devastate computer systems in any major city worldwide. … The heartbreak of psoriasis is nothing compared with the anxiety of malware — insidious invaders of your home computer, known in the jargon as worms, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, rootkits, backdoors, botnets, keystroke loggers, dialers, and adware. … Spam accounts for more than 90% of all email messages; and pornography swallows more than 70% of the entire World Wide Web. … Anxiety caused by Information Overload — and the problems of how to keep up with technology and manage the assault of our exponentially-growing tsunami of information — is a problem that can only be addressed by acquiring more information. … If you fall for a phishing scheme you could lose your life savings: the website Scambusters.org has estimated that one of these frauds, the family of variegated Nigerian email scams, dupes people out of 200 million dollars per year. … Last year more than 8.1 million Americans were victims of identity theft. … With help from the Internet, child abusers lure naive children to fatal meetings. … Addictive behaviors (“I checked my email 20 times today, but I can stop any time.”) are easy to fall into, and difficult to heal.

Fortunately, using caution, knowledge, and uncommon sense, we can avoid (or minimize the effects of) these scourges of the Information Age. They are clear and present dangers; and it’s not too difficult to find reliable websites, savvy commentators, and free software that may keep us relatively free from cyberharm. The Firefox browser extension ‘NoScript’ extension for the Firefox browser) prevents security vulnerabilities caused by scripts. PC users can tap the collective knowledge of a forum called TechGuy (http://www.helponthe.net), where experts offer detailed and step-by-step diagnoses and advice. Mac users can access various forums, or — for those of us with world enough and time — learn the art of enhancing security (known as “hardening” your computer) by reading Apple’s newly released PDF security guide, only 240 pages long. [ http://www.apple.com/support/security/guides/ ].

The Information Revolution giveth, and the Information Revolution taketh away: should we call the game a stalemate or a draw? … Unfortunately, there is another set of dangers, far more subtle and elusive than the ones mentioned above. These days — despite thousands of books, millions of videos, and countless web pages dedicated to computer-related “how-to’s” and “how to avoids” and "what’s the latest-best-coolest must-have gadgets and gizmos?" — there are only a handful of critics who dare to ask “why?”, “what’s it doing to us?’ and “should we?”. Neil Postman, who died in 2003, is one of the enlightened few. His 1992 book on this theme is Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture To Technology. Postman’s book is brilliant gem with one flaw only: it was published before the colossal expansion of the Web. What we need is a new book to explore the pros and cons of the new technologies.



Lee Siegel has written it. The book is called Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In a pyrotechnic series of profound questions and sharp insights, Siegel’s book aims its criticisms at the dark heart of Internet, at the people who use it unquestioningly, and at the makers who, with all the energy of high-school cheerleaders, ceaselessly promote it. [Note: Siegel’s book should not be confused with another book with the same title, written in 2004, by Nicols Fox: Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives.]


Before examining Siegel’s new book, let’s step back to examine some bits from Neil Postman, and his skeptical predecessors. In Technopoly, Postman argues that civilization has moved through various stages, and that culture may be categorized into three varieties: tool-users, Technocracies, and Technopolies. (One cannot imagine what this author would be saying about a Postmanic phase beyond Technopoly, Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity”, where machines are light-years more intelligent than human beings, human beings will be required to have brain implants to continuously access the Internet, and change happens so fast that nobody can understand it.). Until the 17th century, all cultures on our planet were “tool-using cultures” — the tools used by these cultures never interfered with belief systems or ideology. Some time in the 18th century (perhaps in 1765 with the steam engine, or in 1776 with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations) we find the emergence of technocracies, cultures in which the tools attack the culture: they intrude upon and seek to dominate every facet of the culture including “tradition, social mores, myth, politics, ritual, and religion.” In the early part of the 20th century, the United States became the world’s first Technopoly. What is a Technopoly? … Technopoly is a culture dominated in all aspects by technique and technology. In Technopoly, Information is king, or rather, emperor. “One way of defining Technopoly, then,” writes Postman, “is to say it is what happens to society when the defenses against information glut have broken down. It is what happens when institutional life becomes inadequate to cope with too much information. It is what happens when a culture, overcome by information generated by technology, tries to employ technology itself as a means of providing clear direction and humane purpose. The effort is mostly doomed to failure.”

In an interview with Brian Lamb, Postman wonders aloud why Technopoly is dangerous. He says that the job of the academic is to “… try to raise the questions of what’s to become of us if we lose a sense of spirituality. If we devote all of our resources and our psychic energies to making bigger and better machinery and designing better techniques, will we become less human in some sort of traditional way of defining that?”

About information in particular, Postman issues this dire warning: “The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is not a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, and have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.”

Technology is never neutral: it transforms almost every aspect of our culture. Some critics go even further, to insist that technology changes essential aspects of the human self. Hear Thomas Carlyle, more than 150 years ago: “ … let us observe how the mechanical genius of our time has diffused itself into quite other provinces. Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. … These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”



Charlie Chaplin warned us, too, with the magic of his humble and hilarious style. In
the 1936 film Modern Times, the tramp-hero is gainfully employed in a factory. He becomes caught in giant gears; he is fed by an experimental feeding machine that saves time for the management as it causes immense unpleasantness for the workers; and by lunchtime, he cannot prevent his body from jerking helplessly with the same motions he has performed all throughout his laborious working morning. Renewal is one of film's main motifs. A few moments later we are told: "Cured of a nervous breakdown but without a job, he leaves the hospital to start anew."

What Chaplin makes us laugh about in pictures, Aldous Huxley expresses with equal force in words: “In the process of creating ugliness and multiplying monotony, machines had destroyed the old order and were turning the men and women who tended them into brutes and automata.”

The road to hell is paved with good inventions. Our passionate focus on technology has perhaps distracted us from other, more essential things. I do not believe that all technology dehumanizes us, or that life without technology (or, with less-advanced technologies) necessarily creates more enlightened persons. Indeed, in 1932 (7 years before television, and the same year that Huxley published his dystopian comic novel, Brave New World), Sigmund Freud began his classic Civilization and Its Discontents, with the admission that he had never in his life felt that “oceanic feeling” — the sense of wonder, awe, oneness with the universe. Information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom. Neil Postman argues that life in a Technopoly, more than any other time in human history, reduces our opportunities for becoming fully human.



I first discovered Lee Siegel’s work via video on YouTube, where Siegel is seen at the Google headquarters talking about his book. On this tape (which is well worth watching), Siegel appears soft-spoken and serious; but the book is better, and reading Siegel’s book gives us a much deeper portrait of the man and his ideas. In the book, Siegel is often funny, in fact, he can be laugh-out-loud funny, as when he compares shopping for a watch on eBay, with searching for a woman on the website, match.com. Why does Lee Siegel refuse to join the fan club that worships the Internet? … Sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop, Siegel notices a subtle shift in the way he (and other people) interact with one another. In the past, people were more likely to look at people and to start a conversation; whereas today, everyone is absorbed in the virtual world they access through their laptops. Siegel says that the Internet encourages isolation, loneliness, alienated personalities, and what Christopher Lasch has called “the culture of narcissism.” One might speculate that greater isolation promotes greater individuality: but Siegel says that the opposite is true: the Internet promotes mass thinking. He writes: “Fewer and fewer people are doing their own thing. They are cautiously and calculatingly imitating someone or something else.” … In arguing that the Internet rewards not quality, but popularity, Siegel gives us this gem: “You must sound more like everyone else than anyone else is able to sound like anyone else.”

The Internet makes us more isolated, and discourages the ability to “think different”. That is just the tip of the melted iceberg of Siegel’s comprehensive critique. The Internet allows “malicious anonymity”, which harms democratic principles and values. In its focus on “me”, the Net encourages blathering blogs, mixed-up mashups, and puerile videos, produced by mass-minded amateur-artists with no sense of the distinction between superficial self-expression and genuine art.

Corroborating Postman, Siegel states that the Internet gives us too much information. And that the Net is dominated by commerce and commercial interests. The ancient Greeks believed that leisure time was important, because it would naturally be used for learning and self-development. Siegel laments that even our leisure time has been appropriated: “The Internet transvalues all experiences into economic experiences.”
In February, I wrote an open letter to Apple computer mogul Steve Jobs. Jobs had recently been speaking about a product named Kindle, a new ebook reader. Jobs said:

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

And this is a perfect example of Technopoly at its worst. Because people aren’t reading anymore, Jobs will develop products that people will use. Had he been thinking differently, he might have explained the value of reading, and vowed a way to use technology to encourage us to read the most significant books.

In Lee Siegel’s new book, Against the Machine, Steve Jobs is not mentioned at all. Courageously, Siegel criticizes many other giants of the hi-tech industry, including Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Bill Gates, Alvin Toffler, Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Johnson, Lawrence Lessig, and Tim O’Reilly. Siegel implies that we should question the objectivity of these tech titans, whose bread and butter burgeons as the worship of technology spreads.

Indeed, I have observed that we are not only encouraged and seduced to consume technology and information, we are threatened and shamed. A commercial for the Microsoft search engine features a young woman hiding in a janitor’s closet, terrified to join her co-workers at the office water cooler. The co-workers are described as “a group of sharks” who are up on “all the latest headlines and celebrity gossip.” But this poor woman has not yet read her Microsofted news today, so she must shamefully hide herself away. It all ends with a guitarist cheerfully strumming and singing the theme song: “Noone wants to look dumb.” … Apparently this bullying tactic is not working: Microsoft recently announced that they would pay us when we use their search engine to shop.

Siegel’s book is refreshingly smart; it questions Internet technology with the questions that matter most. I could quibble with Siegel’s claim that the Internet give us nothing new, and only makes things more convenient. I could argue for a rounder portrait of O’Reilly and Lessig: these two brilliant men have done extraordinarily good work in moving society toward open source software, technological literacy, sanity about copyright, and a movement known as “free culture”. And I might strongly disagree with Siegel’s slant on web publishing: to me (and to Joseph Epstein and Andre Schriffin), traditional print publishing is dysfunctional because the commercial interests of print publishing have crushed the Perkinsesque integrity in culture and in art. From my perspective, Web publishing — all these blogs and books and videos — gives people a voice — for the first time in history — to directly challenge the traditional (and the commercial) view of things. These mass voices are often crude, foolish and unartistic. Yet there may be enormous therapeutic value in the process of personal expression. And there are diamonds in the coal-heap: some of these voices are profoundly honest and genuinely original.

These disagreements are mere quibbles: the critic is always looking for the fleas in the lion’s mane. From page first to last, Siegel’s book captivated me, and changed the way I see the Internet.



We are drowning in information, but it could be that the alarm system is just beginning to resound. A May 16 (2008) article in “The Economist”, From Literacy to Digiracy: Will Reading and Writing Remain Important?, notes that “Only one in three [American] children left high school able to read proficiently.” In the current issue of the magazine Atlantic (July/August 2008) an essay by Nicholas Carr (Is Google Making Us Stupid? — What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains), argues that we are losing the ability to read deeply. And even our American literature — that barometer of cultural sanity and health — might at last be waking from its splendiferous triteness and its slumberous snore. As the Green movement grows, we are seeing a renewal in interest in the great works of Henry David Thoreau. And Thoreau Bound, a recent Utopian comic novel about how we might live more simply-wisely-lovingly, begins with a scathing parody of cybersex, and a protagonist who insists: “The downloaded dumpling cannot take one’s hunger away.”

Our culture is virtually lost, whirling into the future without a plan. The way home is to discover a middle ground between the Luddites and the technological utopians. We are now living in the era of Web 2.0, characterized by unabashable egoism and unprecedented collaboration, made of (according to the gospel of Wikipedia) “web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. ” We need to leapfrog toward Web 3.0, which will keep the valuable facets of our current Web, promote true art and courteous debate, and change the dehumanizing aspects of Internet use. Web 3.0 will have a human face. It will have nothing to do with inventions, and everything to do with our inner lives. It would be a sustainable Information Revolution, which begins with an expansion of personal consciousness, and then continues with meaningful actions that transform the world. Web 3.0’s greatest service to us will be paradoxically simple: it will be a Web that encourages people to spend less time in front of computers and television screens, and to give more life to the natural world, to artistic creation, and to other human beings.

To live wisely and well, to become fully human has never been easy. Hawthorne’s protagonist, Ethan Brand, acquired vast knowledge, but soon perished when he shockingly grasped what he had become in the pursuit of his vacuous quest. Chekhov’s man in a case failed to escape his self-made shell. Isaac Singer’s lonely scholar, Dr. Fischelson fared better: luck, desperation, and a simple woman led him a to new and more meaningful life.

The unexamined online life is not worth living. What we cannot find in caring relationships with other persons, we will never find through the medium of interconnected machines. Goethe, despite his enlightened culture at Weimar — ingeniously designed to nourish its citizens, and promote scientific discoveries and all the arts — needed to constantly remind himself about the simplest things. Remember to live.



Michael Pastore is the Editorial Director of Epublishers Weekly, and the the author of more than a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, including the forthcoming The Tao of Information: How to Simplify Your Life, Keep up with Technology, and Harvest the Internet’s Essential Facts and Ideas in 30 Minutes a Day. (Zorba Press, Spring 2009).

This essay is copyrighted. You may reprint it on your blog or website, if you give us the credit we deserve: add the tag, "From Epublishers Weekly."
To reprint this essay in a print publication, or in other electronic sources, contact us by email. Thanks. -- MP

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