Keeping up with the odd man out.
Ever used wikipedia? Of course you have. You’re on the web. EVERYONE on the web has seen something at wikipedia at some point, right?
Long story short, they need money for all that bandwidth and storage space that wikipedia takes up. Their end goal is to catalog the sum of all human knowledge, for the love of pete!
So please, if you believe that humanity will be better served the more people can access good information for free, give a donation.
Ok, first of all, the “ATM of books” is a terrible way to describe this little doohickey. (I almost said “how-ya-doin”, and as some of you may know, I would’ve had to go wash my mouth out. Or hands, anyway.)
This is an on-demand book printing machine. Call it a personal publisher or something, but it is not an ATM in any reasonable way. What…was it loaded with the books and just spits them out? No. Its actually printing them.
Anyway. Link here.
I have been hoping something like this would come out, because what this machine begins to do is move the long tail of economics into the local physical realm.
Up to this point, the long tail has been truly prevalent in two situations: digital only media, and “infinite” warehouse internet retailors who can afford to keep a huge stock of everything that everyone might want in one place.
With this machine, you have an instant, localized competitor to large-scale bookstores. The sheer volume of advantages to this is staggering. You have, in one place: long tail selection (and, if they do this right, the necessary collaborative and/or social filtering), the human society of being in a public place with people who share at least one interest with you, the opportunity to get out of the house, the atmosphere of a local bookstore (often includes cats, endless shelves of books), instant gratification when you really want to read that one book you heard about, overly expensive coffee and hot chocolate, and a proprieter who will likely learn your name a something about what you like.
For many people, I think this will beat the pants off the barnes and nobles and the borders of the world. Why do people go to those bookstores vice little local ones? The same reason anyone goes to a megastore. Selection. The ability to get everything you want in one place.
The long tail and internet superstores are already beginning to degrade the market potential of these physical megastores. Afterall, borders has a lot of books, but amazon has just about every book ever printed (or so it seems). When I want a specific book to read, I buy it on Amazon or better yet, alibris. When I want to look at books and hang out with a book reading crowd, I go to borders. But if I could do both and support a LOCAL businessman who knows me? Perfect.
Let’s extend this past just books. As rapid prototyping gets better, much of what you now go to walmart for (cheap crap) will hopefully become manufacturable on demand in what amounts to a 5 and 10 with infinite capacity. And, because one of the tenants of rapid prototyping is the ability to reuse materials, this has the chance to change the world. Imagine a world where any simple item that isn’t consumable (by which I mean anything you have to keep buying, from food to shampoo and toothpaste) can be created from an infinite catalog on demand. Clothes. Dish and silverwear. Toys. Books. furniture. Tools. All the tens of thousands of minor pieces that we accululate just to live.
Now you’ve essentially eliminated massive logistics systems. You would still have to deliver raw materials (I’m assuming growth of population continues) to the local stores. But the entire make way more than you need, packing, shipping, repacking, reshipping logistics train just disappears.
Now, as I type this I think that this could cause people to worry (with legitimacy) about the sheer number of jobs that can and will be eliminated by this sort of technology. But, if we follow this train of thought, I would have to explain why I think that eventually, humanity will be able (and will have to) sustain a large percentage of its population who do not add anything productive to the mix. People who are pure consumers. But I’m not gonna go into that right now, because I’m tired of typing.
Wes Clark got an hour on the Diane Rehms show. It was good. I’d link the transcript as well, if I could find it but it doesn’t seem to be out yet. And NPR makes you pay for transcripts.
Let me take a moment and just point out how stupid it is that a PUBLIC RADIO STATION makes you pay for something that:
1) Can be created for free yourself
2) Is already paid for by the people supporting the public radio
3) Is going to show up elsewhere for free anyway if the show is any good
Why do they do this? I mean, I know they’ve been strapped for cash for 6 - 16 years (I’m guessing the clinton years weren’t all that good to public radio either, but on that note its supposition…I actually don’t know what I’m talking about) , but still…transcripts aren’t the place to make your money. At all.
Those should be a public service.
Anyway. Go. Listen. Love.
UPDATE 15 Dec 2346: As mentioned by the commenter below, a transcript is now available.
I just saw her in concert at the pageant in st louis. I don’t really do concert reviews, but it was a great time. She had two opening acts, first Levi Weaver and then Kid Beyond. They all do a shit-load of loopback to give them the ability to be one person bands. Weaver is kind of a emo/alternative/folksy guy…hard for me to really pin down, but really good. I’m gonna have to dig up his music online (I had no cash for the cd’s) because he’s got some songs with some lyrics that I just have to get. And then Kid Beyond is pure human beatbox extravaganza and what he can do when he layers his own beatbox with the loopback was fucking awesome.
When those two guys got done and we had a 20 or 30 minute break to reset the stage, I was really hoping that Imogen would find a way to work those guys into her act, and she did. About half her songs had them playing. It was great.
Sorry the picture sucks. Haven’t figured my camera phone out yet.
What can I say abuut Imogen heap? I have no way to describe her stuff. You just kinda gotta go listen. Actually, even better, watch a video, because its really amazingly cool to watch her sing chords by herself. I know its probably a simple loopbacky thing that isn’t that impressive, but it sounds sweet. And then she had this neat little thumb piano thing…not sure what it was…
Anyway, I’ll stop gushing like a teenage fan boy now.
But the show was good. If you get a chance to see her, I recommend going. Anyone. You’d enjoy it.
After going to a (fairly disappointing) moveon.org meeting this evening, and staying at the venue (The Schlafly Taproom), I had texted my buddy Brian to see if he wanted to roll down and join me (Brian being a partier and almost always up for having a couple of good beers).
Well, he was elsewhere, celebrating his next to last night in town.
Which gives me some pause. It might just be my mood, but I don’t think so.
Brian is sort of my go-to buddy when I feel like going out, “partying”, in the American sense of the word. He’s a short, athletic, gregarious fellow from California. Armenian, genetically speaking, and quite proud of the fact. He has this amazing ability to just start talking to anyone…anyone…in a loud, crazy, brash, but amazingly friendly fashion that even though it ought to be scary somehow just becomes charming. And even when he is quite clearly charming the pants off someone (often, from what I can tell, quite literally, though I’ve never benefited from the view), he somehow manages to do it without ever being remotely dishonst. He’s the sort of guy I would *never* recommend to my female friends, unless they were just looking for a good time….but he’s honest about it. And for all that, I truly believe that he would never do anything if he knew it was going to hurt someone. Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for most of the men that I would put into his category.
I think it is this strange dichotemy that draws me to Brian, keeps me going back to hang out and party with him even though I have to be *very* careful to not end up in a bad situation around him. He’s one of those golden boys where no harm can ever touch him, so he is very carefree about things that I cannot be, so I have watch my step and keep an ear to the plans for the furthering of the night. But he is, unlike so many of his partying brethren, understanding of those who do not lead as charmed an existence as he. He will try and get you to join him in his craziness, and he’ll press you on it…but only if he actually likes you and wants your company. And if you say no…he respects it.
Anyway, he leaves town tomorrow night. And I’m surprisingly sad to see him go.
