Influential Works

[Last Updated: May 27th, 2008]

This page will be augmented and edited regularly, at least when observed over any sufficiently long period. It is intended as a repository for inspirational works I have found - works which will continue to drive the focus and writing on this website:

• Sara Lloyd, “A book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st century”

  A thoughtful manifesto cataloging the many ways that the publisher role is diminishing in the production of text and proposing how adaptation will need to occur if publishers want to stay relevant.

  In an ‘always on’ world in which everything is increasingly digital, where content is increasingly fragmented and ‘bite-sized’, where ‘prosumers’ merge the traditionally disparate roles of producer and consumer, where search replaces the library and where multimedia mash-ups – not text - holds the attraction for the digital natives who are growing up fast into the mass market of tomorrow, what role do publishers still have to play and how will they have to evolve to hold on to a continuing role in the writing and reading culture of the future? Will there even be a writing and reading culture as we know it, tomorrow? Is the publishing industry acting fast enough and working creatively enough to adapt to the new information and leisure economies?

• Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence,” from Harper’s Magazine, February 2007.

  A breathtaking essay on the derivative nature of art and an examination of how copyright is an ongoing active debate, which in its present state, is inarguably doing harm to the common good.

  A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. In this regard, few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation.