Differences & Repetitions

About a week ago Michael Eisen, who teaches evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley, blogged about a shocking discovery one of his postdocs had made in early April. The discovery happened not in his lab, but of all places on Amazon.com.

While searching the site for a copy of Peter Lawrence’s book The Making of a Fly (1992), long out of print, the postdoc happened across two merchants selling secondhand editions for — get this — $1.7 million and $2.2 million respectively! A series of price escalations ensued as Eisen returned to the product page over following days and weeks until one seller’s copy topped out at $23 million.

But that’s not the worst of it. One of the comments Eisen received on his blog post pointed to a different secondhand book selling on Amazon for $900 million. It wasn’t an original edition of the Gutenberg Bible from 1463, nor was it a one-of-a-kind art book, either. What screed was worth almost $1 billion? Why, a paperback copy of actress Lana Turner’s autobiography, published in 1991, of course! (I suspect the price may change, so in the event that it does, here’s a screen shot showing the price on Saturday, April 30th.)

Good scientist that he is, Eisen hypothesized that something wasn’t right about the prices on the fly book. After all, they seemed to be adjusting themselves upward each time he returned to the site, and like two countries engaged in an arms race, they always seemed to do so in relationship to each other. Eisen crunched some numbers:

On the day we discovered the million dollar prices, the copy offered by bordeebook [one of the sellers] was1.270589 times the price of the copy offered by profnath [the other seller]. And now the bordeebook copy was 1.270589 times profnath again. So clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged. (emphasis added)

So the culprit behind the extraordinarily high prices wasn’t a couple of greedy (or totally out of touch) booksellers. It was, instead, the automated systems — the computer algorithms — working behind the scenes in response to perceived market dynamics.

I’ve spent the last couple of blog posts talking about algorithmic culture, and I believe what we’re seeing here — algorithmic pricing — may well be an extension of it.

It’s a bizarre development. It’s bizarre not because computers are involved in setting prices (though in this case they could have been doing a better job of it, clearly). It is bizarre because of the way in which algorithms are being used to disrupt and ultimately manipulate — albeit not always successfully — the informatics of markets.

Indeed, I’m becoming convinced that algorithms (at least as I’ve been talking about them) are a response to the decentralized forms of social interaction that grew up out of, and against, the centralized forms of culture, politics, and economics that were prevalent in the second and third quarters of 2oth century. Interestingly, the thinkers who conjured up the idea of decentralized societies often turned to markets — and more specifically, to the price system — in an attempt to understand how individuals distributed far and wide could effectively coordinate their affairs absent governmental and other types of intervention.

That makes me wonder: are the algorithms being used on Amazon and elsewhere an emergent form of “government,” broadly understood? And if so, what does a billion dollar book say about the prospects for good government in an algorithmic age?

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After a series of delays (I hear this is how things go in Hollywood), I’m pleased to debut The Late Age of Print video at long last. It’s no “Thriller,” admittedly, but hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it anyway.

Here’s a little back-story for those of you who may be interested. Last fall my editor at Columbia informed me that the Press had begun promoting some of its books using short videos. He then asked me if I’d be interested in shooting one for Late Age. Since I’m not someone who believes that electronic media are out to kill books — I’m quite confident in their ability to help books out, in fact — I decided I’d say yes.

I was a little daunted by the prospect of shooting the video, mostly because I’m a methodological writer who’s unaccustomed to speaking in sound bites. I reflected on this a bit last December on Differences & Repetitions. In hindsight, that should have been the least of my worries.

In chapter 2 of Late Age I touch on how the campus bookstore at Indiana University (where I teach) was designed by Ken White, the architect who went on to create the big-box bookstore template. What better location for the video shoot, I thought, than at ground-zero of the big-box bookstore phenomenon?

Unfortunately, IU decided in 2007 that it would be a good idea to outsource campus bookstore operations to Barnes & Noble — about whom I write rather approvingly in Late Age. The long and the short of it is that Barnes & Noble denied my requests to shoot the video there.

I still find it difficult to fathom how a private sector company would — or even could — refuse the use of public property for a purpose such as this. In any case, I’m sure I could have complained to the University, but by then so much time had elapsed that I just needed to get on with the shoot.

I settled on the IU Lilly Library, which houses rare books and manuscripts. It’s a truly lovely location, though I fear that it may inadvertantly up the “book fetishist” quotient that I try so hard to mitigate in Late Age. The videographer also had me harp on the “books aren’t going away anytime soon” theme, which, though appropriate, doesn’t quite get at the substance of the book, which focuses on e-books, book superstores, online bookselling, Amazon.com, and Harry Potter.

Anyway, despite all the drama I’m still pretty pleased with the result. I hope you like it, too. Please share it, rate it, and comment on it. I’d love to hear what you think!

Now that I’ve entered the video age, would it be asking too much for Colbert to call?

Sorry it’s been awhile. I spent early September preparing feverishly for last week’s Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP) regional conference in Copenhagen, Denmark and for two talks that followed shortly thereafter at Uppsala University, Sweden. Life’s been a blast, needless to say, albeit rather hectic. Hence the relative quiet here on D&R.

Anyway, until I can muster a proper blog post, I thought I’d share this fun YouTube video that my friend and colleague Isaac West recently sent my way. I realize it’s been doing the rounds for awhile now, but I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who haven’t yet seen it. Enjoy–and remember your Carolyn Marvin: all old technologies were once new technologies.

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Today I ran across an intriguing story from the New York Times. Mostly it’s about the political strategy presumptive Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin used when she ran for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska back in 1996. She turned the tables in the election by sidestepping more run-of-the-mill local fare such as sewers and snow removal. Instead, she campaigned on so-called “wedge issues” including abortion, religion, and gun rights. With these she unseated a three-term mayor and became a polarizing political figure in the process.

Even more compelling to me than all this, however, is the interest she expressed as mayor of Wasilla in banning some books at the local library. The Times has this to say:

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical.”

I wish the Times had provided some indication as to which “morally or socially objectionable” books Pain expressed an interest in banning. For my part, I consider book banning to be undesirable, even in cases where the books in question constitute unpopular speech. I suppose that makes me a good liberal–not in the sense of someone who endorses a left-wing politics per se, but rather in the sense of someone who holds fast to at least some of the tents of liberalism.

What truly fascinates me about the issue of Palin’s interest in book banning, though, is the synergy it seems to share with right-leaning religious groups who in recent years have attempted to get books such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter (of course there are many others) off of public library shelves. There are plenty of people who say books don’t matter much anymore–that they’re a medium in decline, that they’ve been edged out by television and the internet, etc. If that’s true, then why all this interest on the part not only of the Christian right, but indeed of other groups, to ban them? Or, why all the outcry over Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison’s 2006 swearing-in ceremony, in which he used not the Christian Bible but instead the Koran to consecrate his oath of office?

I don’t have concrete answers to these questions as yet; they do open up some interesting future directions for my research. For now, though, I will say this: the Palin book-banning controversy, coupled with the other examples I mention above, suggest that print (and printed books in particular) is far from dead. If anything, print remains a lightning-rod for the some of the most important social controversies of our time.

An interesting post I thought I’d pass along from the Environmental News Network….

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PLANT A TREE FOR EVERY BOOK YOU READ

Want to get a new book but worry about its environmental impact? Worry a little bit less. With the help of Eco-Libris, you can plant a tree for every book you buy or read.

Says Raz Godelnik, an Eco-Libris co-founder, the company works with readers, publishers, writers, bookstores, and others in the book industry to balance out the paper used for any book by planting trees. About 20 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper to be used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone. Eco-Libris raises awareness about the environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and provides book lovers with a simple way to do something about it: plant a tree for every book they read. Ten dollars will cover tree planting for ten books.

To date, Eco-Libris has balanced out over 24,000 books, resulting in the planting of more than 31,500 new trees! Kedzie Press is collaborating with Eco-Libris in a “Million Tree-A-Thon” initiative to plant one million trees for one million books by the end of 2009.

The Eco-Libris program is being offered by some local bookstores; otherwise, it’s easy to participate on-line.

Thumbs up, Eco-Libris.

You can read my interview with Eco-Libris here.

It’s funny how things come and go. I published an essay about a year ago in the journal Television and New Media about ebooks and electronic reading. It’s had some response, and a version of the piece will be included in my forthcoming book, The Late Age of Print. Even so, there’s been some sense for awhile now, particularly since the dot-com bust, that stand-alone electronic reading devices were pretty much over and done with–at least, for the time being. I know, I know: Sony’s had one out for a few years now; I’ve seen and tried it at Borders. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to have had a great deal of uptake, much less sparked widespread discussion about the future of books and reading.

That’s starting to change with Amazon.com’s recent announcement of Kindle, its electronic reading device. It’s been featured on the cover of last week’s Newsweek and in stories by NPR; it’s also whipped the technology wing of the blogosphere into something of a frenzy. (D&R is no exception here.) Suddenly, ebooks and e-reading are sexy again, the stuff of public commentary and conversation.

I’ll be honest: having researched and written at length on the history and technology of ebooks, I’m skeptical of Kindle’s possibilities for success. Every few years an ebook “revolution” seems to flare up, only to flame out shortly thereafter. Witness all the hoopla surrounding the Rocket Ebook and other such devices, which were touted in the late 1990s as the Next Big Thing. Where are they now, other than selling for pocket change on eBay?

Though I may not be optimistic about Kindle’s future, there are a few significant differences that set it a part from earlier stand-alone e-reading devices. The most significant factor for me is probably Amazon.com, which is unusually well-positioned to market and sell the reader. But even more interesting to me is the careful messaging that’s going on around Kindle. In contrast to many earlier forays into the realm of ebooks and e-reading, Kindle isn’t being marketed as a replacement for printed books. Instead, media reports about the device, and indeed the marketing surrounding it, all speak reverentially about the smells, sounds, and textures of printed books. The Newsweek article I mentioned earlier even touted the printed book as having one of the best “interfaces” (to impose an anachronism) of all media hitherto created. Kindle’s being sold not as a replacement for printed books, but rather as a supplement to them, or even as a way of augmenting them. This definitely shows signs of having learned from past mistakes.

Here are a couple of the rubs for me. First, Kindle can only hold 200 books. Now, that may sound like a lot, but at a time when iPods and other such devices can hold thousands of megabyte-consuming songs, couldn’t the designers of Kindle have done better with what is, after all, mostly text? What’s more disturbing to me, though, are the terms of service Kindle and many other ebook devices attempt to impose. Once you buy a book and download it to your Kindle, you’re done–as in, you can’t pass it on to anyone else due to embedded digital rights management technology. This “friendly” new e-reading device, like many digital technologies abounding today, is working actively, if quietly, to undermine the First Sale Doctrine. This basically says (among other things) that once someone has sold you some good, she or he is no longer at liberty to dictate to whom you can give or sell it. Kindle thus represents yet another salvo in the book publishing industry’s ongoing war against the used and pass along book trades. Worse, now a major bookseller is in cahoots with the publishers.

I can understand why the book industry, as well as the Author’s Guild and the sellers of new books, might be discomforted by the passing on and resale of books. None of these groups profits directly from the circulation of these objects in the after market. But I wonder: is it as simple as that? Does cutting off the ability to circulate books after their first sale really help authors and publishers? Or is this an unimaginative way of creating demand by manufacturing artificial conditions of scarcity, a way that neglects the degree to which informal and unauthorized economies of exchange actually can increase people’s desire for at least some consumer goods? (Here I’ll refer you to Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, which addresses these concerns more cogently and in more detail than I can here.)

All that to say, if you really want to revere the printed book (and I’m talking to you, Amazon.com), you need to respect its ability to circulate more or less freely and to create ebook devices that do the same. Lock down culture all you want. I’m not buying until I start seeing some keys.

Coming soon: my reflections on this little ditty from Amazon.com, which now appears on the page for a book I co-edited called Communication as…: Perspectives on Theory: “Upgrade this book for $9.19 more, and you can read, search, and annotate every page online. See details….” Sigh.

This summer’s hardly been lazy, to be sure. That said, the break from teaching has given me some time to catch up on my reading. And in that spirit, I thought I’d say a few words about my summer reading list. I’m quite excited about it. They’re all academic books, so for those of you anticipating literary recommendations, you’ll have to look elsewhere (although recently I enjoyed Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, which just became an Oprah’s Book Club selection).

I loved McKenzie Wark’s A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard U.P., 2004), and so I was thrilled to pick up Gamer Theory (Harvard U.P., 2007) at the Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa this past April. I wasn’t disappointed. Though perhaps a tad uneven compared to Hacker, Gamer Theory is definitely worth reading if you’re interested in everyday life, digital (and non-digital) gaming, and what it may be like to live in what Gilles Deleuze has called “a society of control.” (This is a theme I develop in my forthcoming book, by the way.)

I met Alex Galloway, author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (MIT Press, 2004), when we were graduate students (he at Duke, me at nearby UNC-Chapel Hill). At the time I didn’t really know what he was working on, so I became intrigued when I ran across Protocol about a year or two ago. I knew I’d like it, but I just never had the time to read it–until now. It’s a gem. Not only is it an insightful elaboration of how control works in contemporary networked societies, but it’s smart about the technical aspects of computer programming and networking. I’d describe it as a “must read” for those interested in new/technology studies.

Friedrich A. Kittler’s Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 (Stanford U.P., 1990) is a book that’s been in my library for some years now. I’ve only just begun reading it, so I don’t have a whole lot to say at the moment–except that I should have read Discourse Networks ages ago. The foreword provides a wonderful contextualization of Kittler’s work, and I’m especially enjoying the “1900″ part of the book.

There are two more books that I’ve been sent recently, both of which I’m hoping to get to before summer’s end. Last year on D&R I reviewed Daniel Heller-Roazen’s amazing book, Echolalias (Zone Books, 2005). By the good graces of the folks at Zone, Heller-Roazen’s latest tome, The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation, arrived on my doorstep. I can’t wait to read it. It’s about the perception of perception–a heady topic that couldn’t be in more capable hands.

Last but not least on my list is Tarleton Gillespie’s Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture (MIT Press, 2007). I had the good fortune of meeting Tarleton at an intellectual property symposium in Iowa in 2005, and we’ve corresponded off and on since then. As with several of the books on my summer reading list, I suspect it’s going to have a lot to say about control. And did I mention I just love the title?

Okay–that’s it for now. Of course, I’d welcome any suggestions for further reading.