Kane X. Faucher's Blog, page 3
March 24, 2013
Amazon: Oh, the Games We Will Play!
Compared to my ancestors, my thumbs are exceedingly well-developed mini-machines. Although now one need only hop on to Facebook or any other social media platform to see the thumb digitized as part of a popularity metric (I have an article forthcoming where I assess the semiotic function of the thumb as a "phaticon"), what I mean to say is that my actual thumbs have been subject to decades of rigorous training. Some of those extreme training modules have names such as Colecovision, Sega, Nintendo, N64, Gamecube, and now cell phone QWERTY keypad. My thumbs have been able to mash buttons, tap, wiggle, and otherwise navigate pixelated worlds to beat the time score, kill the big boss, dodge flying shuriken, make that just-in-time leap, collect gold, and be told the princess is in another castle. My thumbs are hardened veterans fully accustomed to the games (of capital).
Praise for my agile, spatulate digits aside, I want to peer at Amazon and other like book venues through the lens of something called gamification. Are authors on Amazon really just level-grinding?
Callois gives us two definitions of play: ludus and paidia. The paidia form is the kind of open free play without any rules or objectives (think here of playing in the sandbox as a wee one), whereas ludus is entirely rule-based with clear objectives (think here of the frustration of playing Monopoly with the family). Digital environments like Facebook seem to be "paidia-fied" environments since it doesn't seem to have an actual goal (to connect people for the sake of connecting people?), but scratch a bit deeper and one discovers that it is entirely a gridded, rule-based system where there are game modules running in the background (data harvesting for targeted advertising to users), and the usual "great heap forward" of getting the most attention via the posting game (post it up the flagpole and see if the others salute with their "likes"). Plenty of mini-games on Facebook, but what about Amazon?
When I think of gamification, I am reminded of what Ian Bogost says:
"More specifically, gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway."
And further down:
"Gamification is easy. It offers simple, repeatable approaches in which benefit, honor, and aesthetics are less important than facility. For the consultants and the startups, that means selling the same bullshit in book, workshop, platform, or API form over and over again, at limited incremental cost. It ticks a box. Social media strategy? Check. Games strategy? Check."
It should come as no surprise that gamified environments plunder capitalism for inspiration. How else to understand WoW but by way of a kind of fixation on neoliberal ideals of arch-individualist self-development in a ranging world where the means to self-development is the accumulation strategy of getting loot and gear? Here's a provocative speculation by Paolo Pedercini:
"Is the fantasy of gamification a testament to the decline of money as the general, all-encompassing incentive to regulate human relations?"
Most likely. Add in the perversion of cybernetics writ in micronized, microtemporal bursts (what Wolfgang Ernst calls "time criticality), and you have yourself a deal.
So, Amazon. Perhaps not as infantilizing an environment as Facebook in a competition to accumulate "likes", or Twitter (where a billion users compete to write the best fortune cookie), there is still a gamification component. Anatomizing the general Amazon product page, the implications of software design are fairly obvious: solicit reader reviews headed by an unqualified Likert scale in the form of x stars out of 5, right at the point-of-purchase page (PoP). Metrics are supplied to the potential consumer to guide (or persuade) purchasing decision, and the more 5-stars and reviews a book gets, the more likely someone will take the chance to buy it. But that's not all: Amazon collects visitor and consumer data as part of its algorithm to up-sell other products (customers who looked at / bought x also looked at and bought y and z). It is a simple automation of an old sales trick: you go to the change-room to try on some new threads, and the sales person gathers accessories that "go with" what you are trying on.
But that's Amazon's version of its game, and not all players play it as intended. Let me put it another way: if Amazon reviews are a kind of game of accumulation to prove value through popularity, then there will be "players" willing to pay to win. We can call them cheaters, the kind of people who try to find ways to win at a game by using alternative and questionable methods.
P(l)ay to win? Sock puppet reviews are fairly standard practice among the "cheaters," and there is a booming market as evident on places like fivver.com where any author can pay five bucks to some stranger with an Amazon account to post some vague words of high praise for the author's book.
It's not like Amazon is completely oblivious to such practices. In order to cut down on the spammy sock puppetry that jeopardizes review credibility overall (and Amazon doesn't want to lose face), Amazon has introduced the "verified purchase" mechanism so that if someone is going to put up a sock puppet review, credibility is diminished if said sock puppet didn't purchase the book from Amazon. It is not a perfect system, but it suits Amazon just fine. In fact, Amazon is not really trying to root out insincere and bogus reviews, but instead trying to ensure that every bogus reviewer will have at least bought the book since that is all that matters to Amazon: sales.
The language is also particularly interesting on Amazon reviews. Users can record their approval or disapproval of a review according to the prompting question "was this review helpful to you?" Helpful for what? The question is not "was the review well-written?" or "did the review capture something meaningful about the book?" but if the review was helpful... i.e., did it help persuade you to buy it. Amazon is in the business of selling books, period (well, that and other merchandise), not to function as the arbiter of actual merit and value of any book.
I have not even touched the mysterious algorithm known as the Amazon sales rank. There are a lot of authors who come near to obsession in tracking their sales rank, and whose hopes plummet as the sales rank decays. There are plenty of services out there (including on-site with Amazon Author Central) such as NovelRank where authors who thrill at seeing numbers go up and down can track their book's popularity as an expression of number of sales. It is a kind of bizarre arithmomania, but also reminiscent of video game level grinding.
In order to entice more authors to fixate on the sales rank, Amazon started to create endless little subcategories where authors could gain some degree of personal validation in saying, "my book was #19 in the category 'YA fiction involving armadillos set in a dystopian future.'" Quite the badge of honour. In fact, if we wanted to create even more sub-sub-sub-etc., categories, every single author could swagger and swell with the pride of being #1 on Amazon.
The sales rank algorithm is not terribly complicated, although the precise formula is black-boxed by Amazon as proprietary knowledge. It is a numerical expression of how many books sold relative to a time scale, and relative to other books sold relative to their time scale. But, just like sock puppet reviewing, some players will choose to alter their sales rank using whatever means. But this is where Amazon could care less. The only way to budge the sales rank is through purchase, so the author can beg all his or her friends, family, and strangers on the bus to buy the book, perhaps even coordinating a synchronized campaign of "ok, everybody, click purchase at 7pm tonight!" Or, the author can try to get a little lift in the rank by buying the book him or herself. In any case, Amazon wins. One wonders if the sales rank is less a lure for readers, and more a lure for authors to coordinate some kind of sales campaign.
I don't mean to nitpick on Amazon at the exclusion of other sites that employ similar tactics. In fact, I'm not necessarily critiquing the grand goliath of online book sales whatsoever beyond just pointing out some curious parallel to gamified environments in an ostensibly non-game context. From book-buying, promoting, ranking, reviewing and so forth, we might come to see that these acts can be understood through the gamified context.
And, just like some of us grew up mashing buttons to beat the big boss and earn a new high score, some of us are still mashing buttons in an entirely new context.
Praise for my agile, spatulate digits aside, I want to peer at Amazon and other like book venues through the lens of something called gamification. Are authors on Amazon really just level-grinding?
Callois gives us two definitions of play: ludus and paidia. The paidia form is the kind of open free play without any rules or objectives (think here of playing in the sandbox as a wee one), whereas ludus is entirely rule-based with clear objectives (think here of the frustration of playing Monopoly with the family). Digital environments like Facebook seem to be "paidia-fied" environments since it doesn't seem to have an actual goal (to connect people for the sake of connecting people?), but scratch a bit deeper and one discovers that it is entirely a gridded, rule-based system where there are game modules running in the background (data harvesting for targeted advertising to users), and the usual "great heap forward" of getting the most attention via the posting game (post it up the flagpole and see if the others salute with their "likes"). Plenty of mini-games on Facebook, but what about Amazon?
When I think of gamification, I am reminded of what Ian Bogost says:
"More specifically, gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway."
And further down:
"Gamification is easy. It offers simple, repeatable approaches in which benefit, honor, and aesthetics are less important than facility. For the consultants and the startups, that means selling the same bullshit in book, workshop, platform, or API form over and over again, at limited incremental cost. It ticks a box. Social media strategy? Check. Games strategy? Check."
It should come as no surprise that gamified environments plunder capitalism for inspiration. How else to understand WoW but by way of a kind of fixation on neoliberal ideals of arch-individualist self-development in a ranging world where the means to self-development is the accumulation strategy of getting loot and gear? Here's a provocative speculation by Paolo Pedercini:
"Is the fantasy of gamification a testament to the decline of money as the general, all-encompassing incentive to regulate human relations?"
Most likely. Add in the perversion of cybernetics writ in micronized, microtemporal bursts (what Wolfgang Ernst calls "time criticality), and you have yourself a deal.
So, Amazon. Perhaps not as infantilizing an environment as Facebook in a competition to accumulate "likes", or Twitter (where a billion users compete to write the best fortune cookie), there is still a gamification component. Anatomizing the general Amazon product page, the implications of software design are fairly obvious: solicit reader reviews headed by an unqualified Likert scale in the form of x stars out of 5, right at the point-of-purchase page (PoP). Metrics are supplied to the potential consumer to guide (or persuade) purchasing decision, and the more 5-stars and reviews a book gets, the more likely someone will take the chance to buy it. But that's not all: Amazon collects visitor and consumer data as part of its algorithm to up-sell other products (customers who looked at / bought x also looked at and bought y and z). It is a simple automation of an old sales trick: you go to the change-room to try on some new threads, and the sales person gathers accessories that "go with" what you are trying on.
But that's Amazon's version of its game, and not all players play it as intended. Let me put it another way: if Amazon reviews are a kind of game of accumulation to prove value through popularity, then there will be "players" willing to pay to win. We can call them cheaters, the kind of people who try to find ways to win at a game by using alternative and questionable methods.
P(l)ay to win? Sock puppet reviews are fairly standard practice among the "cheaters," and there is a booming market as evident on places like fivver.com where any author can pay five bucks to some stranger with an Amazon account to post some vague words of high praise for the author's book.
It's not like Amazon is completely oblivious to such practices. In order to cut down on the spammy sock puppetry that jeopardizes review credibility overall (and Amazon doesn't want to lose face), Amazon has introduced the "verified purchase" mechanism so that if someone is going to put up a sock puppet review, credibility is diminished if said sock puppet didn't purchase the book from Amazon. It is not a perfect system, but it suits Amazon just fine. In fact, Amazon is not really trying to root out insincere and bogus reviews, but instead trying to ensure that every bogus reviewer will have at least bought the book since that is all that matters to Amazon: sales.
The language is also particularly interesting on Amazon reviews. Users can record their approval or disapproval of a review according to the prompting question "was this review helpful to you?" Helpful for what? The question is not "was the review well-written?" or "did the review capture something meaningful about the book?" but if the review was helpful... i.e., did it help persuade you to buy it. Amazon is in the business of selling books, period (well, that and other merchandise), not to function as the arbiter of actual merit and value of any book.
I have not even touched the mysterious algorithm known as the Amazon sales rank. There are a lot of authors who come near to obsession in tracking their sales rank, and whose hopes plummet as the sales rank decays. There are plenty of services out there (including on-site with Amazon Author Central) such as NovelRank where authors who thrill at seeing numbers go up and down can track their book's popularity as an expression of number of sales. It is a kind of bizarre arithmomania, but also reminiscent of video game level grinding.
In order to entice more authors to fixate on the sales rank, Amazon started to create endless little subcategories where authors could gain some degree of personal validation in saying, "my book was #19 in the category 'YA fiction involving armadillos set in a dystopian future.'" Quite the badge of honour. In fact, if we wanted to create even more sub-sub-sub-etc., categories, every single author could swagger and swell with the pride of being #1 on Amazon.
The sales rank algorithm is not terribly complicated, although the precise formula is black-boxed by Amazon as proprietary knowledge. It is a numerical expression of how many books sold relative to a time scale, and relative to other books sold relative to their time scale. But, just like sock puppet reviewing, some players will choose to alter their sales rank using whatever means. But this is where Amazon could care less. The only way to budge the sales rank is through purchase, so the author can beg all his or her friends, family, and strangers on the bus to buy the book, perhaps even coordinating a synchronized campaign of "ok, everybody, click purchase at 7pm tonight!" Or, the author can try to get a little lift in the rank by buying the book him or herself. In any case, Amazon wins. One wonders if the sales rank is less a lure for readers, and more a lure for authors to coordinate some kind of sales campaign.
I don't mean to nitpick on Amazon at the exclusion of other sites that employ similar tactics. In fact, I'm not necessarily critiquing the grand goliath of online book sales whatsoever beyond just pointing out some curious parallel to gamified environments in an ostensibly non-game context. From book-buying, promoting, ranking, reviewing and so forth, we might come to see that these acts can be understood through the gamified context.
And, just like some of us grew up mashing buttons to beat the big boss and earn a new high score, some of us are still mashing buttons in an entirely new context.
March 17, 2013
Goodreads Should Be Weighted Toward Readers and Not Writers
I was thinking about this the other day when talking to a writing colleague. This is not to say that we should insist that writers are not readers, or vice versa, but it is the role we play on GR that matters.
Given the rise of self-pubbed authors, I know the literary market becomes drenched in the martial metaphors of competition and battling to be on top of some numerical scale, to accumulate the most five-stars, and all the rest that has the look and feel of a gamified environment where it might seem pardonable to engage in underhanded or mercenary tactics to "win" at the game of approbation and the "attention economy." But does it have to be that way?
It is as disingenuous of me to say that writers need not fight so viciously for attention (and royalties) as it was for Socrates to pan the sophists for getting paid to teach when he never took a drachma in payment (Socrates was living on a nice inheritance). For me, writing and publishing is not my sole source of revenue or else I would have dried up and withered away long ago. So, for me it is not a matter of jockeying for position because my income depends on it, and I think that gives me a kind of freedom. Praise or higher rankings are just supplementary benefits.
When I think about the aims of GR's site (even despite its software platform incentives to get authors to market themselves), the site seems to me to be indexed on readers. So what ought to be the ideal role of the author?
From purely a personal opinion perspective, I believe that the author's role on GR should not be heavy-handed, or in assuming that the site is really just an ego temple for authors where readers can gather round and give tribute. At most, the author on GR should simply make her- or himself available to readers, to interact and discuss the work(s). Sure, it is nice when we receive additional attention, but I don't believe authors should be pushing themselves on readers.
In fact, authors should cultivate the skill of reading their readers. That is, a reader's profile tells an author so much about that reader's taste in reading. I'll give an example:
Many months ago I had organized a giveaway which resulted in over a 1,000 readers adding the book to their "to-read" lists. I understand the basic premise of the giveaway where one maximizes on the probability of winning *some* book if one enters as many of those as possible. So, from the standpoint of judging the popularity of the book in terms of actual interest, this cannot be inferred by this metric for there may be a lot of readers who indiscriminately enter as many giveaways as possible regardless of the book's actual content and intended audience. So, I could not assume that there were 1,000 readers interested in my book despite having over a 1,000 people adding it. Let that stand as any author's ego check.
Every once in a while, I like to conduct an informal giveaway that does not make use of the in-built giveaway function. I see who has put the book on their "to-read" list and visit their profile page to see what books they feel are their favourites. So, if a reader's reading habits and most favourite author is Sophie Kinsella or J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, then I can be reasonably sure that my book would not be an ideal match for their particular reading tastes. However, if the reader's favourite books happen to fall in the "genre" I am writing in, and we share several literary influences, I might send a message offering if they would like a free copy of the book with no obligation to accept, or even review it.
That is only one way a GR author can contribute to a community of readers. Yet in any way GR authors choose to participate in the community, it should be kept fairly clear that this site is about the readers, not the authors. It is not a place for authors to dominate with a colossal ego to browbeat readers in telling them what the book meant, nor is it really the venue for shilling books as though this were a parallel sales page for Amazon.
Ultimately, I take the very name Goodreads in a specific way: it is a place where good readers find good books, and the way they do so is done through friend recommendations and a little serendipity (if not also through a little algorithmic assistance). Authors have plenty of digital spaces where they can swagger, breast-beat, and proclaim their literary genius, but Goodreads is - and should be - more about the readers and their community. We authors need to take a backseat and be happy when a reader wants to ask us about our work, or want to discuss some aspect of it.
Yes, I am a GR author, but when I am here I am a reader first. Just as I tell students that the mission of a university is not to be so fixated on strategic acquisition of some numerical grade, and to focus on the experience of learning and discovery as its own intrinsic value, I think the same applies to us authors. It is not about how many readers add our books, or give them textual praise, or even in the royalties we earn. We all know how easy it is to set up sock puppets or purchase vacuous reviews of praise from several sites that host said services.
There is an intrinsic value to writing and sharing that need not be muddied by peripheral games of popularity and profit.
The purpose of this site, to me, is that it is for the readers. We authors should really only make ourselves present when asked, and even then to listen to the readers and not dictate what the book means, or tell them that their interpretation is wrong. Interpretation has such a wide latitude to begin with, and readers come to our books with varied contexts, understandings, and experiences that it is the height of arrogance to assume a direct relation between authorial intention and reader interpretation.
Sure, we need to take some degree of pride and ownership over what we create, but once our books go public, it is the public that will take pride and ownership over a book's most important function: its reading. Readers are all that stand between what we create for reading, and a diary buried in a locked box in the ground. Even if I don't personally like a reader's impressions of my book, I am obliged to respect their opinion just as I hope respect works both ways.
Given such a widespread decline in the time or desire to read books overall (matched with a proportional rise in published books), I think we should be grateful that there are readers, that they congregate on sites such as these, and continue the powerful legacy of the joy of reading. Writers are not multi-million dollar pop stars, nor are readers simply passive and uncritical fans.
So, as a writer here on GR, I'm going to engage more as a reader. As an author as well, I'm here, but only if you need me.
Given the rise of self-pubbed authors, I know the literary market becomes drenched in the martial metaphors of competition and battling to be on top of some numerical scale, to accumulate the most five-stars, and all the rest that has the look and feel of a gamified environment where it might seem pardonable to engage in underhanded or mercenary tactics to "win" at the game of approbation and the "attention economy." But does it have to be that way?
It is as disingenuous of me to say that writers need not fight so viciously for attention (and royalties) as it was for Socrates to pan the sophists for getting paid to teach when he never took a drachma in payment (Socrates was living on a nice inheritance). For me, writing and publishing is not my sole source of revenue or else I would have dried up and withered away long ago. So, for me it is not a matter of jockeying for position because my income depends on it, and I think that gives me a kind of freedom. Praise or higher rankings are just supplementary benefits.
When I think about the aims of GR's site (even despite its software platform incentives to get authors to market themselves), the site seems to me to be indexed on readers. So what ought to be the ideal role of the author?
From purely a personal opinion perspective, I believe that the author's role on GR should not be heavy-handed, or in assuming that the site is really just an ego temple for authors where readers can gather round and give tribute. At most, the author on GR should simply make her- or himself available to readers, to interact and discuss the work(s). Sure, it is nice when we receive additional attention, but I don't believe authors should be pushing themselves on readers.
In fact, authors should cultivate the skill of reading their readers. That is, a reader's profile tells an author so much about that reader's taste in reading. I'll give an example:
Many months ago I had organized a giveaway which resulted in over a 1,000 readers adding the book to their "to-read" lists. I understand the basic premise of the giveaway where one maximizes on the probability of winning *some* book if one enters as many of those as possible. So, from the standpoint of judging the popularity of the book in terms of actual interest, this cannot be inferred by this metric for there may be a lot of readers who indiscriminately enter as many giveaways as possible regardless of the book's actual content and intended audience. So, I could not assume that there were 1,000 readers interested in my book despite having over a 1,000 people adding it. Let that stand as any author's ego check.
Every once in a while, I like to conduct an informal giveaway that does not make use of the in-built giveaway function. I see who has put the book on their "to-read" list and visit their profile page to see what books they feel are their favourites. So, if a reader's reading habits and most favourite author is Sophie Kinsella or J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, then I can be reasonably sure that my book would not be an ideal match for their particular reading tastes. However, if the reader's favourite books happen to fall in the "genre" I am writing in, and we share several literary influences, I might send a message offering if they would like a free copy of the book with no obligation to accept, or even review it.
That is only one way a GR author can contribute to a community of readers. Yet in any way GR authors choose to participate in the community, it should be kept fairly clear that this site is about the readers, not the authors. It is not a place for authors to dominate with a colossal ego to browbeat readers in telling them what the book meant, nor is it really the venue for shilling books as though this were a parallel sales page for Amazon.
Ultimately, I take the very name Goodreads in a specific way: it is a place where good readers find good books, and the way they do so is done through friend recommendations and a little serendipity (if not also through a little algorithmic assistance). Authors have plenty of digital spaces where they can swagger, breast-beat, and proclaim their literary genius, but Goodreads is - and should be - more about the readers and their community. We authors need to take a backseat and be happy when a reader wants to ask us about our work, or want to discuss some aspect of it.
Yes, I am a GR author, but when I am here I am a reader first. Just as I tell students that the mission of a university is not to be so fixated on strategic acquisition of some numerical grade, and to focus on the experience of learning and discovery as its own intrinsic value, I think the same applies to us authors. It is not about how many readers add our books, or give them textual praise, or even in the royalties we earn. We all know how easy it is to set up sock puppets or purchase vacuous reviews of praise from several sites that host said services.
There is an intrinsic value to writing and sharing that need not be muddied by peripheral games of popularity and profit.
The purpose of this site, to me, is that it is for the readers. We authors should really only make ourselves present when asked, and even then to listen to the readers and not dictate what the book means, or tell them that their interpretation is wrong. Interpretation has such a wide latitude to begin with, and readers come to our books with varied contexts, understandings, and experiences that it is the height of arrogance to assume a direct relation between authorial intention and reader interpretation.
Sure, we need to take some degree of pride and ownership over what we create, but once our books go public, it is the public that will take pride and ownership over a book's most important function: its reading. Readers are all that stand between what we create for reading, and a diary buried in a locked box in the ground. Even if I don't personally like a reader's impressions of my book, I am obliged to respect their opinion just as I hope respect works both ways.
Given such a widespread decline in the time or desire to read books overall (matched with a proportional rise in published books), I think we should be grateful that there are readers, that they congregate on sites such as these, and continue the powerful legacy of the joy of reading. Writers are not multi-million dollar pop stars, nor are readers simply passive and uncritical fans.
So, as a writer here on GR, I'm going to engage more as a reader. As an author as well, I'm here, but only if you need me.
December 27, 2012
Are Bots Our Best Readers? - An Exercise in Silliness
“Ad Lectorem (Cogitans Machina)”
In 1950, Alan Turing threw down the gauntlet in his paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” effectively challenging us via what is now called the Turing Test, if we could tell the difference between a computer and a human being in communication if both parties were concealed from us. Now, with a surfeit of chatbots and (perhaps more alarmingly) successful advances in persona management software that aids the shady practice of online astroturfing, the Turing test is one that we continue to pass or fail (depending on who you are rooting for). The Internet is infested with bitty bots that go about doing the work of collecting and sorting data, presumably to facilitate ease of use.
A writing colleague of mine was asking me who my “biggest” readership was. I am sure he meant some kind of niche market segment or demographic. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that my largest reading audience are bots; specifically, the webcrawling variety. An algorithmic program designed to capture and collect online data for the purposes of storage, categorization, classification, and dissemination. Bots are indeed my best readers. For example, Google’s search engine bots read me once every couple of hours, if not every few minutes, in providing up to date content associated with my name. If I have full works posted online, the bot can scan that data much quicker than any human being could. A quick look at my website analytics tells the story much better: the vast majority of page visits are performed automatically by bots, not human readers. In fact, in a breakdown of my readership, bots outnumber human beings by about ten to one.
When our writing is subjected to the digital alchemy of being transmuted into bits, is it no wonder that we may in fact also be writing for our other very large audience, the bots? The bot, that most indiscriminate but thorough of readers, will voraciously gobble up anything you choose to post. The bot will not chastise you for the occasional (or frequent) typo, will not judge your work as being good or bad.
Of course a bot is not designed to process the “deeper meanings” of the text any more than the bot can pick out a metaphor, or identify any poetic device from the antistrophe to the zeugma. Yet, if being able to pick such devices out were a necessary precondition to being a reader, then a majority of human beings would be excluded from that category as well. And if we even consider how many of us download free books, or purchase a bundle of used books at a sale with all the intention of reading them, and never getting around to doing so, then perhaps bots are more “well-read” quantitatively than we are.
It might also be said that the bot does not derive pleasure or displeasure from the act of reading. Quite true since it apparently reads in a value-neutral way that is entirely governed by a mechanical process. No matter how bad, formulaic, ersatz, or cliche our writing might become, the bot will remain our most loyal reader.
Bots are not discriminating readers because their function is to collect all data posted in the online world and make “sense” of it, following our lead as Internet users in tagging that information, sorting it, and making it easier for us to access what we are looking for (although I can say from experience that Google’s failure rate in providing what I am searching for has never been higher).
The old saw of “write with your audience in mind” puts me in a very awkward position if I am to abide by both the spirit and the letter of such a demand. How am I to write for the bots? I suppose I should ensure that all the keywords and meta-tags are in place to make their reading job easier. It is not as though bots are intelligent agents that have preferences for particular genres. They never give feedback on whether or not they liked or disliked the text. They don’t ask for interviews, don’t come to book signings, don’t implore the author to write a novel based on a favourite character, and they certainly don’t directly increase author royalties. I suppose a large number of human readers may also share these qualities.
For those authors who fall into despair that they are not being read, well, there is some cold and mechanical solace in the fact that at least the bot does, loyally and without judgement, soundlessly munching away at your bon mots, organizing them for search and retrieval.
I know a bot will be reading this shortly after I post it, and will not be irritated at the speciousness of what I have written here.
In 1950, Alan Turing threw down the gauntlet in his paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” effectively challenging us via what is now called the Turing Test, if we could tell the difference between a computer and a human being in communication if both parties were concealed from us. Now, with a surfeit of chatbots and (perhaps more alarmingly) successful advances in persona management software that aids the shady practice of online astroturfing, the Turing test is one that we continue to pass or fail (depending on who you are rooting for). The Internet is infested with bitty bots that go about doing the work of collecting and sorting data, presumably to facilitate ease of use.
A writing colleague of mine was asking me who my “biggest” readership was. I am sure he meant some kind of niche market segment or demographic. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that my largest reading audience are bots; specifically, the webcrawling variety. An algorithmic program designed to capture and collect online data for the purposes of storage, categorization, classification, and dissemination. Bots are indeed my best readers. For example, Google’s search engine bots read me once every couple of hours, if not every few minutes, in providing up to date content associated with my name. If I have full works posted online, the bot can scan that data much quicker than any human being could. A quick look at my website analytics tells the story much better: the vast majority of page visits are performed automatically by bots, not human readers. In fact, in a breakdown of my readership, bots outnumber human beings by about ten to one.
When our writing is subjected to the digital alchemy of being transmuted into bits, is it no wonder that we may in fact also be writing for our other very large audience, the bots? The bot, that most indiscriminate but thorough of readers, will voraciously gobble up anything you choose to post. The bot will not chastise you for the occasional (or frequent) typo, will not judge your work as being good or bad.
Of course a bot is not designed to process the “deeper meanings” of the text any more than the bot can pick out a metaphor, or identify any poetic device from the antistrophe to the zeugma. Yet, if being able to pick such devices out were a necessary precondition to being a reader, then a majority of human beings would be excluded from that category as well. And if we even consider how many of us download free books, or purchase a bundle of used books at a sale with all the intention of reading them, and never getting around to doing so, then perhaps bots are more “well-read” quantitatively than we are.
It might also be said that the bot does not derive pleasure or displeasure from the act of reading. Quite true since it apparently reads in a value-neutral way that is entirely governed by a mechanical process. No matter how bad, formulaic, ersatz, or cliche our writing might become, the bot will remain our most loyal reader.
Bots are not discriminating readers because their function is to collect all data posted in the online world and make “sense” of it, following our lead as Internet users in tagging that information, sorting it, and making it easier for us to access what we are looking for (although I can say from experience that Google’s failure rate in providing what I am searching for has never been higher).
The old saw of “write with your audience in mind” puts me in a very awkward position if I am to abide by both the spirit and the letter of such a demand. How am I to write for the bots? I suppose I should ensure that all the keywords and meta-tags are in place to make their reading job easier. It is not as though bots are intelligent agents that have preferences for particular genres. They never give feedback on whether or not they liked or disliked the text. They don’t ask for interviews, don’t come to book signings, don’t implore the author to write a novel based on a favourite character, and they certainly don’t directly increase author royalties. I suppose a large number of human readers may also share these qualities.
For those authors who fall into despair that they are not being read, well, there is some cold and mechanical solace in the fact that at least the bot does, loyally and without judgement, soundlessly munching away at your bon mots, organizing them for search and retrieval.
I know a bot will be reading this shortly after I post it, and will not be irritated at the speciousness of what I have written here.
September 3, 2012
A social media novel
We might declare "about time!" or "good lord, hasn't this social media thing received far too much attention already?" Well, I've decided to direct my virtual pen to trace its contours in a new book courtesy of Enigmatic Ink Press entitled (with some cheek) "ZOMG!"
I'm still on the hook for finishing the last book in the trilogy, but this social media novel is a nice little break from dealing with the heavy stuff. There's nothing fantastical or dramatically hyper-charged about ZOMG. It is a straight piece of realist fiction. There are no infinite libraries or demented artists or cipher puzzles in this book: it's a plain book about plain people doing plain things.
So, the question arises: why bother reading it?
ZOMG! takes place in a Canadian city not unlike the one I live in. In a way, it is a bit of an homage to writers who can create small worlds filled with ordinary people. Perhaps one of the best Canadian authors in my opinion who did this would be Nathan Whitlock.
ZOMG! has plenty of references to social media technology, ICTs, and the whole gamut of attention-annihilating devices that ping, beep, or otherwise snatch us in small intervals away from offline reality. I don't take the most optimistic view of the soc-med technologies, that is true, but neither do I froth angrily at them like some modern day Luddite. Due to the fact that I teach courses on social networking, a lot of the issues pertaining to the real effects and occasional problems are of concern to me.
Those of you reading this here may be interested to know that there is a giveaway associated with this book. Just do a search and you'll find it.
But ZOMG! is not just about social media. It's about direct democracy and imagination and attention and what the smaller sized Canadian city faces today. Leamingville, the fictional city where the novel takes place, is a kind of everytown. There are some fairly specific Canuck references, but even our southern neighbours may see a resemblance between Leamingville and where they live.
ZOMG! is coming out this month. I hope you who are reading this will consider adding it to your reading list. If you want to know more about the book, please do not hesitate in sending me a message. This novel does not carry the heavy weight of some profound, life-changing message. It is really more of a little distraction, a small slice o' life.
I'm still on the hook for finishing the last book in the trilogy, but this social media novel is a nice little break from dealing with the heavy stuff. There's nothing fantastical or dramatically hyper-charged about ZOMG. It is a straight piece of realist fiction. There are no infinite libraries or demented artists or cipher puzzles in this book: it's a plain book about plain people doing plain things.
So, the question arises: why bother reading it?
ZOMG! takes place in a Canadian city not unlike the one I live in. In a way, it is a bit of an homage to writers who can create small worlds filled with ordinary people. Perhaps one of the best Canadian authors in my opinion who did this would be Nathan Whitlock.
ZOMG! has plenty of references to social media technology, ICTs, and the whole gamut of attention-annihilating devices that ping, beep, or otherwise snatch us in small intervals away from offline reality. I don't take the most optimistic view of the soc-med technologies, that is true, but neither do I froth angrily at them like some modern day Luddite. Due to the fact that I teach courses on social networking, a lot of the issues pertaining to the real effects and occasional problems are of concern to me.
Those of you reading this here may be interested to know that there is a giveaway associated with this book. Just do a search and you'll find it.
But ZOMG! is not just about social media. It's about direct democracy and imagination and attention and what the smaller sized Canadian city faces today. Leamingville, the fictional city where the novel takes place, is a kind of everytown. There are some fairly specific Canuck references, but even our southern neighbours may see a resemblance between Leamingville and where they live.
ZOMG! is coming out this month. I hope you who are reading this will consider adding it to your reading list. If you want to know more about the book, please do not hesitate in sending me a message. This novel does not carry the heavy weight of some profound, life-changing message. It is really more of a little distraction, a small slice o' life.
April 23, 2012
The Infinite Atrocity - Now Available
Sooner than expected, The Infinite Atrocity is now available: http://www.amazon.com/The-Infinite-At...
For you Kindlers out there, yes, there is a Kindle ed'n (but the illustrations are only in the print ed'n).
Feel free to visit my webpage to get more information about the book, and the trilogy in general.
-KXF
For you Kindlers out there, yes, there is a Kindle ed'n (but the illustrations are only in the print ed'n).
Feel free to visit my webpage to get more information about the book, and the trilogy in general.
-KXF
February 29, 2012
Book II - Infinite Atrocity
Hello all -
This is just a thank-you for all those who are participating in the Goodreads Giveaway for volumes I and II of the trilogy; The Infinite Library (vol 1) giveaway now has 1,000 entrants.
The second volume, The Infinite Atrocity, is slated to drop on April 30th. I'll post something on that day as a kind of virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony... Or, I'll just say quietly, "it's here."
Thanks to all my readers, and I hope "you" who are reading this win a free copy, whoever "you" may be!
KXF
This is just a thank-you for all those who are participating in the Goodreads Giveaway for volumes I and II of the trilogy; The Infinite Library (vol 1) giveaway now has 1,000 entrants.
The second volume, The Infinite Atrocity, is slated to drop on April 30th. I'll post something on that day as a kind of virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony... Or, I'll just say quietly, "it's here."
Thanks to all my readers, and I hope "you" who are reading this win a free copy, whoever "you" may be!
KXF
December 21, 2011
The Book is Not Dead… But the Reader is on Life Support (+ Twitter Literacy)
There goes Chicken Little again, claiming that the sky is falling. There has been much renewed alarmism in the past five years on the topical issue of whether or not books are going the way of the butter-churner, the hansom cab, and the 8-track player. E-books continue their explosive growth, netting record profits, and yet the surplus of newly published books has continued apace.
Recently, I undertook to catalogue my entire library for insurance purposes (and as a handy reference for when I need bibliographical details for citing purposes). Yes, I know books occupy an obscene amount of space, are cumbersome to move about, and seem archaic in an era where we can fit the entirety of our libraries on our computer hard drive with so much more room to spare.
I, for one, enjoy the look and feel of books. Perhaps I fetishize them, but there is much to be said about the beauty of the book (and I admire how their spines occupy a fully book-cladded wall). I enjoy their binding, their smell, and their unique histories - something not present in the sterile and standardized form of digital text. They do not require recharging, and are still quite durable and portable (I can drop a book and not wince the way I might if I dropped a Nook or Kindle).
My concern is not that books have somehow become antiques, but that the patience and attention required for reading has been the real victim of this shift in the medium. New media optimists - the kind who make their names by lauding everything academia stands against - tell us that this is a new age for text. Those like Clay Shirky remind us that many of our canonical works may not be worth reading. What we want is information NOW. We don't want to have to work for it, wait for it. Give us the memes! Give us the keywords via the search engine algorithm! And with that comes a fundamental change in our textual great expectations.
In Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, he cites a variety of recent neuroscience studies that have been mapping the effects of digital media on our cerebral hardware - and the findings seem to confirm the suspicions of those like myself who are cynical devotees of technological determinism. Yes, hypertext is distracting. Yes, our being plugged in so often is a source of constant interruption. Yes, the depth of research and thought is compromised by severe cognitive switching costs as we snap (and must adjust) from one screen or popup or notification to another. The ultimate danger of such radical changes in our neural operations? I can think of a few:
1. Lack of cognitive depth (relying too heavily on working memory) might makes us more efficient at finding information, but information needs to be processed into knowledge. We are constantly gathering the ingredients for a cake that we will never bake.
2. Decrease in historical context and sustained reasoning. This has disastrous consequences for a democracy.
3. Attention deficits compromise deeper thought which, perhaps, makes us not so bright.
4. This lack of context and deeper reasoning increases ignorance, especially when it comes to understanding the world in which we live. This ignorance - which seems to be a baffling point of pride among those who malign intellectualism - will increase intolerance, violence, and repetition. I say that because I can hop into the comment pit at my local news site and see almost verbatim the same invective I have read in books from the 1920s. In addition, an ignorant, context-less society is so much easier to control and manipulate with less effort. It also means that politicians can simply appeal to emotions rather than reason.
5. It will privilege a lesser quality of thought. If you cannot make your point in two lines or less, the audience is becoming increasingly incapable of understanding what you are trying to convey. Not all knowledge can be communicated in two lines or less, and much of it takes time and development. When we do not afford that time, we lose out.
6. Without proper consideration of issues, without the careful posing of problems, all we will be capable of is short-term solutions.
I mentioned earlier about the apparent pride in being anti-intellectual. There is much clamour against the perception that the "elites" are running the show. This, of course, does not square with the facts (those who seek to confirm their beliefs are effectively immune to facts, it seems). In reality, much of our political landscape is dominated by those who do not belong to an intellectual elite class. Instead, it is governed by those who seek popular support by maligning intellectuals as being irrelevant know-it-alls whose main purpose is to raise taxes and live sinecure lives. Meanwhile, the politicians on the wave of corporate support are the ones living that sinecure life, using the intellectual as their convenient scapegoat. By drumming up the false perception that an intelligentsia is behind all the woes of a nation, this works to appease the "average" voter. Now that "average" continues to experience downward pressure with regard intellectual expectation, what we find lurking behind anti-intellectualism is really, in its naked form, an attempt to justify one's laziness.
But back to books and readers. When I say readers, I mean the serious kind, not the sort that points to the formulaic potboilers and sensationalist sweet nothings and calls that reading. Technically, yes, it is reading, but so is reading an ingredient label, a road sign, or comments on an online news story.
Recently, we read that Margaret Atwood was all-atwitter about Twitter, praising it for its benefits in increasing literacy. I would ask Atwood to please provide us with an operational definition of literacy, specifying what sort of literacy (since this is a complex concept that cannot be so easily reduced and simplified). What I think problematizes her claims would be the following:
1. Relying on communication media comparisons ("Twitter is like a smoke signal, a carving in a tree, a telegram" etc.) is not useful. Moreover, it is to commit a fallacy. Communication technologies of any kind have specific aspects to them that do not necessarily make them neatly comparable.
2. Atwood does not supply us with any real quantitative support to substantiate her claim that literacy is improving. First of all, what KIND of literacy? Second, prove the causal link or else you have committed post ergo propter hoc. Thirdly, anecdotal data (the tweets she follows does not constitute a more robust empirical study). Verdict: her opinion, which is unqualified in this respect.
3. How does she respond to the amount of redundancy and self-promotion on Twitter? How does that increase literacy?
4. I do not recall Atwood saying this whatsoever, but it is in the public discourse; namely, the idea that short-forms, misspellings, and other "alterations" on the English language represent a creative and dynamic reinvention of the language. This I do not buy. The poets and prose-writers who re-imagined the language did so with a purpose in mind. They did it for very real reasons, and knew the rules of the language. We should not coddle those who do not bother with the rules of language by praising their innovation when it is more likely it is ignorance or indolence. I fully agree that language is fluid and in constant re-negotiation over its lexical terms, its structures, and semantic flexibility, but not knowing how to properly use an apostrophe, for example, is not the way to push language forward.
And now I sound like a language Nazi. However, what is wrong with some of the linguistic rules we currently have on offer? Do we really need to spell words any which way as proof of our creativity? I can fully understand altering certain conventions of language such as gendered writing, or stock phrases such as "fair game" which are insensitive holdovers from a colonial past.
If Twitter is having such a tremendous positive impact on literacy, I would like to see the studies that show this to be the case.
Recently, I undertook to catalogue my entire library for insurance purposes (and as a handy reference for when I need bibliographical details for citing purposes). Yes, I know books occupy an obscene amount of space, are cumbersome to move about, and seem archaic in an era where we can fit the entirety of our libraries on our computer hard drive with so much more room to spare.
I, for one, enjoy the look and feel of books. Perhaps I fetishize them, but there is much to be said about the beauty of the book (and I admire how their spines occupy a fully book-cladded wall). I enjoy their binding, their smell, and their unique histories - something not present in the sterile and standardized form of digital text. They do not require recharging, and are still quite durable and portable (I can drop a book and not wince the way I might if I dropped a Nook or Kindle).
My concern is not that books have somehow become antiques, but that the patience and attention required for reading has been the real victim of this shift in the medium. New media optimists - the kind who make their names by lauding everything academia stands against - tell us that this is a new age for text. Those like Clay Shirky remind us that many of our canonical works may not be worth reading. What we want is information NOW. We don't want to have to work for it, wait for it. Give us the memes! Give us the keywords via the search engine algorithm! And with that comes a fundamental change in our textual great expectations.
In Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, he cites a variety of recent neuroscience studies that have been mapping the effects of digital media on our cerebral hardware - and the findings seem to confirm the suspicions of those like myself who are cynical devotees of technological determinism. Yes, hypertext is distracting. Yes, our being plugged in so often is a source of constant interruption. Yes, the depth of research and thought is compromised by severe cognitive switching costs as we snap (and must adjust) from one screen or popup or notification to another. The ultimate danger of such radical changes in our neural operations? I can think of a few:
1. Lack of cognitive depth (relying too heavily on working memory) might makes us more efficient at finding information, but information needs to be processed into knowledge. We are constantly gathering the ingredients for a cake that we will never bake.
2. Decrease in historical context and sustained reasoning. This has disastrous consequences for a democracy.
3. Attention deficits compromise deeper thought which, perhaps, makes us not so bright.
4. This lack of context and deeper reasoning increases ignorance, especially when it comes to understanding the world in which we live. This ignorance - which seems to be a baffling point of pride among those who malign intellectualism - will increase intolerance, violence, and repetition. I say that because I can hop into the comment pit at my local news site and see almost verbatim the same invective I have read in books from the 1920s. In addition, an ignorant, context-less society is so much easier to control and manipulate with less effort. It also means that politicians can simply appeal to emotions rather than reason.
5. It will privilege a lesser quality of thought. If you cannot make your point in two lines or less, the audience is becoming increasingly incapable of understanding what you are trying to convey. Not all knowledge can be communicated in two lines or less, and much of it takes time and development. When we do not afford that time, we lose out.
6. Without proper consideration of issues, without the careful posing of problems, all we will be capable of is short-term solutions.
I mentioned earlier about the apparent pride in being anti-intellectual. There is much clamour against the perception that the "elites" are running the show. This, of course, does not square with the facts (those who seek to confirm their beliefs are effectively immune to facts, it seems). In reality, much of our political landscape is dominated by those who do not belong to an intellectual elite class. Instead, it is governed by those who seek popular support by maligning intellectuals as being irrelevant know-it-alls whose main purpose is to raise taxes and live sinecure lives. Meanwhile, the politicians on the wave of corporate support are the ones living that sinecure life, using the intellectual as their convenient scapegoat. By drumming up the false perception that an intelligentsia is behind all the woes of a nation, this works to appease the "average" voter. Now that "average" continues to experience downward pressure with regard intellectual expectation, what we find lurking behind anti-intellectualism is really, in its naked form, an attempt to justify one's laziness.
But back to books and readers. When I say readers, I mean the serious kind, not the sort that points to the formulaic potboilers and sensationalist sweet nothings and calls that reading. Technically, yes, it is reading, but so is reading an ingredient label, a road sign, or comments on an online news story.
Recently, we read that Margaret Atwood was all-atwitter about Twitter, praising it for its benefits in increasing literacy. I would ask Atwood to please provide us with an operational definition of literacy, specifying what sort of literacy (since this is a complex concept that cannot be so easily reduced and simplified). What I think problematizes her claims would be the following:
1. Relying on communication media comparisons ("Twitter is like a smoke signal, a carving in a tree, a telegram" etc.) is not useful. Moreover, it is to commit a fallacy. Communication technologies of any kind have specific aspects to them that do not necessarily make them neatly comparable.
2. Atwood does not supply us with any real quantitative support to substantiate her claim that literacy is improving. First of all, what KIND of literacy? Second, prove the causal link or else you have committed post ergo propter hoc. Thirdly, anecdotal data (the tweets she follows does not constitute a more robust empirical study). Verdict: her opinion, which is unqualified in this respect.
3. How does she respond to the amount of redundancy and self-promotion on Twitter? How does that increase literacy?
4. I do not recall Atwood saying this whatsoever, but it is in the public discourse; namely, the idea that short-forms, misspellings, and other "alterations" on the English language represent a creative and dynamic reinvention of the language. This I do not buy. The poets and prose-writers who re-imagined the language did so with a purpose in mind. They did it for very real reasons, and knew the rules of the language. We should not coddle those who do not bother with the rules of language by praising their innovation when it is more likely it is ignorance or indolence. I fully agree that language is fluid and in constant re-negotiation over its lexical terms, its structures, and semantic flexibility, but not knowing how to properly use an apostrophe, for example, is not the way to push language forward.
And now I sound like a language Nazi. However, what is wrong with some of the linguistic rules we currently have on offer? Do we really need to spell words any which way as proof of our creativity? I can fully understand altering certain conventions of language such as gendered writing, or stock phrases such as "fair game" which are insensitive holdovers from a colonial past.
If Twitter is having such a tremendous positive impact on literacy, I would like to see the studies that show this to be the case.
