Loren C. Steffy's Blog, page 11

Why Footnotes Are Becoming Obsolete

The footnote, the holdover of documentation from the pre-digital era, continues to be a mainstay in the online world, but should it be? Tim Parks ponders that question in the New York Review of Books blog, arguing that in many cases, footnotes have become tedious and unnecessary.

Parks points out that the widely accepted rules for footnoting — citing a particular edition of a work and a page number — are becoming obsolete as more people search electronic versions of texts. Such citations no longer provide necessary assistance to the reader, but tracking them down can be a burden for the author — especially if the author, too, is using electronic versions of books as reference material.

According to Parks:

It’s time to admit that the Internet has changed the way we do scholarship and will go on changing it….There is, in short, an absolutely false, energy-consuming, nit-picking attachment to an outdated procedure that now has much more to do with the sad psychology of academe than with the need to guarantee that the research is serious. By all means, on those occasions where a book exists only in paper and where no details about it are available online, then let us use the traditional footnote. Otherwise, why not wipe the slate clean, start again, and find the simplest possible protocol for ensuring that a reader can check a quotation.

That’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Parks acknowledges the benefits of online text in researching his books, but ironically, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the benefits of publishing his works in electronic form.

As more people read electronically, the footnote is becoming an anachronism. I have referenced Parks’ essay in this post, but I don’t need a footnote. I’ve provided you with a hyperlink, allowing you to jump to the source material with one click.

I do a lot of technical writing these days, and while many companies still prefer footnotes, the form is being loosened to some degree to include hyperlinks. Even the PDF format favored for many white papers and essays has the ability to include hyperlinks in the footnotes.

When I submit my Texas Monthly column to the fact-checkers, it’s annotated almost entirely with hyperlinks — and nothing else.

Links, though, are just the beginning. Some ebooks already have the ability to call up footnotes embedded in the text, and platforms such as The Atavist are pioneering methods for embedding complete source materials, sidebars, interview excerpts and video directly into the narrative.

Rather than forcing readers to find the sources themselves, as Parks suggests, these new formats will enable writers to include all source material directly with their work, with each piece bookmarked to the relevant portions.

The rise of ebooks and online platforms is making writing more interactive. Sooner or later, that interactivity will filter into technical writing and even break down the “inertia in the academic world” that Parks decries. As technology advances and reading habits evolve, footnoes are quickly joining the second space after a period as another unnecessary holdover from the past.

 

 

Why Bitcoin Is More Like a Penny Stock Than a Real Currency

Last week, Vox writer and Bitcoin evangelist Timothy B. Lee wrote a piece entitled “Why I’m Investing in Bitcoins.” By the end of the day, he wasn’t.

Lee, a former Washington Post reporter, has long been a Bitcoin believer, and he acknowledged that he had bought Bitcoins in early 2012 for about $7 apiece. He sold them in May 2013, for $120 each, when he joined the Post, in accordance with the paper’s ethics policy.

When he followed the Post’s Web wunderkind Ezra Klein to Vox, Klein allowed Lee to buy the virtual currency again. In his piece, Lee extols the virtues of Bitcoins. He discusses how they are probably undervalued at the current price of about $500 and how they are likely to become the foundation for payment systems in the future:

Right now, many bitcoins are held by speculators, but if it became used routinely then we might expect each bitcoin to be spent about once per month, which is a typical rate for conventional currencies. Based on the value and number of bitcoins today, that would correspond to $72 billion in Bitcoin transactions per year.

That would be about as large as the Western Union network, which transmitted $79 billion in 2012. It would be a third the volume of the Paypal network, which transmitted $7000 per second in the second quarter of 2014 — or around $220 billion per year. It’s 50 times smaller than MasterCard, which processed $3.6 trillion in payments in 2012.

The column sparked a backlash on Twitter, where some readers thought it represented a conflict of interest for Lee to invest in Bitcoins while also touting the potential for their growth. Ultimately, Klein, who’s Lee’s editor at Vox, agreed.

In an editor’s note, Klein said initially he didn’t see any problem with the investment:

I ended up saying yes for a few reasons, and with a few conditions. First, Bitcoin is a large and liquid market that struck me as less like an individual stock and more like, well, a market unto itself. Second, the strange process of buying, holding and selling Bitcoins is, itself, part of the Bitcoin story — and it seemed to me there was value in understanding it, and even writing about it, firsthand. Third, we agreed that the value of the holdings would be capped around $2,000, so I didn’t see this as an investment meant to generate personal financial gain. Fourth, we agreed that the holdings would always be clearly disclosed.

I wrote about Bitcoins for Texas Monthly several months ago, and I agree with a number of Klein’s points, especially the part about understanding the buying process. (I set up a virtual wallet and studied the process but never actually purchased a Bitcoin.)

I also agree with the reasoning that Bitcoins have characteristics that are more like a market than a stock. But I disagree with Klein’s statement that Bitcoins are “a large and liquid market.” As Lee points out, the current value of all Bitcoins in circulation is about $6 billion, and many are held by speculators. In other words, for a global system of currency, it isn’t that big, and it isn’t very liquid.

In fact, that’s the reason for Bitcoins’ volatility. By going on to tout what he sees as the future value of Bitcoin, Lee actually could have pumped up the entire market. That doesn’t seem to have happened. In fact, Bitcoin prices fell after the story came out, although they did have a big jump the day before.

It’s unlikely that Lee’s story, which also raised cautions about Bitcoin investing, had any impact on price. But like penny stocks, Bitcoins value can be more easily influenced by speculators, and that puts Lee — and more importantly, Vox — in an uncomfortable position.

As Klein ultimately concluded, it’s better to err on the side of caution.

 

You’ve Got Ultra High Speed Internet. Now What?

(Photo: Paul Sableman, Flickr)

Back in February, I wrote about Google’s efforts to bring ultra high speed internet service to Austin and how competitors, such as AT&T and Time Warner Cable were responding. A New York Times piece this weekend takes a look at Kansas City, Mo., the first place where Google rolled out its Google Fiber service, which offers Internet speeds of one gigabit per second. That’s about 100 times faster than the typical Internet connection in the U.S.

Despite all that speed, there simply aren’t many uses for connections that fast, the Times found. As the story noted:

…The area is finding out that Google Fiber is so fast, it’s hard to know what to do with it.

There aren’t really any applications that fully take advantage of Fiber’s speed, at least not for ordinary people. And since only a few cities have such fast Internet access, tech companies aren’t clamoring to build things for Fiber.

What’s more, the roll out of faster Internet service is being left to the whims of the Internet providers themselves. Not surprisingly, they target upscale, tech-savvy areas where residents are likely to want and pay for their service.

As I noted in my Texas Monthly piece, many other countries already offer far faster Internet speeds than Google Fiber, for less money. Sony, for example, offers its Nuro service in Japan for about $50 a month, and Nuro has download speeds of as much as 2.5 gigabits per second—two and a half times as fast as Google Fiber.

Part of the problem: other countries see high-speed Internet as an essential utility for the modern age, but Americans still view it as a luxury. Instead of thinking of it as a way to upload cat pictures faster, we should be thinking of it as the modern equivalent of electrical service. Of course, a century ago, utilities were reluctant to bring electric service to rural areas. It took the creation of co-ops and municipal-owned utilities to bring electricity to everyone.

What can we do with ultra high speed internet? Until we make sure that everyone has access to it, we may never know its full benefits.

Back on the Bitcoin Beat: KUHF’s “Houston Matters”

Last week, I was interviewed by KUHF’s Craig Cohen for “Houston Matters.” We were discussing Bitcoins and whether the virtual currency is really catching on in Houston and across Texas. Will it become a mainstream form of money or remain a virtual pipe dream?

The discussion centered on my column in the August issue of Texas Monthly about the rise of virtual currency and how Texas has become the most Bitcoin-friendly state in the country.

If you missed it, here’s a link to the podcast.

A New Column for Energy Voice

A Yukos station before the government targeted the company a decade ago.

This week marks the debut of my new energy column for Energy Voice, a website devoted to the global energy industry. My first topic: an interview with former Yukos executive Bruce Misamore about the recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR ordered Russia to pay $2.5 billion related to the seizure Yukos a decade ago, and Misamore has been involved in the case from the beginning. The judgment is the largest in the court’s history. You can read more here to find out why Misamore doesn’t think it’s nearly enough to make Yukos shareholders whole.

You may be wondering how I came to write a column for a website in Scotland. A few months back, I spoke at an offshore safety conference in Aberdeen, and I met some journalists from the local paper, the Aberdeen Press and Journal. That led to discussions about a regular column, and I was excited about the opportunity to reach an international audience. I had a debut piece ready to go when the ECHR ruling came down. While the Yukos case has generated only moderate coverage in the U.S., it’s been closely followed in Europe, so I suggested we delay the original column and go with this one instead.

And what was the topic of that original column? You’ll have to wait until next month to find out.

(Note: some of my blog posts for Forbes.com are republished on the website Oil Voice, which shouldn’t be confused with Energy Voice.)

Hastening the End at Hasting’s?

On the record: There was something about those rows of albums….

I have a short piece in the latest Texas Monthly on the sale of Hasting’s, the music and entertainment store chain that was prominent in many small towns in Texas and the Midwest. The Amarillo-based chain was bought out recently by a New Jersey financier. The sale brought back memories of my adolescence and the role that Hasting’s played in my musical awakening.

The College Station of my late-seventies adolescence had its share of record shops—mall mainstays like Musicland and mom-and-pops that came and went. But Hastings Entertainment was a destination. Its megastore in the Culpepper Plaza strip center, a short bike ride from my home, became the place to while away summer afternoons and shed discretionary income in proportions that only a teenager with part-time employment as a dishwasher could justify. With few other financial responsibilities, I quickly established a pattern of browsing, planning, and then bingeing as each paycheck hit the bank. Sometimes I spent close to two weeks’ worth of wages in a single day buying the latest albums from Styx or Foreigner or Rush. 

So a lump rose in my throat when I heard in mid-July that Amarillo’s Marmaduke family had sold the Hastings chain to the New Jersey merchandising mogul Joel Weinshanker for a measly $21 million. The inevitable move marks a big fall from the heady days of the nineties, when the Marmadukes’ retail expertise was sought after by Walmart and Hastings first went public, with visions of opening as many as five hundred stores. 

Read more here.

If you subscribe to the print edition, check out the “Things Acquired” column on page 22. You’ll see some of the albums I bought at Hasting’s in College Station back in the day.

 

Overstock Takes Bitcoin International

A big online retailer is going to start accepting Bitcoin on international transactions, according to the New York Times’ Dealbook site. Overstock.com, which has been an outspoken proponent of the virtual currency, will introduce on Sept. 1 a new payment system on its international website, O.co, that allows customers to pay with Bitcoin, CEO Patrick Byrne told the Times.

Overstock is one of dozens of merchants that now deal in Bitcoin in the U.S. As the Times notes, Dell and Expedia began accepting virtual currency earlier this year. Overstock, though, will be the first major retailer to accept international payments, which in many ways it exactly the purpose for which Bitcoin was designed. As I mentioned in my recent Texas Monthly column, the biggest benefit of Bitcoin is that it is a cheaper and faster method of sending money internationally.

Talking Bitcoins in Big D

Last week, I spent an hour or so on Dallas’ KERA midday program “Think” talking with host Krys Boyd about Bitcoins and why Texas has become such a hotbed for the burgeoning Bitcoin industry.The discussion grew from my piece in the latest Texas Monthly about virtual currency and its rise in the Lone Star State. You can stream the entire discussion here.

Fracking’s Publishing Boom Revisited

In Sunday’s New York Times, Jim Malewitz of the Texas Tribune revisits the publishing boom that has erupted in South Texas with hydraulic fracturing. The story focuses on The Boom at Eagle Ford Shale, a newspaper published by Kathy Rudkin, who runs an advertising agency in Boerne. I first wrote about fracking’s publishing boom in my Forbes blog last year, and I, too, focused on Rudkin’s publication.

As the Times story notes, advertisers are begging to get into these shale-related papers and tap into the huge market that the Eagle Ford has become. Thousands of oilfield workers with lots of discretionary income and little do during their time off make for an enticing market for everyone from retailers to purveyors of hunting lodges. In fact, one of The Boom’s regular features is “Bored in Eagle Ford,” which covers leisure-time activities.

By the way, I should note that after I wrote my piece last year, Rudkin contacted me and asked if she could reprint some of my Forbes posts. So periodically, posts like this one appear in The Boom under my byline. I’ve even had a few featured on the front page.

Bitcoin Bonanza: Why Texas Can’t Get Enough of Virtual Currency

ILLUSTRATION BY ROCCO MALATESTA

In my latest Texas Monthly column, I take a look at the state’s hottest new cottage industry: Bitcoins. The virtual currency took the online world by storm a few years ago, and while it still has plenty of skeptics, Texas has become one of the leaders in developing rules and applications for virtual currency.

Texas,” says Jeremy Kandah, “is the most Bitcoin-friendly state in the union.” Kandah, a member of the Austin venture capital group Bit-Angels Network, has his reasons for asserting that the Lone Star State is bullish on the headline-making virtual currency. BitAngels, after all, is in the business of convincing Bitcoin-related start-ups that Texas is where they should be turning for capital. But once you start paying attention, you notice that Kandah’s enthusiasm is more than just your typical chamber-of-commerce boosterism. Texas dwarfs even Silicon Valley as a Bitcoin pioneer, which is one reason Kandah, like many others who want a piece of tech’s new big thing, recently moved here from California. “We have one of the biggest concentrations in the country of Bitcoin users and Bitcoin technology companies,” says David Johnston, the managing director of BitAngels’ sister company, the Decentralized Applications Fund.

Though Kandah notes that New Jersey is gaining on us, there are plenty of signs of Bitcoin’s unusually heavy presence in Texas. In April the state’s Department of Banking became the first state regulator in the country to issue guidelines for virtual currencies. That same month Steve Stockman, the Republican congressman from Clear Lake who was one of the first politicians in the country to accept Bitcoin donations, introduced a bill that would require the Internal Revenue Service to treat Bitcoins like any other  currency. Even the Second Amendment contingent is getting in on the game: in January Austin’s Central Texas Gunworks began accepting payment in Bitcoins, making it the first firearms shop in the country to do so. A month later, after the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission approved the use of Bitcoins to buy booze, downtown Austin beer and cocktail joint the HandleBar installed the country’s first Bitcoin ATM.    

Why is Texas so attached to Bitcoin? Our hands-off regulatory philosophy, which could encourage entrepreneurs to take a chance on a virtual currency, likely has something to do with it. And there’s no doubt that the state’s libertarian leanings play a role; embracing Bitcoin is the ultimate statement of disdain for the Federal Reserve, the bête noire of Texas’s Libertarian party standard-bearer Ron Paul. As Stockman said in an online video, “Digital currency’s more about freedom. . . . Freedom to choose what you do with your money and freedom to keep your money without people influencing it by printing money or through regulation.” Texas Bitcoin Association president Paul Snow likes to throw around libertarian boilerplate phrases like “the crumbling, diminishing dollar.” 

Read more here.