Steven Lyle Jordan's Blog, page 65

Prius: The evolution of the automobile

Last weekend, I took the plunge: I replaced my 2000 Hyundai Tiburon with a Toyota Prius C Three, the newest iteration of Prius to come off of the Toyota assembly lines.  There were a number of reasons for my upgrade, not the least of which was the aging condition of that beautiful shark, and its increasing maintenance costs.  But I was also ready to move up to the next generation of automobiles… the generation that I expected to jump into in 2000, but wound up buying the Tiburon instead.  Now, twelve years later, I finally have the next generation of car, and I find myself wanting to catalog the ways in which the car has improved over its older self. I honestly wish I could say that the Prius C is more handsome than my Tiburon; but I can’t.  Both cars were hatchbacks, but the Tib was sporty in design, wide of road stance, and (to my mind) singularly attention-getting in its appearance.  The Prius C looks like the economy hatchback that it’s supposed to be, no pretentious sportiness… but one thing about that no-nonsense skin, it’s aerodynamically slick.  The Prius will cleave through the air much smoother than my Tiburon did, and the Hyundai was no slouch; a great deal of its energy savings is due to its ability to avoid drag.

So, the Tiburon was sexier than the Prius on the outside; but the Tib was a basic, no-frills car on the inside.  The Prius is exactly opposite: Where it’s not sexy on the outside, it’s got lots of modern frills on the inside.

To begin with, getting inside.  The upscale Prius has done away with the venerable key, in favor of a fob that unlocks the car when you approach it, and allows you to start it with just a finger on the Power button on the dash.  To my mind, this is the least that every modern car should have today, and in fact, should be standard for houses, garages, offices, bike locks, you name it… technology has advanced far enough that we could use a single fob for everything we need to lock and open.  It continues to amaze me that all cars don’t have this feature, and that we’re not presently rolling it out for everything else.

Of course, the Prius is a hybrid, using a gas-powered engine and an electric motor to share the driving duties.  It’s a clear improvement over the old internal-combustion-engine-only system that has been standard since the Model A.  But this is another one of those “what took you so long?” technologies, as we’ve had hybrid vehicles for decades before the car (trains and ocean liners run on hybrid engine systems).  Still, better late than never, and one can only hope that eventually, all gas-powered vehicles will run on more efficient hybrid systems.

The interesting advances, to me, are all in the cockpit, the place where the modern car has evolved from power-hungry transportation device to social life support system.  It used to be that the big-deal accessories in the car were the radio and the cigarette lighter.  Today, you probably won’t get the lighter (in the U.S., anyway), but you’ll get all kinds of other stuff to keep your mind off smoking.

First is the radio, which is much more than just a radio today.  Besides being able to hear local AM and FM stations, the radio on the Prius C Three is equipped for satellite and HD radio, as well as accepting your CDs.  In addition, you can now plug your MP3 player into the car through either a USB port or a standard earphone jack, and play your favorite playlists… if you have enough music on your iPod or smartphone, you may not need any of the other radio or satellite stations… ever.  In fact, now it’s hard to imagine the ages-old tradition of periodically replacing your car radio with the latest, greatest in-dash unit; this one feels like it already does everything you could possibly need, short of dropping Katy Perry into your lap as you drive.

The radio is integrated into a multi-use screen which provides a lot more than music.  A built-in map will navigate your way, and give you all kinds of display choices, including icons of “points of interest” (gas stations, coffee houses, restaurants, parks, hotels, etc, etc, etc), and complete with voice to tell you where to turn instead of forcing you to stare at the map.  A built-in Bluetooth system will connect to your phone, download your address book and favorites, and allow you to have hands-free phone conversations, again, without taking your eyes off the road.  Another system, called Entune, allows the car to use your phone as an internet connection and provide you with news, stocks, weather, internet access, email…

I mean, this is almost scary, even to a tech-head like me.  This car knows when I’m coming, where I’m going, how to get there, and how to do it energy-efficiently.  Some people joke that, with today’s economy, many Americans will start living permanently in their cars.  But with a ride like this, it would be almost do-able.

If I were to create a timeline of the evolution of the automobile, I would probably delineate it based on the design of the car, to wit: 1769 would cover the first power-propelled vehicles; 1885 to 1900 would cover the first “true automobile,” the gasoline-powered carriage; 1901 to 1945 would cover the first of the mass-produced autos and trucks, still partially based on the carriage frame; 1946 to 1969 covered the post-World War II “ponton” design; 1970 to 1999 brought us the age of computer-designed efficiency (at the same time that it created in some pockets an age of disdain for efficiency and yearning for the gas-guzzling past of our fathers… but that’s another story); and 2000 to the present has been the era of in-car communications, the period in which being in our cars no longer isolates us from the world until we reach our destination.

Unfortunately, there’s a downside to all of this connection: It tends to take our attention away from the road.  All across the U.S., accidents are increasing because people are being distracted from the primary job of navigating traffic with their quarter-ton guided missiles.  Law enforcement professionals are struggling to deal with the issue, partially because it can be difficult to determine what is and is not permissible or safe during driving, and partially because people handle distraction with differing levels of ability.  But as laws try to curb these activities, drivers fight them or find ways around them, demonstrating that they refuse to give up their connectivity to the world, even when behind the wheel.

This, I believe, will eventually lead to the next evolution of the auto: The self-driving vehicle.  Companies are already experimenting with computer systems that can map and follow a route, avoid obstacles (and other cars), reroute around traffic and accidents, and deliver the occupants to their destinations without incident or mishap.  The reality of self-driving cars is close, probably by 2020; and as those who already have trouble driving (or are too lazy to drive themselves) will probably be the first to try and prove the technology to the public, the value of letting the car do the driving will be evident to all drivers.  We may even see laws that will restrict manually-operated vehicles to certain back-roads at that point, thereby convincing more drivers that self-driving cars will be the vehicle choice of the future.

The Prius is clearly a product of the modern, in-car communications era.  I truly hope that the next era to document will be the fully self-driving era, when we get in our cars, give it a destination, and let the car do all the work while we play with the radio, check our stock performances, send emails and make phone calls, and update our social media pages.  Hopefully that will be my next car.  And hopefully, by then, none of them will be burning fossil fuels either.

Do we need a publishing industry?

A recent article by Eoin Purcell examined the damage done to the publishing industry by the Agency pricing scheme.  His take on it was that publishers had lost the battle and the war to maintain their position in the publishing industry, and that it was about time for existing publishers to make way for the new breed of publishers, or find a way to re-invent themselves to take advantage of the new digital era.

Eoin’s impression is that the publishing industry must evolve, or perish and be replaced.  But I wonder about that: Do we need a replacement for the publishing industry’s existing players?  Do we need a publishing industry at all?

Let’s examine the idea of the “industry” part of the equation: An industry is generally defined in two ways, either as an aggregate of activities related to a particular field or product, or as the sum of organizations working in cooperation to produce and disseminate a product.  For the purposes of this discussion, we will consider the latter definition of the publishing industry, that is, the companies that work in concert to produce books to sell.

Publishers would fit within the latter definition as part of the equation of companies; most call them the middlemen between authors and readers, though a closer examination of their role reveals them to be the middlemen between the authors’ agents, and the distribution point (the bookstore).

A clear-cut process has been in place for decades, orchestrating the process by which agents bring books to publishers, and publishers work with those books to package them for optimum sales potential in bookstores, chains and other markets.  The publishers are largely responsible for creating and developing this process, creating predictable relationships with agents at one end, and controlling the supply of books to retail outlets at the other end.  They have also been primarily responsible for marketing their products via pre-arranged outlets and cooperative services.  And until recently, this process has worked successfully for publishers, even when it was not so successful for the agents at one end or the retail outlets at the other.

Enter the future, in two pieces: First, the computer, which gave individuals the tools and power to create that they never had before; and second, the internet, which connected individuals to goods and services, and other people, around the world.  With the computer came tools to make writing easier and faster—suddenly, someone who could spare the time could write a novel, use computer-assisted tools to improve, proof and edit the novel, create covers, and save it in formats that others could use to call up and read the book.  Thanks to that breakthrough, the number of writers grew.

The second piece of the future, the internet, opened new communications avenues for individuals.  Sharing was the new activity of the close of the twentieth century, and the internet made sharing easier than it had ever been.  Potential authors could now share their stories with others, and gain free critiques and suggestions of the type that editors provided to their paying clients.  Authors could also share software (not always legally) and suggestions as to how best to create and finalize their books.

The internet then created digital commerce, internet-based avenues to sell products, and most importantly, the tools to bring those capabilities to the individual.  No longer was it necessary to build a giant corporation dedicated to selling and distributing a product; it could now be sold out of a basement using a computer, a connection to the web and a service like PayPal to handle money transactions.

Put the pieces together, and you have author-entrepreneurs—like myself—capable of creating a novel independently of (or selectively working with) outside assistance, as well as creating a venue to sell that product, access the tools needed to monetize and control selling of the product, and to market that product regionally, nationally or even globally.

Such author-entrepreneurs have, in no time, reached levels that the existing publishing industry had made virtually impossible for outsiders to reach beforehand: They are visible to the public; and they are making sales in major outlets.  Both of these points were aided by the change in the end of the publishing chain, the decay of the bookstore system.  The economy has been driving the bookstore and bookstore chains out of business, and as they were the publishers’ primary and absolutely-controlled sales outlet, publishers have been forced to put more of their eggs into baskets of which they have little or no control, such as space in retail stores and chains.

Some of the biggest retail spaces are online, such as Amazon; and in this area, publishers have found themselves without the advantage of control.  Even paid advertisement doesn’t accomplish online what it does in other outlets.  And right next to their products are books sold by independent authors, some of whose work is directly comparable in quality to that of the publishers.  Many authors are happy with their position selling directly through online outlets, and see no reason to seek publishers, through their agents, in order to sell their books.  It would seem that the publishers, their agents, and their failing retail outlets have become redundant in the modern market.

Given the facts, it is by no means out of the question to answer: No, we do not need agents, publishers or dedicated retail outlets; or, at least, we do not need the publishing model that we have enjoyed for the past few decades.  In fact, we could get along just fine without it, as independent authors have discovered and demonstrated.

But this answer begs another question, perhaps even more important than the first: Would we be better off without the publishing industry?  Perhaps, if the current industry cannot sustain itself, if it is not needed, then we’d be better off without its impact on (or interference with) the new digital industry under current development.  On the other hand, the old publishing industry has learned a lot about what kind of writing has the most impact on markets and individuals, what kind of language is best suited for what markets, and how to take advantage of trends and position products… in other words, how best to sell books.  That knowledge is not worthless.

So, instead of merely wishing the old publishing model to implode, and take all of its resources with it, we should be encouraging the old publishing industry to bang its 20th century swords into 21st century plowshares, and to find its place in the new digital market.  If they can offer to independent authors services that will improve their product quality, they will have proven their value.  If they can increase that product’s sales enough to live comfortably off of a percentage of the profits, they will have proven their worth.

It won’t be publishing, in the old sense; but it will have similarities to the old values of publishing, primarily the core values of aiding authors and improving their products.

Titanic: Emblematic of our life and fate

At this hundred year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, programs about the doomed ship, passengers and crew abound.  One of the more interesting ones, to me, was the program by James Cameron, director of the 1997 film Titanic.  In his program, Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron, he gathered numerous experts and carefully studied the latest information on the Titanic, examinations of the wreck and accounts from that fateful night, in order to try to correct some of the wrongs and misconceptions about how the ship went down.

Though the forensic investigation of the most infamous ship disaster in history is fascinating, I will not go into its detail here.  To my mind, the most valuable part of the program was the ending, and Cameron's very appropriate last words. As Cameron saw it, the Titanic was as much a victim of human pride and hubris, as it was a victim of an iceberg.  Cameron and his group examined flaws in the ship's design, which were not as severe as the designers' assumptions of what the ship could handle, or the officers' intent to maintain schedules and appearances.  When the collision happened, the severity of the accident was not immediately realized; and when it was, they realized that the ship's emergency systems were ill-prepared to save everyone. The result was a horrible catastrophe in which two-thirds of the people aboard the ship perished, many needlessly because certain precautions had not been taken.

Perhaps this is not surprising from the director that also brought us Avatar, but Cameron's final words presented a parallel between the sinking of the Titanic, and the fate of the world. He saw the Earth being altered by climate change, caused primarily by polluting human activities; and that even though we've come to recognize the threat to the ecosystem that our actions pose, little has been done to reverse those trends, because those with money are more interested in making more money than in mitigating the damage they've caused.

In Cameron's words, we are aboard the Titanic now, and we know the iceberg is coming; yet those in control refuse to steer clear, heading us for an inevitable collision.

Further, Cameron sees prophecy in the division of rich and poor on the Titanic, and the resultant loss of many more working-class lives trapped in steerage, compared to the majority of the rich and famous who made it to lifeboats.  He believes it is symbolic of the likely fate of the undeveloped world when we hit our iceberg: When climate change reaches crisis proportions, Cameron predicts that the richer countries will hoard the last available resources and use them to escape the worst of the damage, while the undeveloped countries will be abandoned, possibly shut purposely out of any sources of aid, and will suffer the heaviest losses.

The loss of the Titanic—as well as other famous disasters, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Columbia and Challenger shuttles—should have served as a lesson to human engineers, to understand that as much as we know, we don't know everything… and that our lack of knowledge can be deadly.

However, we need to look past the obvious connections to ships, bridges and spacecraft, and realize that our lack of total knowledge extends to the very planet we live on… and that many more people than sailed on the Titanic are at stake.  The next iceberg we hit—when we hit it—will not endanger two thousand people, but seven billion.  And there are no lifeboats.

Robots: The successors to vampires and zombies?

The concept of humanoid robots—men created from mechanical parts—is almost as old as Science Fiction itself.  They have taken on many representations, from clearly-assembled hunks of shiny metal and plastic, to creations that seem so close to human that they may have sprung from a womb as opposed to a workshop or assembly line… and everything in-between.  Some of these variations were chosen to emphasize some aspect of the story, such as their physical prowess, their strength, or their calculating skills.  Others have been created to be virtually indistinguishable from a man.  But they all have had one thing in common.

They were—and continue to be—impossible to create.

The concept of a humanoid robot is, at heart, almost ludicrous.  To begin with, the biological systems of advanced animals are complex and refined over millions of years; mechanically-assembled parts could never surpass or even equal that refinement and complexity.  A robot could never replace a human in all the things a human can do.  This observation is not limited to physical ability; it extends to mental ability.  No electronic device has been designed that can mimic the complexities of the human mind, its emotional range, its memory and intuitive sense, its pattern-recognition skills, and its ability to put all of these things together on-the-fly in order to solve unique problems and make unexpected insights.  And due to the realities of physics, this statement is unlikely to change… ever.

Yet, we continue to fantasize about our mechanical men, creations as unrealistic as vampires and zombies, and to build stories around their interactions with humans. Where did this fascination with mechanical men come from?

As the phrase "mechanical men" suggests, the subject is essentially about an analogue of a human being.  The trope hits a number of obvious hot buttons: The God complex, that of creating a being in your own image; the definitions of life, self and individuality; the definitions of freedoms and self-determination; and the outright competition, begun essentially at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, between Man and Machine for the title of Most Superior.

The first robots in media were products of the early Industrial Era, responses to the new concept of the factory, buildings devoted to manufacturing… and the men who worked in these factories, doing rote labor in support of the machines.  Robots were seen as the evolution of Man and Machine, the perfect factory worker, machines that could do the drudgery work of men.

Robots had a distinct advantage that men didn't have: Their parts were more easily repairable or replaceable; their worn out parts could be swapped out as needed.  Robots could effectively be immortal.

Even before the advance of computers, these robots were seen as being capable of thinking for themselves… they were self-aware, even as early as their portrayal in Russum's Universal Robots (RUR) in the early 1900s.  Self-aware… but soul-less, since they were machines that were naturally incapable of carrying the "divine spark."

The era of computers, machines capable of being controlled in their responses by human programming, brought about a significant advance in the concept of robot men: The possibility that robots could not only think independently but could actually out-think men.  Robots as—or more—intelligent than men suddenly suggested the possibility that they could have feelings and emotions, just as men do… and possibly even souls.

Finally, the development of plastics led to the idea of robots that could be sheathed in a "synthetic skin," making them appear as human.  Though many of the robots in early media were presented as human in appearance, supposedly with mechanical parts underneath the skin, this was often done due to budgetary constraints; but by the latter half of the twentieth century, it was believed that robots indistinguishable from humans would soon be possible.

So, after roughly a century of fictional development, robots evolved from a clumsy collection of machine parts, capable of handling rote tasks, to creatures capable of doing anything men could do… and more.

And herein lies the attraction—and the danger—of media robots.  They have reached the status of substitutes for imperfect men.  They are potentially more powerful, more intelligent, more dangerous than men, but have the capability of being controlled.  They are less likely to die, and can be more easily repaired if injured.  They are not considered to have a soul, but in today's decreasingly religious atmosphere, the soul's very existence has come under question, and is seen as less important than having feelings… which, if robots can at least approximate to a human's satisfaction, seems to be enough.

In short, robots have graduated to the position of being another race of human, considered different on many levels, but not on every level that counts.  Much like the present romance with vampires and zombies, robots have become the iconic "mysterious other," the person from a different background, trying to fit into our society by masquerading as one of us.

Robots are, in general, considered to be incapable of acting like humans well enough to pass for one… which opens the storytelling door for the special robot, the one that can and does act human, and is therefore attractive to humans.  Like the vampire, traditionally a murderous creature, seeking to overcome his murderous nature, the robot can seek to overcome his cold and emotionless nature.

The idea of a man trying to overcome a negative quality tends to draw sympathy from others, and especially in stories, often attracts the interest of women who find that effort attractive in men; this is the essential attraction of the Twilight stories, and in fact of many movies and books wherein the girl becomes attracted to the iconic Bad Boy and tries to reform him, for both their sakes.  In those stories, the vampire icon replaces the bad boy, essentially human but with odd "family and cultural values."

The robot evolution to human, or Pinocchio theme, is typified by Bicentennial Man, in which the robot Andrew pursues humanity, and at the end, wins the hand of a human girl.  Not quite Bad Boy, the robot is more "Uncivilized Boy," who must be taught to be like us… a Pygmalion to be molded to fit into proper society, and to be offered companionship and love, the overriding signal that they have been fully accepted by that society.

But most important is the dark side of robots: It is said that vampires and zombies have become the signs of a fear that society would be taken over and destroyed by evil, calculating outsiders (vampires) or by ignorant masses (zombies); robots represent a different concern, the fear that the people all around us have become cold, desensitized, accepting of life's hardships and contributing nothing to improving life.  Robots march oblivious through the world, unblinking in the face of change or disaster, unmoved by grief and unangered by cruelty.

And most insidious is this: Though you are not at risk of being bitten or contaminated by a robot… there is the irrational fear that, possibly through exposure to too many of them, or by oversaturation by all the trials and evils in the world around us, we will somehow become one of them anyway, transformed without warning into the soulless robots that we'd hate to know we'd become.  Society would we wiped out, not by attackers, but by apathy, a world whose people lose interest in each other, and in making life better.

Perhaps, when the zombie and vampire stories run their course, writers will look to society and see that its greatest threat is lack of caring, not in strange outsiders or rampant consumerism.  And maybe then, the age of robots will take center stage in fiction.

Ebooks: Scarcity, abundance and economy

A recently revived subject by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Scarcity and Abundance, examines the ebook industry in terms of the shift from a "scarcity" economy, in which things are valued and priced due to their limited availability, to "abundance," in which items are available in effectively unlimited supply, turning the old economic model upside-down or destroying it entirely.

I've touched on the subject in my own blogs in the past: I don't think there is any aspect of ebooks that isn't impacted by the digitally-imposed shift from scarcity to abundance… and most of those aspect changes are good things.  The (possible) exception to this is in ebooks' economy.  Abundance has altered consumers' expectations of what a book should cost, in light of its now-ephemeral state and the need to use a device to read them.  And authors/publishers who still desire to make a reasonable income from books struggle to create an economic model that works for both parties.

As I've tried to sell and promote my books, I've come to realize that in many ways I still think in terms of scarcity, not abundance.  Not surprising, really, as that's how I was taught to understand products and the economy.  But now I need to think in terms of abundance and what kind of economy can operate under that concept.  Times are a-changin'.

At issue is the growing disconnect between the author's effort in creating a book, and the worth of a virtually limitless product.  An author's time is finite, their talent valuable.  They are interested in profiting off of their hard work, and would like to see ebooks as potentially profitable as printed novels.  But a digital product is seen by consumers as being of low value because of its almost nonexistent production costs (beyond the initial, or prototype, product).  Consumers see this as meaning the product should be priced low, since no production costs need to be recovered in order to profit.

Unfortunately, consumers also happen to hold the view that low price equals low value.  Price and value have historically been connected in a 1 – 1 correlation, high price suggesting high value, and low price suggesting low value.  This concept has been regularly used as a marketing tool by promoters to lionize their product (or to tear down the competition).

Ebooks written by amateur writers and released to the public at low retail cost, or even free, have often been of poor writing quality, further reinforcing the stereotype that "cheap books equal bad books," and that their writers were therefore bad writers… or, at least, were in desperate need of professional support from the major publishers to create a good product.  (And it can only be the PR machine of those major publishers that somehow makes sure the public conveniently forgets about or does not see the low-priced high-quality books that stand out among the independent fare.)

So, in the midst of this consumer dichotomy, demanding cheaper ebooks while simultaneously believing that cheap books are no good, authors and publishers must find a way to satisfy consumer demand whilst re-educating them on the quality of low-priced books.  Proof-by-example may be the best weapon independent authors have, something the public can latch onto when bad press circulates; nothing beats negative PR more soundly that a positive example in your hand.

It may be that micropayments—essentially, reducing the cost of ebooks to significantly less than a dollar, as low as a few pennies—will be the strategy through which consumers will willingly buy ebooks in an abundant world.  Micropayments may provide enough of a separation from traditional books and their costs to allow consumers to mentally discern the ebook as a separate product; and further, to move beyond the idea of "cheap" being equal to "bad."  And in an atmosphere of abundance, it is certainly easier to imagine buying an abundance of books that only cost 5 cents.

Unfortunately, most payment systems do not provide for micropayments, and even discourage the idea.  Enacting a micropayment system could require a lot of work on the part of the author/producer, and financial institutions thinking "outside the box," to make it viable.  To date, the micropayment systems that have been tried have not worked for long, or have not provided enough profit to make them worthwhile.  But there is still possibility for the future.

(There is also the possibility that the porn industry has already worked out a viable micropayment system, but its lack of "legitimacy" has so far prevented it from being discovered by and applied to mainstream products.  Porn is like that.  We should all probably keep our eye on these more risqué content sources, as they tend to figure these things out far ahead of the rest of us.)

Of equal import to ebook cost, there is the problem of getting noticed in an abundant world.  I consider an independent author to be like a kernel of corn in a stew: Not only does he need to get noticed among all the other corns and vegetables that float to the surface; but he needs to be noticed among the huge pieces of meat and potatoes that are the famous writers and major publishers, floating on the top. And for every corn you see on the surface of the stew, there are many more kernels just below the surface that are completely obscured.

There are many means of getting noticed, although most of them are a crapshoot.  The thing is, if you've thought of it, chances are a few thousand others have already done it, and you're an automatic also-ran.  Still, being clever can count for more than being good, and is more often than not the driver of viral videos and emails.  Thinking "out of the box" is encouraged, though, with so many others also thinking "out of the box," you may need to think out of the box and clean across the block.  But the current thinking is: If it gets you noticed, anything goes.  And that's when it gets interesting.

There's a funny thing about abundance: Many products spring from an abundance model, and are available for cheap or free at the beginning; but once they achieve notoriety, they tend to be reformed into a scarcity model in order to monetize them.  Matt Mason's book, The Pirate's Dilemma, describes many intentionally-disruptive social and media trends that, once they became popular, reverted to the same economic methods as the old trends that they, themselves, disrupted, in order to create and maximize profit… and later, became the ones being disrupted by the new trends that overwhelmed and replaced them.  Mason's book describes this in terms of the Pirate and the Establishment, but the disruptive methods used were largely about the abundance model taking out the old scarcity model… before rebuilding itself into the new scarcity model.  In every case, the evolution from scarcity to abundance was about takeover, and the evolution from abundance to scarcity was about profit, once takeover was achieved.

So, the abundance model of ebooks is an almost-expected result of media progress, designed to overwhelm and replace the existing scarcity-based printed book establishment.  Once that happens, will it remain an abundant market, and figure out a way to monetize itself?  Or will it somehow be converted to a scarcity-based system again, just in time to maximize ebook profits?  Time will tell.

Unfortunately, there are those of us trying to make the whole ebooks thing work right now.  Authors are walking a tightrope between scarcity and abundance, trying to figure out which direction will lead to recognition and (hopefully) profit today.  Some of us will be able to make the last of the scarcity model work for us, while others will pioneer ahead into the abundance model.  And those without the old connections or the innovative drive will have to wait out the disruptive period and hope that, when the smoke has cleared, there will be a place left for them.

Which will I be?  I got off to a good start in 2006… but have apparently squandered my lead, and in 2012, I'm stuck in neutral, without the connections or the innovation.  I'm trying to get back into gear to follow the abundance path, even if I'm not sure what that path is.  But patience has been my friend throughout this journey, and hopefully it will continue to be an advantage in the abundance economy.

The hybrid and electric future is still “almost here”

Thanks to an accident last fall, my 2000 Hyundai Tiburon is probably not going to last until 2015 as originally planned.  So, I’ve started looking for the car to replace it… and at the moment, that car is the Toyota Prius C.

The Prius C is the newer, smaller version of Toyota’s Prius, a hatchback like the others, significantly lighter, and based on the Yaris platform.  (As it turns out, the Yaris is also going to be released as a hybrid, but because of the Prius C’s existence, Toyota may not release the Yaris hybrid in the U.S. anytime soon, if at all.)  The Prius remains the most efficient of the hybrid vehicles available in the US, and the Prius C looks to join the other Priuses—Prii?—at the top of that list.

As I said, I’d hoped that my Tiburon would stay on the road until 2015.  As I’ve watched the car market over the years, I’ve seen hybrids appearing at more and more dealerships, and of course, the all-electric Nissan Leaf  and the faux-electric sucker-punch of the Chevy Volt.  (The Volt was “supposed” to be all-electric, but Chevy revealed at the last second before release that they made it a hybrid… in other words, they couldn’t pull it off—probably knew it from the beginning—and tried to hide the fact from the public as long as possible.  But enough about GM misleading the public in order to survive on the suffrage of Americans’ pursestrings…)

2015 was the year that I had chosen as the point at which we could expect to have enough hybrids available, at almost every dealership, to make for a great set of choices and lower prices thanks to competition.  I also hoped that all-electrics would also be more numerous and, by that same competition, less expensive.

This is actually not the first time I tried to make this prediction.  Back in 1980, I visited the Earth Day celebrations on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (yes, I’m that old.  Shut up).  On display during that Earth Day were at least four all-electric automobiles, all Department of Energy supported, one of those cars from General Motors.  All of these cars were road-ready, and only needed to be built (and an electric charging infrastructure in place) to begin to fill our country with electric cars.

1980.

At the time, I thought: “This is great!  Do you realize that, by the year 2000, there will be so many electric cars out there that you can pick and choose from dozens of them, and never burn a gallon of gas again!”

Fast-forward to 2000, when I was in the market for a car, and found one hybrid (the Honda Insight), one on the way (the original Prius), and… that was it.  I didn’t like the Insight because of its small size, almost-$20,000 pricetag and waiting list for purchase, so I bought a Hyundai Tiburon that got mileage about the same as the 15-yr-old Datsun I was trading it for.

It was a sad day for automotive advancement.  In fact, 2000 was a sad year for auto advancement.

So, we fast-forward again to 2012, when my slightly-battered car is forcing me to shop for a car 3 years before I had originally planned.  This time, there’s better news: In 2012, 3 years before the date of my initial (well, second) prediction, 39 hybrid vehicles are available in the US (cars and trucks), more are on the way, and competition is indeed bringing sticker prices down for consumers.

For electrics, the news isn’t as good: At this moment in time, the Nissan Leaf is the only all-electric vehicle being mass-produced for the US.  At least there are a few all-electrics about to arrive in 2012, two from Ford, one from Mitsubishi, one from Toyota, and a car from China.  Other dealers are planning all-electrics “in the next few years,” though some will be too expensive for the average driver to even consider buying, and others will be produced in such small numbers that most consumers will never see them.

So, clearly, hybrid choices are great, while all-electric cars are still hard to find in 2012.  If you can hold out a few years, you can expect to see maybe a half-dozen electrics to be available in the US for average consumers… my 2015 estimate might end up looking not quite good, but okay, for availability of electrics.

But there’s a downside: The electrics are all very new out of the gate; battery performance is still not as good as most consumers would like, and are very expensive (the Leaf retails at $35,000).  Many consumers are nervous about buying all-electrics because they don’t like the idea of paying out so much for cars that don’t go very far (by their estimation), and whose batteries might be much more efficient and available at lower cost a few years later.  So, although the electrics may be available by 2015, consumer nervousness is likely to be still with us, impacting the sales of these cars.

Would I consider an all-electric?  Yes, if they were affordable (which, for me, would be about the low- to mid-20′s) and practical.  The Mitsubishi MiEV has a high-mid-20s price tag (and after government rebates, comes down below $25,000), and it’s available, so it’s worth a look.  But practically-speaking, it will only save you gas; there is no cargo space beyond a few bags of groceries, and the range per charge means you won’t be taking it on many driving vacations.  Still, if you have a second vehicle in the family that can take over those hauling and long-distance duties, the MiEV may be just what you want for short trips and grocery-carrying.  And since our household does have that other vehicle, I can afford to check out the MiEV.

Fortunately, my Tiburon still runs, so I’m not under pressure to get whatever I can as soon as possible.  That means being able to evaluate a number of cars, start saving up down-payment money, and take my time making a decision about a vehicle that will be intended to carry me to about 2030.  At which time, I expect my next car to be fully self-driving and capable of crossing the country entirely on electricity beamed down to it by satellite.

Did I mention that I also write science fiction?

The hybrid and electric future is still "almost here"

Thanks to an accident last fall, my 2000 Hyundai Tiburon is probably not going to last until 2015 as originally planned.  So, I've started looking for the car to replace it… and at the moment, that car is the Toyota Prius C.

The Prius C is the newer, smaller version of Toyota's Prius, a hatchback like the others, significantly lighter, and based on the Yaris platform.  (As it turns out, the Yaris is also going to be released as a hybrid, but because of the Prius C's existence, Toyota may not release the Yaris hybrid in the U.S. anytime soon, if at all.)  The Prius remains the most efficient of the hybrid vehicles available in the US, and the Prius C looks to join the other Priuses—Prii?—at the top of that list.

As I said, I'd hoped that my Tiburon would stay on the road until 2015.  As I've watched the car market over the years, I've seen hybrids appearing at more and more dealerships, and of course, the all-electric Nissan Leaf  and the faux-electric sucker-punch of the Chevy Volt.  (The Volt was "supposed" to be all-electric, but Chevy revealed at the last second before release that they made it a hybrid… in other words, they couldn't pull it off—probably knew it from the beginning—and tried to hide the fact from the public as long as possible.  But enough about GM misleading the public in order to survive on the suffrage of Americans' pursestrings…)

2015 was the year that I had chosen as the point at which we could expect to have enough hybrids available, at almost every dealership, to make for a great set of choices and lower prices thanks to competition.  I also hoped that all-electrics would also be more numerous and, by that same competition, less expensive.

This is actually not the first time I tried to make this prediction.  Back in 1980, I visited the Earth Day celebrations on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (yes, I'm that old.  Shut up).  On display during that Earth Day were at least four all-electric automobiles, all Department of Energy supported, one of those cars from General Motors.  All of these cars were road-ready, and only needed to be built (and an electric charging infrastructure in place) to begin to fill our country with electric cars.

1980.

At the time, I thought: "This is great!  Do you realize that, by the year 2000, there will be so many electric cars out there that you can pick and choose from dozens of them, and never burn a gallon of gas again!"

Fast-forward to 2000, when I was in the market for a car, and found one hybrid (the Honda Insight), one on the way (the original Prius), and… that was it.  I didn't like the Insight because of its small size, almost-$20,000 pricetag and waiting list for purchase, so I bought a Hyundai Tiburon that got mileage about the same as the 15-yr-old Datsun I was trading it for.

It was a sad day for automotive advancement.  In fact, 2000 was a sad year for auto advancement.

So, we fast-forward again to 2012, when my slightly-battered car is forcing me to shop for a car 3 years before I had originally planned.  This time, there's better news: In 2012, 3 years before the date of my initial (well, second) prediction, 39 hybrid vehicles are available in the US (cars and trucks), more are on the way, and competition is indeed bringing sticker prices down for consumers.

For electrics, the news isn't as good: At this moment in time, the Nissan Leaf is the only all-electric vehicle being mass-produced for the US.  At least there are a few all-electrics about to arrive in 2012, two from Ford, one from Mitsubishi, one from Toyota, and a car from China.  Other dealers are planning all-electrics "in the next few years," though some will be too expensive for the average driver to even consider buying, and others will be produced in such small numbers that most consumers will never see them.

So, clearly, hybrid choices are great, while all-electric cars are still hard to find in 2012.  If you can hold out a few years, you can expect to see maybe a half-dozen electrics to be available in the US for average consumers… my 2015 estimate might end up looking not quite good, but okay, for availability of electrics.

But there's a downside: The electrics are all very new out of the gate; battery performance is still not as good as most consumers would like, and are very expensive (the Leaf retails at $35,000).  Many consumers are nervous about buying all-electrics because they don't like the idea of paying out so much for cars that don't go very far (by their estimation), and whose batteries might be much more efficient and available at lower cost a few years later.  So, although the electrics may be available by 2015, consumer nervousness is likely to be still with us, impacting the sales of these cars.

Would I consider an all-electric?  Yes, if they were affordable (which, for me, would be about the low- to mid-20′s) and practical.  The Mitsubishi MiEV has a high-mid-20s price tag (and after government rebates, comes down below $25,000), and it's available, so it's worth a look.  But practically-speaking, it will only save you gas; there is no cargo space beyond a few bags of groceries, and the range per charge means you won't be taking it on many driving vacations.  Still, if you have a second vehicle in the family that can take over those hauling and long-distance duties, the MiEV may be just what you want for short trips and grocery-carrying.  And since our household does have that other vehicle, I can afford to check out the MiEV.

Fortunately, my Tiburon still runs, so I'm not under pressure to get whatever I can as soon as possible.  That means being able to evaluate a number of cars, start saving up down-payment money, and take my time making a decision about a vehicle that will be intended to carry me to about 2030.  At which time, I expect my next car to be fully self-driving and capable of crossing the country entirely on electricity beamed down to it by satellite.

Did I mention that I also write science fiction?

Concepts presented in Steven Lyle Jordan books

A recent customer asked me to list the significant science and engineering elements that have been featured in my novels.  The idea was that the list would give an idea about the kind of science I was interested in, and the general slant of my books.  This is not to suggest I "invented" all of these ideas myself; but some of them are unique and created by me, or independently of its use in other books.

Once I finished the list, I thought it was a pretty good list to share… so, here goes:

The Onuissance Cells: Major cities are disassembled and used to build encapsulated mega-cities (aka Arcologies); service robots; data access "sleeve"; cloned meat; hoverbikes.

Evoguía: Advanced medical monitoring and hypnotherapy used to allow patients to access and control autonomous parts of the brain for physical development.

Worldfarm One: Combined information/entertainment/home control component appliance; counter-sonic pest/animal control.

As The Mirror Cracks: Worldwide virtual reality with full-immersion headset, customizable avatars and consistent physical laws that allow for superheroes, monsters and aliens; tied in to world financial structure to allow VR users to make a living they can spend in the real world, and vice versa.

Chasing The Light: "Scrapbook" digital clipping and data storage tablet (a few years before a little thing called an "iPad" was released); Mobile solar cell factory in a semi trailer; self-driving cars and trucks; autonomous truck convoys; remote vehicle operation (used to control, or crash, a vehicle).

The Kestral Voyages: Galactic Union of terraformed worlds, inhabited by humans genetically modified to thrive on specific worlds, creating various new species of humans; ship's drone, mechanical assistant to Captain and crew; counter-sonic noise control; cloned meat.

The Verdant Series: Orbital city-satellites above Earth, housing tens of millions of people in an 80% sustainable environment; The Verdant Drive, a system that "translates" an object from one place in space to another without traversing the space in-between; Translation Drones to scout a translation location and report back on its suitability; GLIS, Governing Logistics Information System, monitoring day-to-day operations and support; Cloud of living spherical organisms travelling in vacuum; counter-sonic noise control.

*Living Mall: An Arcology called a "Living Mall"; A power source for the LM, using water flow to run a MHD generator (no moving parts or heat generated, very environmentally friendly).

*Robin: Robot built from prosthetic body replacement parts.

*Sol: Druller's Field: A suit that taps into brain waves and projects a telekinetic field at the control of the user; exploring adjacent arms of the galaxy to find similarly-matured intelligent species; data access "sleeve".

*Encephalopath: An internet device that communicates directly with the brain, offers enhanced impression of net structure; Groups of cities forming into Arcologies; 3-D modeling columns.

*Factory Orbit: Orbital factory made up of discarded STS shuttle tanks; manufacturing products in space that take advantage of microgravity and vacuum for manufacturing control and purity; pocket-sized PDA/communicators with voice control; PDA components (screens, earpieces); counter-sonic noise control.

*Not currently in circulation

The danger of the “easy route”

When I first began selling ebooks, there was no Kindle store; Sony hadn’t yet begun to sell ebooks, and Smashwords was not yet heard of.  So there weren’t a lot of examples for a newbie like me to follow in setting up my site.  Fortunately, I knew HTML, so I was able to design my own site.  But when it came to collecting money and sending products, I didn’t have the programming savvy (or money) to figure it out on my own.

After some research, I turned to PayPal to handle my transactions.  PayPal had already positioned itself to be able to handle online financial transactions, and to do so with a minimum of fuss at my end.  Like so many other people, I went with the PayPal solution, and later I added a third-party product that would automatically deliver my ebooks when purchased.  Money came in, books went out, and everyone was happy.

A few years later, a change in the PayPal system made my third-party software ineffective, and the system broke down.  This could have been a problem… but fortunately, other companies sold similar software, and I soon found another that would fit the bill.  In a few days, I was able to transition from one software vendor to the other with minimal fuss, and continue to use PayPal to do my transactions.

Later, when the likes of Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes & Noble made it easy to add books to their store, I hesitated in joining any of them: As I examined them, I realized that although they were indeed easy to use, there were things about their terms or services that did not thrill me; and as I had my own selling site, I had no need to rush into the arms of those whom I determined wouldn’t benefit me very much.

Other publishers, on the other hand, actually abandoned their online selling portals in favor of Amazon and others, deciding that it was less trouble for them to go with another vendor that would handle the complex IT tasks of online transactions.  They took the easy route, even as they realized it would cost them part of their profits to do so.

In recent years, ebook authors and publishers have watched as Amazon has altered contract terms, manipulated prices and forced sellers to accept changes which clearly benefited Amazon, not them.  And as authors and publishers railed against the demands of the Amazon machine, along came PayPal to dictate to sellers what kind of content was acceptable in order to use their online transaction system.  Many of them had similarly sunk so much of their systems into using these third parties that there was no easy way to simply shift to another vendor.  In these cases, “the easy route” turned out to be detrimental to their businesses, possibly to the extent of driving them out of business.

The use of third parties to provide services is not a new idea; but it has always held the same threats to those who put too many of their eggs into one basket.  All it takes is the third party’s making a major change to its operations, losing a primary capability, or even going out of business, to cripple or ruin those companies that were too closely tied to them.

And somehow, despite how often this has happened in other IT areas, the lesson rarely sticks.  In an ebook industry that has seen sellers of particular ebook formats go under, and take everything in that format with them, you would think sellers would have learned the value of diversifying their pot.  Yet right now, authors and publishers are horrified at the idea of having to find another online selling company to replace PayPal, whose ease of use has lulled many sellers into thinking they were the only game in town.  It is in PayPal and Amazon’s interests to make the customer believe that there is no place to turn; but in fact, there are other vendors, and it’s time to look them up.

It is in precisely moments like this that other companies step up to fill the gaps left by the major companies’ changes and flaws.  These companies, many of whom have been working in the shadow of the big guys, but waiting for a break that they can exploit, will be ready to grab up customers ready to switch from the bad habits of the other vendors.  Others will follow the surge and try to get a piece of the action for themselves.  And the more potential customers go with the smaller guys, the more the big vendors will be forced to look at the way they do business, and make friendlier changes designed to win their customers back.  This is the way of business, and how monopolies are often kept in check.  The result is usually a healthier market overall, and customers with more and better choices and higher satisfaction.

So, although the likes of Amazon and PayPal are presently exercising their control of the market, it is a reason to look forward to the next step: The further and healthier diversification of the market, and the benefits that should provide to sellers and consumers.  And it should be taken as a cautionary tale, a reminder to take a second thought before going the easy route, lest it come back to bite you.

The danger of the "easy route"

When I first began selling ebooks, there was no Kindle store; Sony hadn't yet begun to sell ebooks, and Smashwords was not yet heard of.  So there weren't a lot of examples for a newbie like me to follow in setting up my site.  Fortunately, I knew HTML, so I was able to design my own site.  But when it came to collecting money and sending products, I didn't have the programming savvy (or money) to figure it out on my own.

After some research, I turned to PayPal to handle my transactions.  PayPal had already positioned itself to be able to handle online financial transactions, and to do so with a minimum of fuss at my end.  Like so many other people, I went with the PayPal solution, and later I added a third-party product that would automatically deliver my ebooks when purchased.  Money came in, books went out, and everyone was happy.

A few years later, a change in the PayPal system made my third-party software ineffective, and the system broke down.  This could have been a problem… but fortunately, other companies sold similar software, and I soon found another that would fit the bill.  In a few days, I was able to transition from one software vendor to the other with minimal fuss, and continue to use PayPal to do my transactions.

Later, when the likes of Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes & Noble made it easy to add books to their store, I hesitated in joining any of them: As I examined them, I realized that although they were indeed easy to use, there were things about their terms or services that did not thrill me; and as I had my own selling site, I had no need to rush into the arms of those whom I determined wouldn't benefit me very much.

Other publishers, on the other hand, actually abandoned their online selling portals in favor of Amazon and others, deciding that it was less trouble for them to go with another vendor that would handle the complex IT tasks of online transactions.  They took the easy route, even as they realized it would cost them part of their profits to do so.

In recent years, ebook authors and publishers have watched as Amazon has altered contract terms, manipulated prices and forced sellers to accept changes which clearly benefited Amazon, not them.  And as authors and publishers railed against the demands of the Amazon machine, along came PayPal to dictate to sellers what kind of content was acceptable in order to use their online transaction system.  Many of them had similarly sunk so much of their systems into using these third parties that there was no easy way to simply shift to another vendor.  In these cases, "the easy route" turned out to be detrimental to their businesses, possibly to the extent of driving them out of business.

The use of third parties to provide services is not a new idea; but it has always held the same threats to those who put too many of their eggs into one basket.  All it takes is the third party's making a major change to its operations, losing a primary capability, or even going out of business, to cripple or ruin those companies that were too closely tied to them.

And somehow, despite how often this has happened in other IT areas, the lesson rarely sticks.  In an ebook industry that has seen sellers of particular ebook formats go under, and take everything in that format with them, you would think sellers would have learned the value of diversifying their pot.  Yet right now, authors and publishers are horrified at the idea of having to find another online selling company to replace PayPal, whose ease of use has lulled many sellers into thinking they were the only game in town.  It is in PayPal and Amazon's interests to make the customer believe that there is no place to turn; but in fact, there are other vendors, and it's time to look them up.

It is in precisely moments like this that other companies step up to fill the gaps left by the major companies' changes and flaws.  These companies, many of whom have been working in the shadow of the big guys, but waiting for a break that they can exploit, will be ready to grab up customers ready to switch from the bad habits of the other vendors.  Others will follow the surge and try to get a piece of the action for themselves.  And the more potential customers go with the smaller guys, the more the big vendors will be forced to look at the way they do business, and make friendlier changes designed to win their customers back.  This is the way of business, and how monopolies are often kept in check.  The result is usually a healthier market overall, and customers with more and better choices and higher satisfaction.

So, although the likes of Amazon and PayPal are presently exercising their control of the market, it is a reason to look forward to the next step: The further and healthier diversification of the market, and the benefits that should provide to sellers and consumers.  And it should be taken as a cautionary tale, a reminder to take a second thought before going the easy route, lest it come back to bite you.