Monthly Archives: July 2008

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Gargantuan collection of writing advice

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In a brief flurry of self-aggrandisement, I’d like to point out that I’m in the habit of collecting author blog posts which contain advice on writing, and then publishing them in big batches on my own blog, Velcro City Tourist Board.

This time out, I’d waited rather longer between posts than usual. End result? One huge post, containing nearly fifty writing advice links.

Which author blogs do you find most consistently useful for advice on the actual craft and work of writing? Share your links in the comments!

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O NOES teh intertubes R killin ur litracy!!!1 (yes, again)

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stacks of booksAnother six months passes, and yet again it’s time to fire up the already-old (and probably unwinnable) argument over whether or not the all-pervasive power of TEH INTERNETS is eroding morals and family values contributing to the decline and fall of the Holy Roman Empire vaguely connected to the perceived decline in literacy in developed nations. [image by austinevan]

To be fair, this New York Times piece is pretty balanced, and the only sensationalist moments it contains are the wild-eyed proclamations of the old guard:

Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.

Right, of course. And if it hadn’t been for the decadent influence of the gramophone, the Great War would never have happened! Damn kids, get off my lawn! And don’t bring up shifting educational standards again – it’s high time you learned not to talk back to your elders!

Sheesh. I expect it’s a case of “seek and you shall find” with these people, to be honest. After all, people have been lamenting the decline of the younger generation since Plato, and we seem to have made it quite a way since then.

What about you, dear readers? Has following Futurismic turned your grey matter green?

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Criticism of criticism… Fruitless Recursion is go!

Fruitless RecursionHere’s a heads-up for Futurismic regulars who don’t just like reading genre fiction, but who also like reading writing about genre fiction, and who would be interested in reading writing written about writing about genre fiction*…

Blasphemous Geometries columnist Jonathan McCalmont has just committed multiple counts of meta-criticism by posting the first full issue of Fruitless Recursion. Here’s the list of articles for you to get your teeth into:

  • Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s review of Barry N. Malzberg’s Breakfast in the Ruins.
  • Martin Lewis’ review of Roz Kavenay’s From Alien to the Matrix.
  • Paul Kincaid’s review of David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague.
  • Jonathan McCalmont’s field report on Paul Kincaid interviewing Christopher Priest.

Something for everyone, then. Aspiring meta-critics, take note – Fruitless Recursion is a paying market for critical works, so get writing!

[ * Try saying that quickly before the first coffee of the day has kicked in. ]

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Surveillance as (dark) art – the Static Obesity Logging devive

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Benjamin Males\' Racial Targeting System in actionAs a contrast to my earlier post about the cyclist panopticon being a positive manifestation of the potential of ubiquitous surveillance, here’s a project from the Royal College of Arts in London that rather neatly illustrates the flipside.

According to we-make-money-not-art, the Static Obesity Logging device:

… can be installed almost anywhere. The casing of the innocent-looking device conceals a computer, digital and analogue inputs and outputs and a camera. The system is able to remotely calculate Body Mass Index and communicate the data via wired and wireless networks.

Given recent hints from the UK government (among others) that they may start legislating against obesity, this is pretty Orwellian stuff. But the other of Benjamin Males’ projects is even darker – it’s a Racial Targeting System.

The [RTS-2] is a fully portable real-time image-processing platform that has the ability to automatically find and follow faces and then analyse and store their race data.

I guess we should be thankful that we’re seeing these devices being made by artists as a commentary on current affairs rather than reading about their deployment on the streets where we live.

That said, one can’t help but worry that what has been implemented by an art student is very likely to have been at least conceived of by our terror-fied governments. [story originally spotted at Hack-a-Day; image borrowed from Benjamin Males’ website]