More from this Issue
Novelist and sinologist Linda Jaivin rejects the excess writing and publishing that the internet affords every person with a keyboard and compares it to Milan Kundera's definition of graphomania(an obsession with writing books). She would rather have fewer readers than more scanners believing that a 'long form' like a novel or book-length non-fiction needs slow writing and carefully crafted prose.
Director of the Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne Professor Sean Cubitt asks: what is the weight of the internet, is it green, clean and immaterial with no environmental costs? The answer is a scary and resounding no.
Freelance writer, author of True Green @ Work and editor Tim Wallace discusses the conflict between new technologies making everything available for free and writers and content creators needing to be paid. He quotes from on a book by Kevin Kelly called New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World: 'The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.'