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The Long Decline of Reading
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3–5 minutes·
55 comments on The Long Decline of Reading“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” – Steve Jobs on eBook readers and the Amazon…
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The ‘Chinese Rejection’
Probably an urban myth, but the ‘Chinese Rejection’ letter from publishers is a good laugh: “We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we…
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ARGs conference slides now online
Most of the slides from the ARGs in Charity and Education conference are now online, in a lovely Slideshare-embedded format. You name it – PowerPoint, Keynote, PDF – we’ve got it. There are also some links to good blog writeups of the conference, in case you want more commentary. Next time, we’ll record the sessions…
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My Daily Read
“You’re better off reading a bunch of blogs than most columnists.” – me, earlier today. Every time I open the Guardian, or the Times, or any other newspaper, I am disappointed by the poor quality of the columns and editorial. For the most part, they’re barely-informed polemics that are constrained by word limits and motivated…
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Democracy Scorned
The energy and public participation in the 2008 US Election has made many in the UK very jealous, and is raising questions about, say, why we don’t have primary contests to choose party leaders. Here’s how leadership contests currently work: Conservatives: MPs choose two candidates, who party members can then vote on Labour: the totality…
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ARGs in Charity and Education Conference
Despite the real and growing interest in ‘serious’ ARGs from companies and broadcasters, there hasn’t yet been a conference dedicated to the subject where people can share knowledge. There’s so much potential for what serious ARGs can do that I’ve worked with the guys at Law 37 to organise ARGs in Charity and Education, a…
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The Shadow War: Getting Boys to Read
How do you get boys to read? One way is to write entertaining and dramatic books, preferably including some violence. This is what Charlie Higson did for his Young Bond series of books, and judging by the fact that they have sold close to a million copies, it’s a pretty good strategy. Of course, in…
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Anathem and neologisms
A lot of people are criticising Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Anathem, for containing vast quantities of invented words. Instead of mobile phones, he has jeejahs; for video, he has speely; for church, he has ark; and so on. I had been warned about these beforehand, and yet I still became irritated during the first couple…
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Austin GDC talk
After becoming irritated about putting in a lot of work to prepare talks for conferences, and then for all that work to promptly vanish into the ether once my hour is up, I resolved to do something about it. I’ve bought a reasonably good microphone and have started recording the talks that I give to…
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Operation: Sleeper Cell – The Future of Fundraising
Just under a year ago, I announced Let’s Change the Game, a competition to fund development of an ARG that would raise money for Cancer Research UK. In February, the winning team, Law 37, began work on Operation: Sleeper Cell. Over the next eight months, over twenty volunteers in Law 37 built an original game,…
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