More on Robots and the Automation of Everything
Following up on my post last week about robots and the law, I read a piece by Gideon Lewis-Kraus in Wired about a robot hotel. Of course it’s in Japan.
Various and Sundry
Tag: Things to Read
Various and Sundry
Crisis of Infinite Star Treks: Of Paramount and Puppets
This is the 13th of the ongoing series about Star Trek’s future and its fandom. I’m as surprised as anyone it keeps going, but hey, that’s why tagging is so handy (or click on Crisis of Infinite Star Treks). So, a pair of links today. The first is an article by Marc Perton that appeared this afternoon in Newsweek. If you haven’t been following this story for months like some of us nuts, it does a…
Producing
Recommended Reading: How American TV Gets Made (with a Case Study of The Americans)
I love to learn more about the nuts and bolts of how productions get made as it teaches me what I should do (and can conceivably do) for the indie productions I work on. So I found this feature article by Caroline Framke in Vox about how an episode of The Americans gets on the air quite absorbing. And I don’t even watch the series (yet).
Various and Sundry
Recommended Reading: Robots and the Law
Anyone familiar with some of Isaac Asimov’s classic robot stories knows they are full of intriguing “what if?” scenarios. Well, now we’re at the cusp of these “what if?” scenarios being “so, when this happens next week…” scenarios. What will we do then? Ryan Calo explores this in an article from last month. Short story ideas are a-brewing.
Various and Sundry Writing
Letting Go of the Canon
This is the 11th entry in a surprisingly long series of posts about Star Trek’s future and its fandom called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks. Yes, we have gone to 11. Asher Elbein’s excellent piece in The Atlantic is worth reading just to consider the nature of pop culture –our modern mythology– and our ownership thereto. I’ve included it in the Crisis of Infinite Star Treks series because reading it helped distill two issues: If a ‘Star…
Various and Sundry
Recommended Reading: Requiem for a Video Store
Reading a recent piece reflecting on the demise of video stores, specifically independent video stores, made me reflect on the demise of Video Vault, an indie film mainstay in Alexandria that supplied film fans for a generation. Mike Musgrove’s article in the Washington Post about the Vault’s closing gives one a good idea of the pressures that made it close. That article is probably a good warm-up for the aforementioned piece on indie video stores.…
Various and Sundry
Alpha Centauri or Bust
In a world obsessed with “maximizing shareholder value,” it’s nice to know that money can mix with imagination and do great things. Enter Yuri Milner, tech billionaire who wants us to get a probe to Alpha Centauri, stat. Okay, it’s more of a generational thing, but let’s face it: we have to figure out how to become more than a one-planet civilization sooner rather than later. Interstellar scouting missions don’t accomplish that, but they do keep…
Writing
Recommended Reading: Tolkien, Fantasy, and Technology
So much of writing can roll up into “having something to say,” so I found Alan Jacobs’ piece in The Atlantic on Tolkien and Technology interesting. Tolkien casts such a long shadow across the world of fantasy, that it’s interesting to consider how much his views on technology color other works in fantasy.
Writing
More on Writing for Free… or Very Little
I should spend more time talking about and linking to Mark Evanier‘s series on rejection. However, in the meantime, in light of my post on Monday, I figured I’d list Part 7 of his Rejection series which covers low and no pay writing. One standout quote: “Working cheap or for free occasionally leads to getting paid decently but more often, it leads nowhere… or to more offers to work for little or no money.” At…
Writing
The Seemingly Eternal Issue of Writing for Free
My head nodded knowingly, along many other part-time scribes, as I read Wil Wheaton’s piece last Fall about turning down Huffington Post’s offer to e-print a popular article of his in exchange for “exposure.” Wil Wheaton touches on what appears to be one of the most infuriating aspects of the modern economy (though I know examples of it have existed for ages): exposure is sufficient payment for creative work. Robert Bevan, from a post on…