The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

Via Making Light, The Social Life of Information

In the years since the long economic boom of the 1990s came to an end in 2000–2001, there has been growing evidence that this view of recent economic history is flawed. In fact, the findings of the three books under review here, along with much recent research, suggest that methods of production based on top-down standardization and tight control of work are as influential in the digital economy as they were in the industrial economy. Drawing upon the virtually unlimited powers of computers to monitor the activities of employees and their use of information, these methods have simply been readapted for the white-collar workplace.

(Kind of relieved that I don’t have to do this myself…)

Great open discussion of The Deathly Hallows over at Timothy Burke’s blog.

Obviously, massive spoiler alert!

This is pretty interesting, and I wish it had been around when I was an undergraduate with a habit of returning books before I’d copied out the bibliographic details: an online bibliography generator.

Apparently designed as a semester project by students at Carnegie Mellon, it draws on data from Amazon, LookSmart FindArticles, Yahoo! News, and CiteULike Academic Papers, displays the results in MLA, APA, or Chicago style, and allows you to download them as RTF.

It’s not perfect: on my test run of the four academic titles that happened to be on my desk, it found all four but didn’t know the author of one of them, and apparently doesn’t have a way of distinguishing between an edited collection and a monograph. It also put a space in the wrong place for MLA.

I don’t know that it will take over from Endnote, and similar applications, but it’s pretty bloody impressive all the same.

The Australian attempts to spin up some high-velocity moral outrage about Harry Potter with Emma MacDonald’s op-ed piece, Harry’s Magic Wearing Thin.

MacDonald suggests that the depiction of the Potter characters’ growing pains constitue Rowling’s endorsement of juvenile misbehaviour: “It’s as if Potter author J.K. Rowling is insinuating that cheating, plastic surgery and spiking drinks is acceptable.”

In the real world there are signs of a deep waywardness. Could there be any connection with the news that 10 children between the ages of 12 and 14 were recently arrested in Lancashire, England suspected of smashing 230 windows of the train used in the Harry Potter films?

No, Emma, I doubt it.

As if this battiness is contagious, US scientists have now come up with “a workable design” – not to tackle poverty or drought – but for an invisibility cloak that head researcher at Indiana’s Purdue University Vladimir Shalaev says “would work exactly like Harry Potter’s”.

Because, of course, every other scientist in the world was working on poverty and drought before Harry Potter came along.

The research I’ve done suggests that the craze has really been adults pretending to get carried away (rushing to buy it for themselves or their kids, who more often than not put it on a shelf without reading it) rather than children themselves.

I’d really like to take a look at MacDonald’s methodology. I’m sure she conducted her research most scrupulously.

The 2006 Hugo nominees have been released:

Novels
Eifelheim, Michael Flynn (Tor)
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Ace)
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)
Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor)

Other categories can be found here.

It is interesting to note that three Dr Who episodes have been nominated again, along with an ep of Battlestar Galactica and one from Stargate SG-1 (my god! Is that still running!). I might try to read more than one of the novel nominees this year…

Judging at Worldcon on 1st September.

Update: In the interests of balance, here are the Nebula novel nominees, which this year—unusually—share no overlap with the Hugos:

The Privilege of the Sword, by Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra
Seeker, by Jack McDevitt (Ace)
The Girl in the Glass, by Jeffrey Ford (Dark Alley)
Farthing, by Jo Walton (Tor)
From the Files of the Time Rangers, by Richard Bowes (Golden Gryphon Press)
To Crush the Moon, by Wil McCarthy (Bantam Spectra)

Winners announced 11-13 May 2007 in New York.

I haven’t time to develop a full review yet but I wanted to strike a note about some recent holiday reading: The Man from the Diogenes Club by British writer Kim Newman. The novel is an anthology of shorts about a 1970s stylish sleuth of the supernatural named Richard Jepherson, and is in general a terrifically effective and knowing pastiche of 70s British television heroes such as Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor Who and Peter Wyngarde’s Jason King.

The most striking aspect of the work comes in “The Serial Murders”, a short story about a series of murders that mysteriously parallel the storylines of a popular television soapie. Drafted in to help solve the case is a lecturer in television studies. And so we have, for the first time that I can ever recall, a sympathetic characterization of a cultural studies academic in a popular culture text. Newman of course is no stranger to the world of academically oriented cultural criticism. But I still found it to be refreshing, all the same.

Bibliographic wisdom from “bobcat”, on a Crooked Timber thread about endnotes:

Jeez. I don’t think “ibid” is that big a deal. I mean, once I realize there are endnotes in the first place, I look to see how many of them are citations, and how many of them contain relevant information. Then, I write down the numbers of the ones that contain relevant information. Then, whenever I see an endnote, I consult that piece of paper. Then, I kill myself and my family.

Four days to go until the 2005 Hugo Awards are decided at the 2006 Worldcon in LA. There some tough competition, but I’m still tipping Accelerando by Charles Stross.

You’ll hear the results here first (if I remember to check them). Otherwise, go to the Worldcon site.

Go Charlie!

Insightful political commentary in 2005 Hugo Award nominee, Accelerando by Charles Stross:

there’s a certain voter demographic that mistakes image for substance and is afraid of the unknown, and I need to acquire a wardrobe that triggers associations of probity, of respect and deliberation. (342)

It’s been a long time since policy has been more important in elections than image, and education of the electorate is seen as a polling disadvantage (qv the Howard Government’s multi-million dollar Work Choices campaign that left 60% of the electorate unaware of the details of the legislation).

But I suppose it’s more of a problem if your platform is one of building an emergency starship to escape the solar system…

If expectant mums can have support groups to break the isolation of having a baby, can I start one to deal with being a blogger and writing a book about cultural studies?