INTERMASHONAL TIMES

BEIJING IN RETROSPECT 05: Coffee in China or Eurocentric delusions of grandeur

2011-10-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

A day or two into my 10 day Beijing visit in September, I came to the conclusion that the West is in a serious state of denial when it comes to China's new global role. Looking back at the material I had read before I went to China, very little of it actually managed to describe the Beijing that I was about to meet.

Many Western commentators seem reluctant to leave post-colonial mode when trying to grasp the new China. There is a predominant tendency in the West to assume that China is shaping her new identity in contrast to the West, that China is somehow defining her global role as some kind of counterpart to the Western World.

Some years ago, I saw numerous accounts in Western media, detailing the expansion in China of popular Western brands like McDonald's, Starbucks and Coca-Cola. The sub-text was often banally gleeful: "Look, the Chinese are becoming civilized!" But in Beijing anno 2011, I saw no queues outside KFC or Pizza Hut. Sure, there are nuggets peddled and burgers served, but most Chinese enjoy their communal meal at their local, often packed, traditional Chinese restaurant, like they always have. Besides, most of them prefer a slice of the good old cong ju bing (green onion pancake), not pizza*.

As aforeigner, I have been duly catered for when- and wherever I have travelled. I have been chased by peddlers withcarpets and water melons, and pestered by professional beggars desiring Euros ordollars. I have been offered jewelry, paintings, drugs, women, souvenirs, antiques.Everywhere I have travelled, whether I have been working or vacationing, I have been the focus of the undivided attention from a horde of locals, or the object of special treatment and sales-pitching discounts.

JUST ANOTHER FACE IN THE PASTRY QUEUE

Not so inBeijing. Just another customer, another face in the pastry queue. I have neverwalked with a populace so disinterested in Europe and the West as theBeijingers. Polite and courteous, sure, but not all that hot and bothered aboutEurope and the West, nor Norway, for that matter. Not hostile, by any means, but somewhat ... indifferent. Thelack of curiosity surprised me, as new Chinese friends from most walks of life usually turned theconversation quickly back to any Chinese topic, as soon as introductions were made and the reciprocal courtesies exchanged.

We wereseveral foreigners staying at the 3-star hotel in the district of Andingmen; Australians, Americans, Germans, Japanese, some speaking languages I could not identify there and then. All sorts of people, really. A result of the hotel advertising outsideChina on a regular basis for customers. But still, the hotel had made very little effort tocater for its foreign guests.

Ok, so the bathroom was European standard, there was almost fluent English spoken by the office management during office hours, and the buffet dishes were labeled in English, but the menu was all-Chinese. No croissants, no corn flakes, no cheese, nothing that evenresembled sucking up to European tastes. The apple juice was heated, and if youhaven't tried red bean curd (tofu), you should maybe consider limiting yourself to avery, very small piece** before you divulge. Fortunately, there was coffee.

** "They say, the first time you eat it, you hate it. The secondtime you hate it even more. The third time, you cannot live without it." From my own experience, I would say the second time is probably the hardest part.

THE LACK OF JAVA

In my hotel room, there was a boiler and bags of tea. But no instant coffee. There are many foreigners in Beijing. Coffee to foreigners should be good business, right?

It's not like it is difficult to find yourself a caffe latte in Beijing. But mostly you'll find it in hipster coffee bars and European-inspired lounges. Take a stroll to the Embassy District, the "West End" of Beijing, or hip quarters like "Guitarshop Street" a.k.a. Gulou (Bell Tower) East Street, where also the rock club Mao Live House is located, and you will easily find your way to the next coffee bar. But the further you get from the city center and the deeper into Beijing you dive, the harder it is to get yourself a simple cup of Java.

For a coffee addict like myself, the absence of coffee came as a total surprise. It also challenged stubborn Eurocentric thought patterns, that I - somewhat embarrassed - found myself stuck in. I had expected coffee to be a token of China romancing, even courting the West, but no. What was equally surprising, was thefact that nobody excused themselves for not serving coffee. No embarrased blushing, no courtesy regrets, no post-rural loss of provincial face. On the contrary, the staff in almost every restaurant I visited, just laughed: “Coffee?? Ha-ha,no, we don’t serve coffee."

The aristocratic 5-star Hotel Beijing resides a block northeast of the Tienanmen, strategically located in the very geographical nexus of Chinese political power, on the corner of Dongchang'an Avenue and Wangfujing Steet, Beijing's partly pedestrian main street. A hotel with a scent of History, in which ballrooms Communist legends like Mao Zedong held receptions andentertained foreign guests. So at the Beijing Hotel, surely, one would expect to be servedcoffee ...? None of the four waitresses in the 5-star lunch restaurant spoke any English*** at all, and there was no coffee served. Body language tell-tale; their reaction was typical, no need for a dictionary:

“Ha-ha,no, we don’t serve coffee."
Ok. (Dictionary intermission.) Tea, then?
"Absolutely, I'll fetch our hand-painted tea menu, handcrafted in sandalwood."

When Ifeasted on rack of lamb coriander at a very fine 5-star Chinese restaurant, thestaff started giggling when I, after an excellent meal, asked for a coffee. No, no kaffei. What a far-fetched thought, haha!

FAKE TEA AND DA GONG PAO

They did, however, serve Da Gong Pao tea, a brew that would have cost 25 Euros a pot back home. The restaurant was in every way well stocked, but not even at this level of Beijing luxury, they could be bothered to serve coffee. However, they had Coca-Cola, and were particular about asking me if I wanted a can of Coke. Or a Cuban sigar, maybe?

“Ha-ha, no, we don’t serve coffee. In China, wedrink tea.”

I was later toldthat counterfeit tea is big business in China. You simply claim that a tea costing 1 Euro akilo in fact is a tea priced at 60 Euros a kilo. That's probably more profitablethan selling marihuana to the hipsters of Beijing.

Most of the tourists I saw on the Tienanmen and in the Forbidden City, were Chinese. The Beijing hotels and restaurants have a potential of 1,3 billion customers insidetheir own borders. Why bother with coffee, if you can sell even more tea to the sightseeing-weary traveler from Guandong or Shanghai?

FASHION STATEMENTS

Of course, fashion is inspired by Western pop culture, so is music. Style is a rather new and fresh concept in China, but Beijing style is not a Western copy. Style is shaped by adaptation; the Chinese way. I saw just as much Japanese influence as Western. If anything, Beijing style is a silent response, not to the West, but to China's own past, to the "excesses" of the Cultural Revolution in the 60ties, to the days of dress-as-one; green, black, grey, blue: "Thanks, but no thanks. We want to dress exactly as we please."

The mode a la Beijing, which includes black metal T-shirts Made in China as well as Fruit Of The Loom, fake or real, does not subliminally express, "We want to be Westerners", but rather, "We want to be modern. We are peasants no more", an issue I shall return to in a later post. In Beijing, style is pride, independent of income level.

So, it goes without saying, the Chinese have started designing their own clothes, probably spurred on by their very successful textile export industry, and among the youngsters I met, it seemed to me that Made in China was at least as popular, if not even more popular than Western brands.

Besides, only hipsters care about labels in Beijing, just like your local iPad- and Ray-Ban-toting hero with the green Adidas does back home, and the sound of modern China is not Lady Gaga or Coldplay, but Chinese pop, the kind of easy-listening pop music you might hear in a Chinese restaurant in the West. And when listening to it, the Beijinger does not carry an iPad or an iPhone, he spouts a Lenovo LePad or LePhone, the IBM-developed tablet and smart phone resp., with Chinese character sets and keys. At 530 dollars/380 Euro, they are selling by the thousands, even millions in China. 特别优惠。

ACCESSING FACEBOOK IN CHINA

A myth is prevailing in the West. It says that if only the Chinese knew, like, you know, really, really knew, how great life is in the West (as compared to life in China), yes, absolutely, if only the Chinese could read and understand English***, and if only they had access to Facebook and Twitter and if only they could read our free-speech newspapers and if only they could watch our uncensored TV, they would surely want to live and be exactly like us. Why, even take to the streets, demanding that China should choose the Way of the West?

If the Beijinger is concerned with censorship, she will be concerned with the censorship of something Chinese, not the Communist authorities blocking out Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Most young, urban Beijingers are fully aware of the existence of VPNs and proxies. The Chinese could be on Facebook if they wanted to, it is not all that difficult. I, for one, had no problems with by-passing the censorship, and everybody I spoke to, took that for granted, me being a foreigner in Beijing and all. But, if you are Chinese, why bother, when you have Renren, QZone (both Facebook-ish) Sina Weibo (China's answer to Twitter), Baidu (search engine) and Youku (video)? All your friends are there, too, of course.

WHO WANTS YESTERDAY'S PAPER?

Everywhere I went in China, and the more I walked, I came to the conclusion that the West is completely overestimatingits own influence and impact on China. I cannot speak for other cities thanBeijing, and hardly even that, aware as I am that 10 days is too short a time for understanding every aspect of any major city, not to mention a city of plus 20 million people. But to me it seems that most of Western mainstream analysis of China is flawed, even biased, as the commentators wrongly assume that Europe and the US are all that importantto the average Chinese, and in that sense, to China as such. We're not.

On the contrary, based on myBeijing visit, I tend to think that China is not really all that concerned with the West.At least not as much as the West would like to think. It takes a strong back to admit you are being overlooked. The United States, Europe ... It's very far away, isn't it? Plus, the populationof Western Europe and the US is half the size of China’s, right? And the Western crisis-stricken economies are crumbling, while China is prospering, isn't that so?

Its a simple as this: The average Chinese is fully aware that China's era has come. The Communist authorities make sure they keep the Beijingers updated on Chinese acquisitions of American stocks and bonds, as well as with China's latest triumphs in international sports. Any Beijinger can feel the - quite literary - daily progress, see the thriving economy expand, sense the general extreme growth of the People's Republic of China, eradicating illiteracy and poverty by the minute, fulfilling dreams.

Of course,some "Western sectors" are extremely important to China***, e.g. financeand technology, but that is not a concern for the average Beijinger. It is thedomain of specialists, of experts. The Beijinger of today has more than enough withChina. His and her China. Inspired for centuries by Confucius and Buddha, not by Aristotle or Hegel.

The urban Chinese buys her grandmother a modern apartment with running water or an Ibanez ARZ guitar for himself, and they are all quite proud of the turn of the tides, proud of themselves, proud of China, proud of "the Chinese Miracle". So why bother with yesterday's heroes?

* I shall return to the question of foreign languages in a later post.
*** In spite of the myth that claims pizza was invented in China.

BEIJING IN RETROSPECT 04: Why China won't accept the recent diplomatic advances of Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Garh Stoere

2011-10-17T05:57:00.000-07:00

Today, Norwegian news media are reporting that China is bluntly rejecting Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre's effort to thaw the ice between China and Norway. The diplomatic cold front arose in 2010, when the Norwegian Nobel Committee, headed by the secretary-general of the European Council, Mr. Torbjørn Jagland, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Both Mr. Jagland and Mr. Støre are both members of the governing Norwegian Labour Party, and the Labour-Left government of Mr. Jens Stoltenberg voiced its enthusiastic support of the decision.

China published Friday its official reaction to Mr. Gahr Støre's advances. Mr. Gahr Støre was bluntly slapped. It was a predictible reaction.

Let's cut through the diplomatic language and go straight for the underlying reasons, the words that are not spoken. Because this is what the Chinese are really saying, and maybe it takes an author to translate it onto "un-diplomatic":

"In 2010 you, the collective political leadership of Norway, headed by Labour-politicians, saluted that another Labour politician, Mr. Jagland, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to a man who has said:

'Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there's no middle ground... Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race'.

For this, we have jailed him, as he is no less than a foreign agent, not a spy, but an agitator for the introduction of the political system of the West in China. His organization is funded by the US Congress.

Mr. Gahr Støre has said that he respects China's 'traditions'. That is, he respects our right to shape China according to our 'traditions' when we supposedly should become like the West. We thank you, Mr. Gahr Støre for your love of pagodas, flute-playing and fireworks, but we will shape China as we please."

Until Mr. Gahr Støre grants the +1 300 000 000 inhabitants of China the right to choose its own political system, not "a West Mark II" with a Chinese "traditional" dragon-twist, he will most likely meet a closed door, independently of how well he performs his diplomatic moves. The Chinese are talking principles here, post-colonial principles.

It is not a question of semantics. There is a difference between saying, on the one hand, that China has the sovereign right to choose its own political path, and on the other hand, the limited right to "choose" its own Western path. The West may refuse to realize this, and simply deny its own Eurocentric arrogance and hypocrisy, but in an un-diplomatic translation, this is exactly what this entire conflict is all about.

In China, strength is tied to respect. That it is little Norway, with a population of less than 5 million people, probably adds anger to what the Chinese consider an insult.

If Mr. Gahr Støre would resign as Norwegian foreign minister, the Chinese would most surely accept it with satisfaction. If Mr. Jagland were to step down as Nobel Committee Chairman, the Chinese authorities would rejoice. But as neither alternative is likely, I predict it will take a change of government in Norway to make the Chinese Communists even considering taking a first step towards letting bygones be bygones.

In China's opinion, the present Norwegian political establishment has arrogantly, even patronizingly used the Nobel Peace Prize to insult China. Thus, it has become a matter of principle. Of honour. Ask any Chinese.

* In September 2011 I travelled to Beijing for research on my forthcoming novel BRENT. This series expresses his non-novel related reflections on China and China's relationship to the West.

BEIJING IN RETROSPECT 03: To the deconstruction of the concept of "human rights".

2011-10-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

When Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre leaves Norway for an official China visit, heis usually asked by the Norwegian press: "Will you raise the question ofhuman rights with the Beijing authorities?" The answer is always, "Yes, certainly", or"We just did", or "We always do". Norway is"concerned" with China's "human rights record".

However, the Declaration of Human Rights is comprehensive. It coversmany aspects of human life and many different rights.

This is e.g. paragraph 25:

"Everyone has the right to a standard ofliving adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family,including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary socialservices, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstancesbeyond his control."

The last decenniums, China has given hundreds of millionspoverty-stricken Chinese these basic human rights.

In comparison, Norway, the world's richest nation per capita, with 3000billion NOK or 385 billion Euro banked in the National Petroleum Fund(SPF), holds the dubious heroin overdose record for Europe. And even thougheach Norwegian citizen, at least on paper, through the Fund "has" 650 000 NOK or 80 000 Euro tucked away for a rainy day, still 10 % of theNorwegian population is officially classified as "poor".

And I could continue onto the second subsection of paragraph 25, which reads,

"Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection",

as 60 000 of these poor are children. I could also mention other Norwegian violations of the Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, I could mention the many human rights violations that has brought Norway to the attention of Amnesty International, but I see no need for that.

For what is my point here? A competition in human rights? "Which country is best on human rights? Norway or China?" Should Norway become Little China? Am I a closet Communist? By no means. But as an author, I feel an obligation to defend the honour of Mother Language.

When Norwegian foreign minister Støre talks about "China's human rights record", he is a thief. He is stealing the words "human rights record", making them his property. He transforms the content of the (comprehensive) Human Rights Declaration, making the concept of human rights synonymous with "free speech" and "multi-parti system".

I am an author, so by default I am a supporter of free speech, and I find any censorship deplorable. So Mr. Støre is of course fully entitled to discuss these matter with the Chinese authorities. However, that he speaks in general about China's "human rights record", making it sound as if Norway is the proverbial angel while China is supposedly a demon, is another matter. From a global perspective, China's human rights record is nothing less than enviable, for any country. Millions upon millions of impoverished Chinese have been lifted up from utter misery to a good and meaningful life.

If anything, Mr. Støre should lower his head in respect for what China actually has achieved when it comes to establishing basic human rights - the very foundation of human dignity - for such a vast number of our fellow human brothers and sisters. If we feel inclined to compare this feat with Norway's human rights achievements, I am tempted to propose the adjective used in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to describe planet Earth: "insignificant". (Pop. 4,9 million.)

That is, if we give paragraph 25 the status that it deserves. Or, as the German author Bertolt Brecht said it:

Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral
Erst muss es möglich sein auch armen Leuten
Vom grossen Brotlaib sich ihr Teil zu Schneiden

(First comes a good meal, then morality
First it must be possible for the poor as well
To cut their slice of the big cake)

In other words, if Mr. Støre sees it as his prerogative to use his (sovereign) right to condemn the free speech record of China from a moral point of view, he should also be prepared for a resiprocal condemnation from China for Norway's appalling human rights records when it comes to the Norwegian poor, and especially the destitute Norwegian druggies, who are only met with police and a cold bureaucracy that treats them like human trash.

Nobody has forced the Chinese Communist Party to take the path that has made China what China is today. The Communists of China could have chosen "the Rumanian model", living a life in luxury and decadence. They had a choice. So has the authorities of Norway when it comes to eliminating poverty and curing drug addiction.

Yes, come to think of it, I would actually encourage the Chinese authorities to raise Norwegian human rights violations internationally, as the dissidents of Norway, and I am but one, have tried to raise these two issues in the oil-rich and prosperous Norway for years, but to absolutely no avail whatsoever.

If this is not to Mr. Støre's pleasing, then maybe he should consider consulting his dictionary: E for Eurocentrism. H for hypocrisy. S for self-righteousness.

* In September 2011, Morten Jorgensen travelled to Beijing for research on his forthcoming novel BRENT. This series expresses his non-novel related reflections on China and China's relationship to the West.

Beijing in retrospect 02: The Nobel Peace Prize and post-colonial megalomania

2011-10-06T05:58:00.000-07:00

* In September 2011, Morten Jorgensen travelled to Beijing in China for research on his forthcoming novel BRENT. This series expresses his non-novel related reflections on China and China's relationship to the West.

Before leaving Norway for China, I had been warned that there might be resent- ment in China towards Norway, due to the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarding the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Determinedon breaking any and all conversational taboos while in Beijing, I brought this subject up myself, expecting it to be, if not perilous, at least touchy.

It was neither. There were four of us around the table, dining and drinking Chinese rice liquor. I asked my new Chinese friends if China was angry with Norway for awardingMr. Liu the Prize? Who? they asked. Liu ...? Oh, right, they could vaguely remember hearing somethingabout that, yes.

Politely, as I was their guest, they assured me that, no, no, there was no resentment against Norway or Norwegians in China. It was a political question, something that concerned the government and their officials; a diplomatic issue. It became obvious to me that they were not really very concerned with the subject matter at all.

Curious, I probed a little. Mr. Liu was an advocate of free speech and multi-party system, right? Yes, they agreed, and this was when I got my first glimpse of what we maybe can call The Beijing Consensus. There were three generations seated at the table, and they were by no means a homogenous group of people, but they all concurred when the "interpreter", who had taken business education in Europe and North America, spoke, on the behalf of them all:

China is China, and the West is the West. They were all highly skeptical to the multi-party system of the West, as it in their opinion, only led to division and strife. It was as if I could hear the voice of Buddha in the background: "Harmony, harmony ..."

Some days later, a student with detailed knowledge of Western politics, used the then recent crisis in the US Congress to illustrate why the Chinese are not all that keen on a multi-party Constitution. The partisan battle between Republicans and Democrats in the US (with president Obama in the middle) seemed to him more or less absurd, a confirmation of the forthcoming Decline of the West.

"In China," he said, "something like that could never have happened. The partisan tug-of-war and the inevitable diluted final compromise is totally contrary to the way China does it. In the West, you plan and build for re-election, and you base your politics on bland compromises. China plans and builds for a hundred years."

It is a myth that there is a Communist Party elite that takes all the decisions. The Political Bureau is of course extremely powerful, but when it comes to participation in the political process, China's credentials are actually rather impressive. The Communist Party of China has +80 millionmembers. If we exclude children, it is close to 10 % of the Chinese population.In Norway, the parties of Parliament have appr. 200 000 members, or 3 % of thepopulation (excl. children). In the UK, appr. 500 000 are party members, orappr. 1 % of the population.

This is how the Chinese technocracy works: If you are talented, you are encouraged to join the Party. If you are skilled and innovative, you are promoted. In the end, you might become the head of an agency or a department. As a Westerner you would have to go through a complicated political process if you wanted to change or achieve something. In China, you take decisions.

One example is the public toilets of Beijing. Before the Olympics 2008, the Communist Party said: "Beijing needs public toilets." So they most likely called their sanitation department, or wherever their most skilled sanitation engineers might be located, and said: "We need toilets. Do it." So now you can't walk anywhere in Beijing without a maximum of 200 meters to the nearest public toilet. There are toilets everywhere.

In Norway, toilets would instantly become a partisan, even ideological issue. The Left would go for public construction and ownership, the Right would go for private. There would be discussions on cost, location etc. There would be hearings, propositions, debates. Maybe even organizations formed and rallies held. It might take years. Not so in China: "Give us the best solution, as you see fit. Now."

The West cherishes opinions. China honors skills, efficiency and competence.

So my Chinese friends quickly changed the subject. Not because the topic was taboo, but they were simply not interested. And who can blame them? After 800 years ofcolonialism, imperialism, post-colonialism and whatnot, someone is awarded aprize for declaring business as usual, i.e. that the West is the best andalways has been:

"Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a humanlife is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinesegoverning system is humane vs in-humane, there's no middle ground...Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the humanrace".
(Liu Xiaobo)

There is a certain beauty to the naive, almost touching aura of European self-centeredness in awarding the Nobel PeacePrize to a person, who in China is known, if known at all, for stating that the West is superiorto China, that China must become like the West. "... choose Western wayof life."

Personally, I tend to think that to the average Chinese, this sounds like high treason. The fact that Mr. Liu's organization is funded by the US Congress will hardly further Mr. Liu's case in China. Try telling that China is "in-humane" to the four young Chinesewho were cheering ecstatically at the table next to mine as China beat Jordan 70-69 on live television, in the finals of theAsian Basketball Championship while I was finishing my Guinness.

The Beijingers are a polite and courteouscreed, but they just might be inclined to ask: - Sorry, but who did you saygave him the award? The answer would be a committee in Norway, Scandinavia. Population 4,9million.

My little Chinagirl

You shouldn't messwith me

I'll ruineverything you are

I'll give youtelevision, I'll give you eyes of blue

I'll give you menwho want to rule the world

(Osterberg/Bowie)

While in Beijing, I encountered a China that ispredominantly concerned with ... China. The China I met, did not seem to takeMr. Jagland's Nobel hint all that seriously. His transparent agenda wouldbe like China awarding a prize to the chairman of the Workers' Party a.k.a. AKP(m-l), the Norwegian pro-Chinese Maoist extremist left-wing party of the 70ies,who actually did propose that Norway should adopt the Chinese way of life, an imagined scenario that the Chinese leadership never was unwise enough toenter.

No, I am not a supporter of political incarceration. No, I am not a Communist, on the contrary, I am a devout anti-Communist. But I am no supporter of stupidity either.

Who in the West would take seriously anyonedeclaring that West should "... choose the Chinese way of life"? Who in China can take the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize seriously?

BEIJING IN RETROSPECT 01: Jazz and politics at the Tienanmen.

2011-10-05T04:39:00.000-07:00

As we pass the Forbidden City, my Chinese friend Kun points to the surveillance cameras that are to be found everywhere on and around Tienanmen, and I take pictures of them. We keep on, walking faster than everybody else on Chang'an Avenue, the very nexus of political power in China. We stand out, and we are surrounded by soldiers and police. I decide it's time to talk politics.

With the giant portrait of chairman Mao Zedong on our left, I ask Kun if he has been inside the Forbidden City. He has not. I ask him why. Doesn't he like chairman Mao? Oh, it's nothing to do with that. But his life is jazz, and jazz only. Kun needs every day and every hour for rehearsing, practicing. He has no time for monuments or sight-seeing.

The very same morning I had shown him Facebook. I have a proxy program that makes the Internet accessible to me, also in countries where it has been blocked by the authorities. Kun is not overly curious, but asks me what Facebook is? I tell him, it's is like a Western QZone. Kun nods. He is of course on QZone, China's answer to Facebook. 530 million users, while Weibo has merely 230 million.

I tell him, in Europe, many people believe that his generation is dying to be on Facebook. 24 year old Kun looks puzzled. Why? "Many in Europe and the US think that many in China think that Europe and the US is better than China." "No, no, no, no, no ... China is my country," he says. "Well," I say, "in Europe, some people believe that if people in China could, they would all run away to the West." Kun doubles over, laughing. He looks at me, incredulous, "No?" "Oh, yes." Kun is shaking with laughter.

When arriving in Beijing, I expected to spend the next ten days in a society with rigid social control and a multitude of restrictions and taboos. I was also assuming a lack of individuality and a comprehensive set of collective norms that would make Beijingers a homogenous lot.

They were not. I expected social control, but Beijing embraced me with its vibrant chaos. Beijing is a happy city, with total freedom of individual expression, even if you flag a cannabis banner in your storefront window and spout dreadlocks. Mini-skirts are high fashion, you can drink your beer in the streets, you can walk with your ghetto-blaster on your shoulder blaring hiphop, you can do exactly as you please. The police won't even frown at you. I looked for all the miniscule signs of social repression that one might find in Belarus or Iran. I saw absolutely nothing of the kind.

It took me just two days to realize this, and as the week progressed, I came to understand that everything I had been told or had read in preparation for my Beijing quest, was severely biased by Eurocentric prejudice and a number of arrogant, post-colonial misconceptions. And in the following posts, I shall tell you all about it.

As we take the stairs down to the underground passage that leads to the Tienanmen Square itself, Kun looks at me with a serious face, "There is one thing I don't like about China." Once again, my preconceptions overtake me, as I expect him to give me an indication of political discontent.

A sad expression settles on his face: "There is no jazz in China. China is pop. That's very bad."
* In September 2011, Morten Jorgensen travelled to Beijing in China for research on his forthcoming novel BRENT. This series expresses his non-novel related reflections on China and China's relationship to the West.

AN ESSAY ON WRITING 01: BEIJING METHOD WRITING or The Method To My Madness

2011-07-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

A talented, skilled and experienced novelist can make the reader believe any story. In principle, it is quite possible to write an astonishing novel without even leaving your desk. Through thorough research and penetrating insight in the human psyche, the seasoned novelist will add details and make observations to such a degree, that if the reader was to be told the author himself had experienced the story, he or she would most certainly believe it.

However, no matter how skilled the author may be, personal experience is unsurpassable, and on-the-spot observation superior.

In the theater, there are two extreme approaches to acting:

*So-called method acting, as theorized and institutionalized by the great Russian director and actor Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938). The essence of method acting can be described within the framework of terms like empathy, identification and even experiencing. The actor immerses himself or herself in another personality, "becoming" that person.

* Classical acting, in the tradition of William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen, where an actor develops skills. Or, as the seasoned and gifted Norwegian actress Anne Krigsvoll commented once in a private setting, upon being told by somebody that she seemed to identify strongly with her character in a particular movie: "Identify? Me? Ha! I am a classical actor, I have technique." If a character is sad, then the actor uses her or his technical skills to express it.

As in theater, so also in literature. I subscribe to what can be called method writing.

CHARACTERS

I do not write about my characters. I become them, I live them. I walk like them, I eat like them, and gradually I start to understand them, maybe even getting to know them.

I do it literally. I go to the mall as them, as if I were an actor. I "enjoy" their favorite ice cream, even though I personally may be allergic to those walnuts. I go to MacDonald's and eat their sloppy burger, while I as a private person never eat anything whatsoever from or at a MacDonald's. I don't equip my characters with hobbies or idiosyncrasies, they find their own, often on pure impulse, like normal people. I never write about The Teacher or The Nurse. I write about actual people, about individuals. I do not design them, they grow themselves like plants.

While the more classically inclined author will do "normal" research, i.e. read stuff, talk to people, go to the library, interview somebody, draw from personal experience, and develop a character by means of assorted semantic character development tools, I start from scratch. I let the characters develop over time, and on their own.

In his 1881 lecture “Norwegian literature” , the Norwegian Nobel Laureate, Knut Hamsun, said about his colleague, the playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen:

“Ibsen‘s persons far too often have been just vehicles ("apparatuses"), who come forward, representing concepts and ideas … Priests are hypocrites, the common people are being violated, Latin and Pontoppidan murders little children fervently to death, merchants seduce young girls.”

Nowhere within the vast field of literature is this more obvious than in contemporary crime fiction. The private investigator or policeman is usually constructed over the same last: He is single or painfully divorced, he drives a particular car, he may have or may have had a problem with alcohol, he has an interest or a hobby, he has a neurotic trait (claustrophobia is currently trending, but fear of heights, water, open spaces, crowds will also do), he may have a disease etc.

These characters are not real, they are templates, cliches, card board characters with no depth, just a mishmash of characteristics. Their makers have snatched the measuring stick of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and others, making the format universal.

There is an army of crime hacks out there who build their characters as if people are sets of Lego bricks. And I will never, ever read "a relationship novel", unless you count Murphy or Le Bleu de Ciel as one.

PLOTS AND STORYS

When I wrote my second novel, “Kongen av København” (The King of Copenhagen), I knew the character “King” from my first novel. But, hey, I hadn’t associated with him for 10 years. Surely, he would have changed?

The most frustrating questions I get from the press are: “What do you want to say with this book?” and “What is the story in the book about?” Morons! It is a story. My books “say” nothing, they have no purpose other than telling a story, creating a coherent text.

No, I am not "Brent". I always try to distance myself from my characters. If I write something autobiographical at a later stage in my authorship, I'll let you know. On the contrary, I enjoy writing about The Other.

Most readers were fooled by The Mustard Legion. Droves of people, including reviewers, thought I was expressing opinions, that I "was" the main character, "TT", or at least that I was sympathetic to him. In King of Copenhagen he is exposed as a liar and a coward. What a jerk. I never even liked him.

RESEARCH

Before I started physically writing The King of Copenhagen, I travelled to Copenhagen. I had absolutely no idea what the storyline would be. I planned next to nothing.

From my publisher J.W. Cappelen AS I acquired a generous amount of money down, sufficient for me to travel as “King” to Copenhagen for a fortnight. As “King” had always been a heavy drinker, it was evident to me that he, ten years after, would have become somewhat of an alcoholic.

So off to Copenhagen I went, with enough money to be drunk for 14 days, carrying a tape recorder and a camera, as I knew I would spend parts of my time there in a haze. And, just for the record, I am unable to write if I drink.

I did not enjoy it. Growing up, I was surrounded by drunks, my father a junkie, the continuous use of alcohol has always been a no-no to me. Even as a notorious punkrock madman in the 80ies, I rarely drank any alcohol at all for more than two days in a row, or three times a week, even though I can assure you I know how to party hard, and in spite of the fact that I certainly don't mind ten pints of Guinness on occasion. But when my friends drink beer in the afternoon, I tend to stick to coffee.

Not only that. I told people my favorite liquor was Jack Daniel's, a liquor I have always detested. The fact that I managed to pour into my sensitive gullet this disgusting, syrupy substance for 14 consecutive days, and lots of it, too, is only due to my total and uncompromising dedication to the craft of the novelist. Seriously.

Did I have to do it? Yes, because I wanted “King”’s hangovers, and nothing, except maybe very old cognac and bad moonshine, gives you a worse morning after than a 40 % proof liquor containing lots and lots of sugar. Well, couldn’t I have leaned on my own hangovers? No, I wanted his.

Robert DeNiro put on weight to play Al Capone, while Christian Bale lost 60 pounds before he became Trevor Reznik in The Machinist. Both method actors, of course.

So there I walked Copenhagen as if I was “King”. Things happened. Scenes I never could have constructed took place, but because they developed originally in the real world, acted out by real people, the story got just that little bit of extra edge, an element of unpredictability.

The Method always adds some obscure detail, some inconsistency, a lack of linearity; it strengthens the credibility of the text. A surprising smell, a cameo, a dog, it can be anything.

I went home to Oslo and wrote the book, and 90 % of what is depicted in the book, is more or less exactly what happened during my stay in Copenhagen.

HOW TO LIE, MANIPULATE AND IMPRESS PEOPLE ... NOT!

Yes, I involve other people. I manipulate, I lie. I posed as “King” in Copenhagen, introducing myself as him if need be, telling strangers that I had been awarded ten Norwegian Grammys. I behaved like an idiot at times, on purpose, to get unique and unpredictable reactions, and most of the embarrassing situations in the book, are the result. I acquainted people whom I would never have approached as a private person. I hit on girls that did not appeal to me. At all.

MORAL ANGUISH AND LIMITS TO MY MADNESS

Naturally, there are limits to what I’ll do, and lines I will not cross, either for personal or ethical reasons, or both. These borders will be severely tested while writing Brent, as Brent is as story of criminals and crime.

Not only that, but there are villains in the book. It is not exactly pleasant to be inside the minds of psychopaths, mass murderers, pedophile cannibals, or serial killers. Being a method writer can be extremely hard on the psyche.

It can also be dangerous. Before I wrote the death scene in "Sennepslegionen" (The Mustard Legion), in which Brian II dies of an overdose, I bought myself half a gram of heroin, which I smoked. I felt that I had to. I haven't touched it since, and I did not like it. But I had to know, I had to understand.

A METHOD NOVELIST IN BEIJING

But now, as I am headed for Beijing on research for my forthcoming novel Brent, I don’t expect to "suffer" all that much, or put myself in danger. There will be other research travels for Brent at a later stage that are bound to become substantially more hairy. And when I write the mid section of volume 1 of Brent, I expect to become a social recluse for a period of time. I don't want other people around me as I walk with the mind of the proverbial homicidal maniac.

The only thing I dread in Beijing, is that I have to eat dog. Dogs are my friends. I love dogs, and I still miss Basse (RIP). But I need to eat dog, I must. “Tasted like” or somebody else's taste buds is not good enough. I shall eat dog in the shape of “Brent”, and I have no idea how he will react. (I hope he pukes, but he probably won't.) I will have to prepare myself psychologically, just like a soldier before his first battle, or a parachutist before her maiden jump.

I have done some Beijing research, and I have friends that have been to Beijing, or lived there. But I am trying to keep my knowledge down to an absolute minimum, as Brent comes totally unprepared to Beijing. He has never been there, he speaks absolutely no Chinese, and he does not know a thing about the China he is visiting, a China that within a few decades will be the dominant global economic power. What Brent knows about China, is what is publicly known among those who on a regular basis read magazines like Time, New Scientist and National Geographic. High school knowledge, plus news watched and read on a daily basis through life. But "Brent" has no idea how to ask for directions, or how to board a subway. So no Chinese glossaries for me before leaving, no reading that contains too much details. On the other hand, when Brent takes place, most Chinese are fluent in English, as Brent is a novel from the future.

I shall be a stranger in Beijing. A somewhat shy entomologist, completely on his own and absolutely out on a limb. I shall eat what Brent eats, I will choose his kind of movie, I shall buy his clothes, I shall blush, I shall be modest, I shall only listen to classical music. I may cry in my hotel room, I may let myself be intimidated, I may embarrass myself, loyal as I am to my character.

Other authors have their ways. I am not saying that my method is superior to others, or that I am the only one to work like this or in similar ways. But this is how I do it. It's the method to my madness.

And, sure, I also master the classical skills. My previous novel Bank (German edition: Rache auf Raten) was written in six weeks without any research. But that was the whole point, it was why I wrote it: I wanted to prove to myself that I could write entirely from my imagination.

And as most of Brent will be written in my imagination, it is imperative to me to balance the bulk of Brent with something which is very earthy and real.

In Beijing, I will most likely spend no time whatsoever in libraries, I'll go method writing. It will be a blast.

I will be blogging from Beijing on BRENTBLOG, and you will also be able to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla and other social media.

WHY FACEBOOK IS LOSING USERS

2011-07-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

According to a recent report, Facebook has lost 6M Users in the US. Some seem to adhere this fact to market saturation, i.e. that no product or company will ever be able to maintain a 100 % monopoly or establish a 100 % market share. Other commentators tend to think it is a question of novelty, that some users simply have become “bored” with Facebook.

Facebook's regional impact varies, and in many countries other social media are far more popular, like Orkut (120M users, mainly in India and Brazil), or the Chinese Qzone with its 500M (and rising) users, probably surpassing Facebook's 600M users already in 2011. Twitter has 200M users, but the fast rising Chinese Sina Weibo is hot on their heels with 140M users.

Ten years ago, a phone line, a road used to be the infrastructure needed for a functional society and social life in general. But today, social media satisfy a need that must be considered a new type of infrastructure, like roads, like surface mail, like telephone lines, like ferries ... The 'novelty' theory is misleading, because social media are not a toy, comparable to computer games. Social media is our new interpersonal infrastructure.

All social media corresponds to a social need. So if users are leaving Facebook, it cannot be due to 'boredom' or 'novelty fatigue'. The reason or reasons for this decline must be sougth within the framework of Facebook itself.

Users don’t leave Facebook to start collecting stamps, or to go fly-fishing instead. Facebook is not a simple hobby or pastime, just one of many items on a menu of entertainment and activities that Man can choose from. Facebook and other social media combined are there to serve the need for a platform from which to socialize in modern society. If Facebook loses users, it can only be because the users feel that Facebook does not satisfy their need or needs.

The fault is Facebook's own, and it is easily identifiable.

In my own country Facebook is big. Of a 5M population, 2.8M have a Facebook account. Thus, 80 % of all potential Norwegians (minus the 1.5M under 13 and over 65 years old), are on Facebook. It's a number that is analogous to Norwegian telephone coverage in the 1950ies.

Facebook has for the last months introduced a number of changes and restrictions. The motivation is said to be a desire to reduce the amount of spam and Facebook traffic in general. The changes were also based on user complaints of too many PMs and far too many requests, invites, suggestions, applications and whatnot. But the consequences can prove disastrous for Facebook.

This winter, Norwegian Facebook suddenly started a purge against what has been labeled "False profiles". All and any profiles that were not personal, not containing a surname and a given name, were deleted without warning. It hit libraries, art galleries, cafés, pubs and restaurants, NGOs, fun profiles, forcing them all to either give up Facebook completely or transfer their activities onto Facebook Pages instead.

I was losing ‘false’ friends in droves, as their ‘false’ profiles were deleted by Facebook. For a while I lost maybe 5 Friends a day, all deleted without warning – Facebook was not even polite about it. At least they could have given their users a fair and friendly warning, so users might salvage important pictures, links and Personal messages plus their Friend list. But no. Facebook Norway interpreted "false" as "bad, mischievous breaking of rules"/"immoral"/"punishable by deletion", as if the "false" user was buying alcohol with a fake ID. I mean, what's wrong with the word "incorrect"?

Whereas a company or an NGO previously could interact as a “person” (profile), an anonymous, but identifiable, even official entity, having all the means and ways of communication of a personal Facebook profile at their disposal, now the company or the NGO were forced into the Facebook Page format, where the Admins can only send Updates to "fans", i.e. Updates most users don't read anyway. Direct communication by Personal Message disappeared.

A company with five employees that used to share a Facebook Profile called "Green Inc", would now have to maintain five separate accounts. Indeed, "Green Inc" can in principle no longer maintain a steady Facebook Profile presence, as Marketing Directors come and go.

Then, begging for disaster, Facebook’s next moves turned out to be universal, not just limiting the Facebook interface for companies and NGOs:

* Changing the "Suggest to Friends" option on Pages to what de facto is "Recommend to friends with a small ad in the upper right corner of your screen, only visible part of the time”.

* Changing "Suggest to friends" in Facebook Groups to the far more intrusive "Add friends to group", even though in this latter case, it must in all fairness be said that (for once on Facebook) the user actually has the necessary Setting tools to limit or switch off any communication within a given Group.

So our poor NGO user, whose "false" profile just has been deleted, a profile with 1.000 Friends, no less, something which had taken our distraught user 7 months to achieve, will now have to work up a totally new Page to achieve his or her goal(s) on Facebook, whatever that or those might be. The user can no longer send Personal messages the same day to all of her friends and ask them to join her Page.

She can, of course, use her Personal (private non-related) profile, if she has one, to recruit fans, but maybe she has just 250 Friends, and of them perhaps only a mere hundred are inclined to Like her Page. Besides, only a measly 8 Friends can have the privilege at the time, according to the new rules.

It takes a whole lot of work to revamp those 1.000 contacts, which is why we all lately have observed that the number of new non-staffed NGO-Pages and spontanous social Pages, maybe Facebook Pages in general, are on the decline, both in activity and numbers. It simply takes too much work to establish and maintain them after the new Facebook “improvements”.

An example: Nuclear power is not the hippest thing these days. I mean, Fukushima, Japan and all that, right? But a newly constructed Page that demands a clean-up of Norwegian nuclear waste, has after several weeks not more than 48 supporters. Dear readers, from what I know of my fellow Norwegian countrymen and -women and their general disdain for nuclear energy ... Just take my word for it: I can assure you that one year ago, that Page would be approaching a minimum of 10.000 supporters by now.

It's elementary, my dear Watson.

So where did Facebook go wrong? We are talking a cardinal error, it was forgetting the no. 1 rule and the defining word for all social media: Identity.

Willy is looking for a new job, and he has recently added himself to Pages and Groups with names like: Overtime never killed anyone and Hard work is better than sex as well as Red Cross, Family is everything to me and Earth Hour.

Marianne would like to hook up with a sexy book lover, but there are six Samuel Beckett-pages, and she has no idea which one is best for her. But even so, she will most like never bother to check if any of these Pages have at least some Scandinavian members, and her friend Tina does not bother to Suggest to friends (= recommend) the correct Page anymore, as she spent half an hour last week inviting (recommending) the Beckett Page to 300 of her friends, but a measly three users joined, as opposed to one year ago, when Marianne invited her first batch of 300 friends by means of the old system, i.e. directly, clickably, instantanously, whereupon she recruited seventy-five new members, of whom eight invited their friends and so on, increasing the Page's following with several hundred new Beckett-fans in a couple of weeks.

So now, alas, Marianne will never hook up on the Samuel Beckett Page with the dark-haired, six feet tall, handsome Beckett-fan, who loves children and Golder Retrievers and agrees with the statements Real men don't hit women, Ban football and A man who does not remember his wife's birthday is a moron.

Facebook forgot the mantra "If it works, don't change it".

One year ago, every Facebook user received a constant up-to-date stream of Invites and Suggestions to Groups and Pages, and all was swell, even though The Usual Whiners complained indignantly. But for the majority of Facebook users, even the need for reading newspapers disappeared. Every single newspaper headline of importance ended up as a Facebook Group or Page. Politics, celeb news, sports ....

Through this endless stream of ... well, the essence of modern life, the user's profile, the user’s public image, the user's identity was shaped and proudly presented. Through and with and by all this activity combined, the Facebook user would organise his or her social life. And – true or delusional – enjoying the benefits of a personal sense of a more clearly defined personal identity, even enpowerment as a result, and publicly presentable at that.

When it comes to social media, the importance of identity is so self-evident that it is a minor mystery how a large enterprise like Facebook managed to err in such a dramatic fashion.

By restricting the use of the Facebook tools of identity-building, Facebook is sawing off its proverbial branch.

Alternatives to Facebook like diaspora.com or altly.com have so far not been willing or able to enthuse the masses and persuade them to leave Facebook, and Facebook's main contender, bebo.com, has been in serious financial troubles for quite some time, making no money.

But the next contestant may well be the David that brings the Facebook Goliath to his knees.

Maybe the main argument for Facebook’s continued existence and/or pole position, is the kidz. The teenagers and post-teenagers of Facebook have never really been into all this identity-building. Teenagers just are, and they communicate mostly with their peers, the harshest judges of all, plus any given number of what used to be pen friends or summer holiday friends 10-15 years ago. Kidz who have grown up with and inside the internet have basically always used Facebook as infrastructure already. It's not something they can "get bored with", just like an eighty-five year old lady never can “grow tired of” her road or her mailbox. Facebook just is there, has always been there and will always be there, unless someone comes up with a cooler “digital highway”. Because there is a need for social media.

Any potential David out there wanting to take on Facebook and create the New Social Media Hit, would be well adviced to remember: Identity first, spam whining and server capacity second.

Fifteen years ago Netscape Navigator ruled the modems. In 2006, MySpace was the place to be. Google is working hard on new models for social media, and Pad development may open up for new customized social media that work far better than Facebook on smart phones and pads, or perhaps the future is TV by holographic HDMI - who knows? Nothing lasts forever.

Facebook may soon be the new MySpace. On the internet, interface is all, and the user is king.

One thing is certain, though: A post-Facebook vaccum will never be. Something will most certainly take Facebook’s place if it collapses. The world needs social media, quite simply. Our 2011 infrastructure is more or less defunct without them.

THE DEATH OF SOFTWARE

2010-07-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

InformationWeek caught my eye today. Entitled "China E-Book Firm Challenges PDF", the article is obviously a sign of the times: The era of Chinese global economic domination is fast approaching, as the millions of graduates from the highly efficient Chinese education system are entering innovation and tech development.

On a more personal note, as I am currenty experiencing the latest abominable Adobe bug a.k.a. plugin, I also welcome any and all competition that Adobe might encounter, being no fan - to put it mildly - of Adobe's memory-gobbling and constantly bugging applications. I left Adobe PDFs for FoxIt ages ago, enjoying immensely how everything instantly sped up the very moment my Control Panel closed, and good riddance.

But the real attention-grabber in InformationWeek was the fact that the Chinese are not challenging Adobe on Adobe's home turf the computer, whether we are talking servers, stationary PCs or laptops: They are going straight for the money-pumping jugular of the future: the handhelds - the pad and the phone.

I mean, why should they? As cloud computing is replacing personal software on home computers, there will be no money in developing generalist software for the personal computer. When Microsoft launched MS Office 2010, the reviews were scorching: "What do we need this for? We've got OpenOffice, Photobucket, gMail etc. We don't need this." Despite its advanced features and improved lay-out, MS Office 2010 was obsolete even before it hit the stores.

And speaking of software ... Haven't you noticed? The word is dying in public use, as the everyday dichotomy of "hard" and "soft" of the personal computer era is being replaced by the word application. The two words have co-existed, being more or less synonomous, but the word application is a word for the future, as hardware and software are becoming more or less indistinguishable from one another for the average consumer. The market for software-in-a-box is evaporating faster than the Arctic ice cap.

Time flies, and the Chinese are right on the mark: Anyone even thinking of launching a competing alternative to MS Office today, is totally out of sync with the future, a stark raving Rip Van Winkle. Just like the Norwegian company Norske Skog Union, which infamously some years ago decided that paper production for newspapers (!) was a sustainable road to future glory and prosperity.

Results from the Technology WC:
Microsoft-China 0-1
Adobe-Beijing Founder Apabi Technology - TBA on a pad or a phone near your hand.

May the best applicationmaker win.

MAC-HEADS, BEWARE!

2010-06-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Mac-heads.

When this author and others with me have declared that the PC is dying, and that the laptop will eventually follow suit as we enter The Age of Pads, you may have been thinking: "Oh, the Microsoft PC, the MS laptop, sure, but not my iMac, not my iBook."

Well, you were wrong.

There is no stopping cloud computing. Soon you will all be wearing pads, we will all be carrying pads - though mine will run on Windows 7 - and hopefully some time in the future on LINUX.

But don't just take my word for it. As usual Fake Steve Jobs (Daniel Lyons) is right on the spot: Apple and (the real) Steve Jobs are fast leaving everything that made you love them. Read it and weep.

Sorry.

TREES SHOULD BE EXUBERANTLY HAPPY (environmentalists too, even all you paperomantics)

2010-06-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

In accordance with what I have written before, saluting the demise of print and hailing the era of electronic reading, here's a clue for all you paperomantics out there, who are still clinging to your futile hope of the survival of the printed book and the newsPAPER: Shift your focus, rejoice in the death of paper.

The positive climate effect should be your new perspective. Be progressive - eBook and ePaper ftw! Here's why; Lynn Hesselberger sums it up: 100 million trees - in the US only.

For my own country Norway, the no. 1 newspaper-reading country in the world, the figures should be appr. 2 % of the American numbers.

Spruce and fir, be happy.

THE NEWSPAPERS AS WE KNOW THEM - Will NYT, WSJ, Times, le Monde and Aftenposten survive the i-, Win- and other Pads?

2010-03-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

The March 22, 2010 issue of the ever unafraid WIRED says it bluntly: The pad is the future, the laptop is dead. Not all of the "13 of the Brightest Tech Minds"* that "Sound Off on the Rise of the Tablet" proclaims the death of the laptop, but most of them do. January 29, 2010, I wrote a blog post The iPad and I here on Intermashonal, expressing much of the same sentiments. However, something Fake Steve Jobs, who is NOT CEO of Apple, says in his trashing of the New York Times in the mag, made me want to take the discussion a step further. Here's what he said:

"The iPad isn’t about saving newspapers. It’s about inventing new ways of telling stories, using a whole new language — one that we can’t even imagine right now.

(...)

Hacks, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to save you. Frankly, I don’t read magazines or newspapers, and if every last one of you were all erased from the planet tomorrow I would not notice and I would not care."

As I read Fake Steves ranting ("you pie-eyed crackhead"), I started to wonder if the assumptions I had made about the future of newspapers, was incorrect. Yes, Fake Steve is right, newspapers as we know them, may actually soon be gone. Not just gone in the sense of leaving the paper format, wandering off from paper onto pad, but gone. In a note to my above-mentioned post, I wrote "... as the news-paper draws its last breath". Should we just drop the (here:rhetorical) dash and consider the death of newspapers as such? You know, The Times, The Guardian, The Sun, le Monde, China Daily, Wall Street Journal? Or our very own Aftenposten, the only national newspaper of integrity left in Norway?

I have recently tried out several all-in-ones for PC. First there was iGoogle, but somehow it seemed clumsy, and the Facebook and Twitter part of it was too limited; I don't do Facebook or Twitter by phone, I hate small screens; I use glasses, all right? I tried TweetDeck for a while, but I didn't think it performed as I had hoped. HootSuite looks like som old pastel Win95-software, but has great performance, the shortening machine for URLs fast becoming a must for me. It takes Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Pages, MySpace, LinkEdin, Wordpress and others, it is superior on retweets, it even has stats.

But then I tried Treadsy. Not as sexy looking as TweetDeck, but very, very friendly. And I like that. I don't like no MS Dog to run around my Word documents, telling me what to do or suggesting lotsa stupid things when I'm late for a date, or have idiot pop-ups tell me I've got unused icons on my desktop. - YEAH, I'VE GOT UNUSED ICONS ON MY DESKTOP! SO?! YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?? GO **** THAT UGLY YELLOW DOG, YOU PRODUCTIVITY-HAMPERING MORONS! (Yeah, I still remember that one, never forgotten, never forgiven, grossly insulting! - OK, OK, I'll chill, it's a long time ago.)

Treadsy also takes all your cloud email accounts and places them beside your Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds. Now, mail is still an existing way of communication. The once so revolutionary email has, at least in the tech-savvy parts of the Western World, been killed by Facebook, MSN, Skype and others as the main means of digital communication on our spare time. However, it is very much alive and kicking within businesses and NGOs, and I still get newsletters and also messages from our beloved sluggish, even slothish authorities, who NOW, in 2010 are discussing the not so very avant-garde idea of "laptops for all Norwegian school kids" and are "offering" us mail connectability to all official bodies and municipalities in the country by maybe 20...12? Make it a pad, guys. Or you will **** yourselves.

What do I want? I'd like BBC World Service streamed as my wallpaper. I'd like Aftenposten streaming headlines and Breaking News, my Facebook and Twitter, I want my mail accounts, and I want all this to be fully operational, as if they were stand-alones or split-screens. I want it all, including subscriptions, RSS feeds on new posts on blogs I follow, I would like to be able to tag certain Twitterers ... I said all.

In short: a pad Version 2.0. I'm waiting for that special interface that can give me all-in one. What would I need a newspaper for then? Unless a newspaper was willing to give me an all-in-one interface, I would have no use for it.

Would I be willing to pay a vendor of newspapers, an agent, a syndicate? Maybe. But what if I wanted international news from the BBC, Norwegian news from Aftenposten, sports from my local paper Adresseavisen, selected comments from the Guardian?

The newspaper as we know it, used to be our portal to the world. But now, whether the newspaper will survive as such or not, I'm not ready to answer yet. However, I' sure that today's pad will become tomorrow's portal, and the newspaper as information icon will be just one voice among many. Of that I'm sure. And maybe they even will fuse with TV stations? The BBC-Guardian Network Alliance? Fox-Sun Media Network?

Of course, we could all be wrong. I predicted Apple's death in the mid-1990ies, so did WIRED. We were wrong. The real Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, did it again. But this time I think we are on the mark.

I never rooted for the laptop, that's just a gadget. But I am, however, rooting for the pad, because I share the revolutionary perspective of Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, first investor in WIRED:

"At a minimum, it needs to hold 100 books and wirelessly access any of the titles stored on nearby tablets. So, if you ship 100 of these to a remote African village, each loaded with 100 different books, that’s 10,000 books in the village — more than you and I had in primary school. I’m talking about the tablet version of the XO from One Laptop per Child, proposed for 2012. By that date, we will have moved from laptop to tablet ..."

So get me that all-in-one smuud interface on a sexy xPad, if you please. That Facebook-Twitter-Guardian-YouTube-browser-Skype-webcam-mail-BBC-New Scientist-eBook reader-Irish Archeology-Spotify-Blogger-Aftenposten-OpenOffice-Diablo3/DunePleasePlayable-cloudPhotoshop-Adresseavisen portal that without me asking, informs me of the new Dillinger Espace Plan album. It could be a portal, an installed software or an all-cloud application, call it what you like. The word software is rapidly disapperaring, anyway, into the sphere of cloud computing, murdered by apps.

A MyPortal with 20 pixel camera and video edit options, phone, great microspeakers and retractable, wireless headset, where everything is compatible with everything, no format excluded, and where QuickTime and other hate-objects are nowhere to be found. MYPortal, not yours. Will it go by the name of a newspaper? Of Aftenposten? Svenska Dagbladet? The BBC? Will there be several portals? Political portals? MyGreenPortal, including dietary tips? Will Apple develop it? A Chinese geek in Hongkong? Will it be just as badly programmed at the Facebook core?

And yes, I'll stick to my holographic screen and keyboard requirements, thank you. I want Avatar in my airport lounge.

*Martha Stewart is the only one that still insists on the survival of paper: "Ultimately, the tablet will not take the place, I hope, of the printed page in terms of the magazine format." But she is the sole luddite among the thirteen.

"PIRACY DIDN'T KILL MUSIC AFTER ALL. SORRY!"

2010-03-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

Despite all the overkill judicial counterstrikes and the stalinesque rhetorics, piracy is peaking. Although there seems to be a shift from movies and music to games, there can be no doubt about it: The war on piracy is a complete failure.

But then again, it has been a ridiculous campaign from the very start, destined for its very own Waterloo at some point. The music lovers of the world have never accepted the basic argument: As long as nobody comes running to tell you that you are going to jail or be heftily fined for borrowing a car from a stranger (at your own and his/hers risk), e.g. in an emergency or just by a friend's recommendation, nobody in their right mind is willing to accept the greedy arguments of the music and movie corporations. You wanna lend your lawn mower or your book to someone, it's your own damned business. You buy a product, and it's yours. Simple as that.

That point may be coming now. Figures from the U.K. tells us that the revenues from CD sales are finally being surpassed by that of legal downloads.

If the recording, gaming and movie industry had realized that they had the world's greatest marketing tool at their hands in the first place, it would never have come to this. And the hypocricy has been blatant. Everybody who's ever been to a torrent site knows that it actually has been used in clandestine marketing operations from the majors - or left to music managements or some other pilatic smart-ass. E.g. Fergie was massively promoted on "illegal" sites, by whom we will probably never know.

President Obama has realized that the war on marihuana is just as stupid as the Prohibition: All the ban on alcohol ever did, was promoting organized crime. People kept on drinking, because they did not accept the ban. For the millions of people, and I for one, who enjoy the pleasures of marihuana and hashish, it has always been only a matter of time before the paranoiacs and the pietists would succumb and do the Canossa waltz.

To the gaming industry, I can only say: Check your price tags. The publishing industry is grudgingly accepting that an eBook simply cannot cost the same as a paper hardcover book, so face the music. They are not going to stigmatize us all, like you have done. Greed does not pay.

To the Swedish authorities, I can only say: Drop the charges against The Pirate Bay, and do it now. Or you will look like fools in 10 years time. Do the Google thang, let the greedy autocrats sail their old old-school waters. Because the pioneers of Pirate Bay, eMule and all the other piracy sites will for ever be our heroes, champions of the freedom of the consumer's right to a product we have legally bought, just as we damned well please; champions of the free float of information, champions of the future.

THE TEARS OF NASA: IS SPACE EXPLORATION DEAD?

2010-03-04T08:58:00.000-08:00

Some seem to believe that the age of space exploration is over, now that US president Barack Obama has sent NASA back to the 50ies, like some even predicted. But that notion would be a serious mistanke on behalf of any brain. AIDS made condoms popular, and in much the same fashion, the financial crisis of the Western World has made anti-space exploration sentiments legit once more. However, Western sentiments are completely irrelevant for space exploration. A gnat's bite, at most.

Once upon a time in the West, resistance to, even scepticism towards space exploration used to be a sign of backwardness, of sun-dried farmland roots, of manure and chaff-studded sweat. Not so these days. Today, being a critic of space exploration is a simple way of flagging yourself as a supporter of fiscal restraint, in the US an Obama-rejecting Republican. The consensus is suddenly wide-reaching. The political left has abandoned its John F. Kennedy-humanist view of space exploration uniting mankind, demanding instead that priority be given to the poor (first).

American and West-European space exploration may be on the vane. But just 3 years ago, we read this CNN article, on Helium-3. And on China, of course. Yes, of course - China! C-H-I-N-A. It is a totally different tune we shall hear in this replay from 2006 - yes, it's an imperial march, it is quite distinct:

What makes helium-3 so attractive as an alternative future fuel source is its environmentally friendly credentials, as it does not produce radioactive waste.

(...)

Scientists have been working to prove nuclear fusion works but much of it still remains theoretical. It is thought to be at least 50 years from being proven to work on a large scale.
The potential, though, is enormous. It has been estimated that about 25 tons of helium-3, equal to just one payload of a space shuttle, would provide enough energy for the U.S. for a year at current consumption levels.
(...)
"We are planning to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery... of the rare isotope helium-3," said Nikolai Sevastianov, head of Russian space vehicle manufacturer Energia, at a seminar in Moscow in January (2006 - MJ).
His bold statement might have been more of a publicity drive for Energia rather than a clear commitment to a program, but China, which has committed itself to a space program to land men on the moon by 2017 has also stated its interest in helium-3.
"China's lunar project can incorporate the mining of helium-3 (HE-3) as a new, clean, efficient, safe and cheap nuclear fusion fuel. The foreign sales and internal uses of HE-3 will help offset the high price of maintaining a lunar base," wrote Stacey Solomone from the University of Hawaii in an article in Futures Research Quarterly.

China is undeterred, Russia is undeterred, India is undeterred. Financial crisis or no financial crisis, Brazil will join them, so willl Canada, and so will other nations, many other nations. Nations without a budget deficit numbering billions, even trillions. Man is headed for space. Richard Branson is undeterred.

And we have been talking just helium-3 her. Space mining as such has a bright future. There is quite literally gold and platinum out there. The mineral deposits by Mother Earth's bosom are depletable. Mankind will need more.

The space quest will continue. But it looks like space exploration is fast becoming a non-Anglo thang, maybe even predominantly Asian.

So much for Kennedy's visions. But then again, I was never that much of a Cortez, Rhodes or Columbus fan, anyway.

(First published on BRENTBLOG, MARCH 3rd, 2010.)

FINALLY - A REFERENDUM FOR A FREE, INDEPENDENT ALBA (SCOTLAND)

2010-02-26T02:53:00.000-08:00

Finally, 690 years after the Declaration of Arbroath and 303 years after the Treaty of Union was passed, the 5 millions inhabitants of Alba (Scotland) have the opportunity to make their country a sovereign, independent republic. Today First Minister Alex Salmond announced the Referendum Bill, giving the Scots the right to answer the two following questions:

* whether the Scottish Parliament should have more devolved responsibility

* whether there should be an additional extension of power to enable Scotland to become an independent country

I would like to extend my congratulations to the Pàrtaidh Nàiseanta na h-Alba (SNP) and express my sincerest hope that the referendum will lead to independence, and that the English rule shall finally be abolished, and that ...

... the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. (Declaration of Arbroath, 1320)

SOAR ALBA

THE iPAD AND I

2010-01-29T09:13:00.000-08:00

I must admit that I was somewhat ambivalent, as I am no fan of Apple, when the AppleTablet hype came to its crescendo. On the one hand, I am extremely impatient to see a permanent eBook solution, but I was fearing that the somewhat snobbish Apple image and the general overpricing of Apple products would make the second phase of the eBook revolution an exclusive epoch for the fashionable and somewhat wealthy. I'd hate to see my books being read by only Apple-heads. But I was ready to do a Canossa, IF the product itself was the groundbreaking gadget, like some of the most optimistic predictions seem to imply.

But with no phone, no camera, no Flash and only one application runningat a time, I find that this iPad review covers fairly my own thoughts:

However, what I do embrace, is the fact that the race is on. Microsoft is working on a tablet, HP as well, and soon there will appear competing gadgets based on Windows 7, as the iPad surely will inspire the competition, just like Nokia's Express series, of which I am a happy user, can be considered an answer to the iPhone.

There can also be argued that while Apple is mainly producing gadgets for the consumer market, the PC is undisputably the computer that is most suitable for businesses.

If we define 'computer' in a traditional and strict sense, i.e. as we so far have known them, one might say that the infamous IBM dismissal of the personal home computer was slightly prophetic after all. The iPad and similar gadgets will appeal to people who use their PC just for browsing and networking. With an eBook reader included, their needs will have been met. "Nobody will want a personal computer at home."

The stationary PC is already being outsold by laptops, but laptops and stationary PCs and iMacs alike are also being undermined by the next generation of television sets. Samsung and other companies are developing TV sets that function more or less like a computer screen. In the future, you will get sets that display a mail icon down in the lower right corner when somebody has sent you a mail, and if somebody makes a comment on one of your Facebook posts, you will get a small red icon in the upper right corner, and Twitter will be running in the left TV margin as you watch "Dexter" Season 10. If Facebook and Twitter hasn't become obsolete as well, that is.

Thus, most people will have a television set at home, maybe a game console as well. Only professionals and die-hard gamers will need more at home.

When leaving home, we will want to carry an All Purpose Device (APD) that covers all our needs. This is why I was never a fan of the single purpose Kindle. When the mobile phone and the camera fused, everybody was delighted. The iPhone infused music to the phone, reducing the iPod to a jogging utility.

But this APD will have to include music, a camera, a phone, chat, an eBook reader and everything else that we are accustomed to on our laptops. As the news-PAPER is mortally wounded, an APD must include the possibility of subscription to newspapers and magazines as well. You may not be willing to pay for your newspaper, but your current subscriptions to web-based magazines like All About Beer, Deer & deer Hunting and Popular Science, will most certainly in the future be downloaded to your APD, pre-paid. However, if the interface is improved, making the web-based newpaper of today seem obsolete, unaestetic and slow, you might even be willing to subscribe to The Guardian or The New York Times, especially if a Breaking News service or some kind of exclusivity is included, even though you may not be willing to pay more than a nominal fee, perhaps spiced with a contribution to a given selection of NGOs.

And the eBook? In a panel debate at the Oslo Science Fiction Festival last autumn, my distinguished colleague Charles Stross argued against my eBook optimism, refering to the sordid fact that only a minority of the Western World's population actually do read books. But that is also a question of price and accessibility. With books and book clubs available on your APD at a far lower cost than the paper book of today, we have no reason to believe that the number of book enthusiasts will drop. However, when it comes to single purpose devices like the Kindle, Mr. Stross may be right.

Today the Norwegian politicians are handing out laptops to all our school children. That might prove to be a costly investment, if HP or MS in a year or two or three come up with an APD that also can read upgradable school books with videos and interactive functions.

Now, all we need is a holographic 42 inch screen that can be projected onto any white wall ...

Next time in Intermashional Times I shall meditate a little around the fact that no-one in institutions of power has even thought of the unemplyment wave that will hit the workers of the paper-, transport and printing industries, as the paper book dies, as the news-paper draws its last breath, and weeklies and magazines will all be out of print.

POWER TO THE READER or The author in a world of digital media - Part 1

2009-09-17T04:31:00.001-07:00

Or ”Good-bye, press!”
Confessions of a cyberjunkie

by Morten Jørgensen

Authors have for the last hundred years, and particularly the novelist, often been, not only a scribe of entertainment, but also a catalyst, an inspirator, an instigator, an investigator. Not all authors, of course, and some authors not at all, but books tend to interact with society. Whether it be Vladimir Mayakovsky or Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Mikhail Bulgakov or Anaïs Nin, authors as a collective have usually not been confined to just writing books, we have been an active element in society, discussing language and politics, sexuality, war and drugs, and in return we have been honored or buried in roses as ”the world’s consciousness”, or labelled as outrageous, for political, moral, religious or other reasons, even jailed or executed.

In Norway, the country’s writers – novelists and poets alike – have always been an integral part of the social discourse. Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun, Jens Bjørneboe and Georg Johannesen, Johan Borgen and Amalie Skram are influential authors that have taken part in the formation of Norwegian society or influenced it from the sideline. In the 70ies the whole thing even took completely off as authors became politicians; the Norwegian Writer’s Guild taken over and for several years controlled by the Norwegian Mao-communists: All writers ”should”, as an imperative, be a ”socially conscious” or ”political” writer. (The result was, btw, library dust collectors a.k.a. crappy books.)

The author has been visible in the papers, later on TV and even on rostrums, on gallas, fund raisings and rallies and seminars. She or he is supposedly a master of language, and many authors have some kind of special field of interest that makes them excellent lecturers and participants in public debates. Besides, we usually simply know a lot of stuff, right?

To many of us, it has been a part of our job, and to some of us it will always be a part of our job, especially among the intellectuals within our ranks, like myself, a university (examless) philosopher, as an intellectual’s calling is to critisize The Power or status quo or whatever you prefer to call it, whether it is the Political Power or the Power of Sports. I tend to prefer alternative 3 on Wiki when defining intellectual: ”An individual of notable expertise in culture and the arts, expertise which allows them some cultural authority, which they then use to speak in public on other matters.”

But now this is all changing. Or rather, we have to move. Leave our old office and resettle. In the virtual world.

1. THE FALL OF THE AUTHOR MONOPOLY

The first novelists, like Victor Hugo of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Les Misérables (1862) and The Man Who Laughs (1869) fame, were a central part of the collective information grid of their society. A contemporary reader of Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville may find the original extremely detailed, compared to a novel of today. Hugo and Melville would inform their readers fully on almost any topic mentioned in their books. Hugo will tell us what comprachicos are, and Melville will enlighten you on every aspect of seamanship.

Today, why bother, when we all have Wikipedia?

The author has often been the voice of alternative, non-conformist thoughts, and being the masters of language, he or she has spoken with authority in the press, often ”on behalf of” others, whether it be the analphabets of Africa or the working class of Europe, Václav Havel became the first president of a Soviet-free Czechoslovakia.

But now people speak for themselves, through millions of blogs, through forums and postings. Out here in Cyberia, out in the digital world, in the virtual space.

Thus, the author, if he or she still wants to remain the intellectual, the philosopher, the court jester, whatever, will have to enter the virtual world and establish his or her own platform out here. Say something interesting, you know. The author has been an icon in the press. Out here in the virtual world, the author’s voice is just one of many. Because the competition from ”amateurs” is growing, and the author’s voice may easily drown in the growing chorus of voices. In Cyberia we are all authors.

2. THE FALL OF THE PRESS

Up until now, in countries with no or little government censorship, the press and the literary critics have been the sole censors of literature. Not necessarily _censorers_ who officially bans or warns the public against a certain book pertained as subversive or challenging or unacceptable to society in some sense. The reviews may just as well sanctify a novel that somehow fits nicely and smoothly into the social fabric, often reinforcing the prevailing self-image or self-imagery of that society.

The press in general and the literary critics in particular are a filter between the writer and the reader, often being the first to interprete a novel or a poetry collection, thus starting some kind of jungle telegraph or buzz, or even ”killing” the book.

Let me give you two examples from my own experience. In 1990 the album ”Psykedelisk utviklingshemmet” (Retard Psychedelic) by my band at the time, the power punk band Morten Jørgensen og Spekkhoggerne som fulgte etter danskebåten uten å røre spyet som rant fra ripa (Morten Jørgensen and the Orcas that followed the Copenhagen ferry without touching the vomit that poured from the rail), was released. A German magazine called it in a favorable review something like ”the most boycotted album in Norwegian record history”, and although I’m not sure that the magazine’s claim is true, it is at least true that the most controversial song on the album figures as one of the 13 formerly banned songs on the compilation ”Sensurert” (Censored) (1996), which covers 30 years of banned Norwegian music: The entire Norwegian press trashed it totally at the time of its release. Today, some of the same media have started to call the album ”a classic”. Well, fuck that. I lost 30 000 NOK on it at the time, as radios stopped playing it and record shops refused to sell it; almost only a handful of alternative records shops had it on sale by the end of 1990.

I’m not saying this to justify the album. You could call it shit, for all I care. Judge for yourself, there are Spekkhogger songs in my Boxes on Facebook. But it is a fact that back in the good old Kazaa-days, more than 10 years after the album had been released, I had up to 50 downloads a week on songs from the album, it also appears more and more frequently on lists of ”great” or ”good” or ”favorite” albums by people who were toddlers or not even born when the album was originally released, but they do not usually appear in the old school press, they pop up on the net.

The examples of misguided or libertophobic reviews that I have been exposed to in the Norwegian press are many, but the second example is from 1998, when my second novel, ”Kongen av København” (King of Copenhagen) was published, and thus reviewed in Norway’s largest morning paper Aftenposten. In the novel we are given several indicators that imply that King, the front man of the band Sennepslegionen, is somewhat of a titty man. Yes, boys and girls, he likes’em big! But in addition to the usual outcry of ”attention-seeking” and ”speculativeness”, the woolhead ”critic” of Aftenposten slams the novel and me (!) for being ”fixated on big tits”! Shit happens. It is a sequel, and I still meet people who have read with enthusiasm the first volume, ”Sennepslegionen”, that do not know of the second volume’s existence.

This is serious business, folks. We can laugh at the stupid reviews today, but I try to make a living out of this, and I write books that I want people to read, and you want to read them too. When ”Brent” is published in 2010, was it will be 12 years since the publication of my previous novel ”Bank” (German edition: ”Rache auf Raten”, 2003). I can assure you all that the ”exile” has been most involuntarily, and debt and money has been, if not the most important reason, at least a major contributing factor to my writing pause.

Today the author can communicate directly with her or his audience. The author does not need the press anymore. These days, all kids under 20 years of age in Norway are on Facebook, as well as most of the 20-30 years olds, in fact 25 % of the entire population is. In ten, twenty, thirty years time, all Norwegians that are less than 90 years old, will have gone digital.

In the past, the reader had to rely on the papers when deciding what books to buy. When ”Brent” is released , I will have several Friends on places like Facebook and Bebo. I can Message them directly, I can have a publicly streamed release party Event, a net meet - not a press conferance, but a reception for you all, where journalists have to que up like the rest of you. And I can – and shall – establish a blog for your reviews.

So I don’t want professional literary critics, right? Sure I do. But the critic, just like the writer, will have to establish himself or herself by the power of his or her skills, not because of the fact that the critic is employed in a ”major” or ”respected” newspaper. There will of course be a link option on my ”review blog” for literary magazines and newspaper critics, but their monopoly will be broken.

3. THE FALL OF THE PUBLISHER?

The eBok has so far not taken off, but it won’t be long. Screens are getting better, weight is going down, a growing number of employees in the publishing business have started using it, and they seem to like it, and they live in and for books, so they don’t work with crap gadgets.

You will soon get your own personalized ”book”, a screen board the size of a normal book, clad in leather if you like, comfortble to hold and easy to read, even in the dark on a boring trainride, maybe a hip designer has made it, it can play music, with or without earphones, it may contain an alarm, like your car keys, you can get a picture of your favorite writer on the cover if you like, it will tell you which of your Facebook friends that are reading it or have read it as well, you can get your reviews or write a stinging ridicule of a review in a forum; you can check a fact in the book that you doubt on Wikipedia, or you can find out what the hell wolfbanging is by going on urban.com. You can check the etymology of the main characters name, and the best of all, you can stash your entire library in your eBook, or you will have all your books online, all available to you all over the world through a bookshelf server, your personal portable library that you pay a monthly fee for, just like you do for World of Warcraft and other games, and you will never have to go to the post office to fetch your monthly club book, it will be downloaded automathically to your eBook without you even asking, being paid for by automatically connecting to your bank as well. Click OK.

Will the printed book of paper dissapear? I don’t know. You tell me, will vinyl records disappear entirely? What about motorcycles running on petrol? Coca-Cola?

I sincerely doubt that the generation who are teenagers now will give up their .pdf files for paper, so personally I think the printed book will most likely die, or maybe survive in niches, like vinyl do today and maybe vintage cars running on petrol. But, frankly folks, there are not being sold many newspapers to the teenagers of today, you teenagers get your news on the net, whether it be on YouTube or on The New York Times. When these kids start working, they will not read the paper in their lunch break, they will read their laptop or whatever we shall call that device.

Could I simply skip the publisher? Yes, I could! I could print ”Brent” in Hong Kong, sell it on Amazon.com when it is due for release in 2010 and hope that the buzz I make will make it sell. Maybe even the eBook has had its breakthrough, so I can sell it in JørgensenShop as a .pdf file with extras and take-outs? I could publish ”Brent” as an audio book (read: file) that I have recorded in my very own living room as well, couldn’t I? In 50 years time, what will a bookstore be? Will bookstores even exist?

The digitalization of the book, as well as print on demand, makes the author independent of the publisher. So the publisher must change too. If not, the industry will be facing a ”Coldplay crisis”. Coldplay simply skipped their record company and sold their album directly to you, their audience. Obama won through Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Bebo and MySpace.

Will the publisher survive? It will all depend on whether the publisher manages to adapt to the new forms of publishing, distribution and marketing, and whether the publisher will still have something to offer that makes the authors happy (editing, proofs, marketing). If not, the publishing empires of today may crumble in 50 years time.

To sum up:

Some of you joke with me and say: ”You’re just on Facebook and YouTube, you are not writing! You’ve got writer’s block? Are you giving up on ’Brent’? Hey, you wrote on your wall that you were out having a beer last night, not writing!” Well, you could not be more wrong.

These are my new offices. I don’t go to libraries as often as I did before, I go online instead, I have in fact not been to a single library yet for ”Brent”. I don’t have to travel to the minor places in my books anymore, I go Google Earth instead. I read scientific papers, I go Wikipedia, I read .pdfs, I watch vids. I answer mails from people who like my books and/or my music, like I always have done, but I don’t have to buy stamps and envelopes anymore and I don’t have to go to the post office. I talk to my publisher via chat or mail (they are a bit old-fashioned), and two of my main scientific advisory experts are on Facebook, and my editor is on underskog.no as well. See?

So let me end this little proclamation by stating that the reader is the sovereign ruler of her or his interpretation of all books, including mine, also when it comes to ”Brent”.

I hereby transfer the initial evaluation power of my books
from the media to my readers.

Hope to see you on YouTube, in the ”Brent” Group on Facebook (coming soon), here on my blog, on Twitter, Flickr, Bebo, ReverbNation, Delicious, MySpace and other places, as well as in the coming Folkets Poet-thread on underskog.no. (Only in Norwegian.) And who knows, maybe I, and maybe you, my dear, beloved readers, shall expand even further into cyber space together, singing ”Power to the reader”.

Morten Jørgensen
Oslo, Friday January 9th, 2009.
Edited for Blogger February, 24th, 2009.

POWER TO THE READER or The author in a world of digital media - Part 2

2009-09-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

On nostalgia and autonomy.

Upon entering cyberspace as an author, leaving the world of old school media behind me, I wrote an essay, a Personal Digital Manifesto (PDM), called POWER TO THE READER or The author in a world of digital media.

Now, 7 months after I moved my activity as an author into cyberspace from the world of old school media, resettling here in the digital universe - opening office, so to speak - I am more than ever convinced that I have chosen a path that leads to the future. The eBook will soon be upon us. The new Kindle reader is closing the gap to the good old books of paper. When mp3s and other downloadable formats arrived, some claimed that people would want the cover, the vinyl, better sound; the mp3 was bound to fail.

They were wrong. Downloads, both legal and illegal, are, as I write this, closing in on the competition. iTunes and mp3 are taking over the charts, and and Spotify or last.fm and YouTube are our new radio and TV.And the pocket book, the second edition, the reprint, the thriller, the romance novel, they will most likely be downloaded onto a Reader, illegally og legally, but it will come.

Some might perhaps suspect that my enthusiasm is due to the fact that my entry into Cyberia as an author has been very fruitful indeed, it's been very good for business. For my writing as well: I have "recruited" a handful of experts for minor areas of my forthcoming new novel, just to mention one example. But the number of Friends; the Pages I have made and the Groups that others have made in honour of books I have written and records I have made; the gigs I have been offered; the jobs I have secured; the contacts I have made ... It has been a little overwhelming, actually. It is called spin.

But no, it is neither the sale of backlist nor the many compliments I have received for my work(s), that makes me dead set on sticking to my plan. Because most of all the abovementioned good news is related to my previous work(s), and as such they are yesterday's river. What I definitely am pleased with, however, is the fact that I now have a network of Friends and fans and contacts that make me more or less independent of mainstream media and the old school world of paper.

Not only have I established a rather - at least to me - impressive network, but my relationship to my readers, even though it is several years since my previous book was published, has never been better; one might actually be temped to call it close, even intimate. Those of my readers who are on Facebook and/or other networks and sites, PM and chat me up all the time, asking for information. Two of the appreciation Groups that has been established for some of my works, have been initiated by a guy that lives 50 km from me, that I probably would never even have "met" as a result of old school literary activity. Norway is a small country with a population of just 4.8 million, and if I allow myself to look at my newborn network from a per capita perpective, if Norway was France, England or Germany, all with a +50 million population, I will be able to reach - in some sense of the word or other - as many as 50 000 people, directly or indirectly; in the US, the number would be +250 000.

Now, that is a serious network. And since my network is constantly expanding, and even accellerating in some areas at that, when my next novel is ready, I may have a network for communication and marketing that by the click of a mouse will set me in direct contact with 0,5-1 % of my homeland's population.

http://z.hubpages.com/u/498622_f520.jpg

For an ambitious author like myself, who is contemplating e.g. selling his backlist, i.e. those of my books that are out of print, based on print-on-demand on maybe Amazon.com, it is extremely encouraging to see his (i.e: my) network also expanding abroad. Print-on-demand means maybe, like 250 % more money to me per book.

It smells independence, even autonomy. Maybe it's just me, but I see the author being torn out of his mystical ivory tower, by facing his or her audience directly.

But in order to maintain that closeness to my audience, I will have to serve my readers. I will have to give the reader what the reader used to obtain from the old school world of media: factual information. It also demands of me a certain "objectivity". The reader will not trust me for information if I depict my works with narcissistic glorification, nor will he or she accept mere marketing, spam or censorship from me.

I other words, I will have to surpass, even outshine the traditional media when it comes to information. My readers must be able to feel that the natural place to seek information about me and my works, and reliable information at that, even "objective", is my cyber spaces, whether it be Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, YouTube, blogs or other sites and networks.*

Occationally Friends and fans alike ask me questions like these: "Why aren't you writing on your book, instead of being on Facebook? Why are you making photo series from the past, videos of your old bands, fan Pages for your backlist? What's this nostalgia, are you living in the past?"

I'm not. What I am doing, however, is establishing an archive, an archeology, a "data base" of my previous work, so that any reader, who does not have a clue who I am, has someplace to go for information. There the reader will find thorough and detailed information about me and my work(s). No need for "interpretors". I am taking control over my own biography.

Yes, it smells autonomy, it wears the tantalizing scent of independence, it carries with it the promise of freedom from any middle men or women that comes between me and my readers. My former dependence on press coverage and the marketing efforts and the budget of my publisher in order to reach potential readers has, if not evaporated, been confortably weakened.

Of course, I could also tell them that I have started submitting and contributing abroad, as a result of my activity in Cyberia. I could tell them that the first publication to accept a submission of mine is not just a net publication, but will be printed in no less than 100 000 copies as well, and I have other offers and invitations pending.

So now, as autumn approaches, I will start focusing on submissions and invitations abroad, mostly through my English Facebook profile, as my Norwegian network is more or less complete. The net is the artist's new arena, and the net knows no nationality. We are better off here, dear colleagues. We're free - free at last!

Morten Jørgensen
novelist, poet
Oslo, August 4, 2009.

You will now find me e.g. here:

Facebook (Norwegian)
Facebook (English)
Twitter
Reverbnation (songs for download)
Bebo (dormant)
MySpace (semi-dormant)
Flickr (to be replaced by Photobucket, due to Flickr's unappealing max monthly download limit.)
YouTube (vidz, mostly slide-slow DIY)

My Norwegian blog STOR M (Capital M) is found here.