KNN grew up on a steady diet of The Brady Bunch. First-runs and re-runs both. There. It's out.
In our defense, it was harmless enough. Except for the eye-searing wardrobe. And Alice. Never got Alice. And the singing jumped the shark long before Happy Days. Hey, it was the 70's. Silly was the norm.
But, as it turned out, we had better taste than we thought, as described in this article from the Boston Globe. Even when their lives were at their most mundane, it just flat out mattered what was going on. Mattered to us.
Why? That's where the complexity comes in. You have to have a sound story, as lived by sympathetic characters, who say and do things that are in keeping with both the point of the story and the revealed traits of those characters. Stakes with personally high investment from the focus character. A few yuks to make the medicine go down well. Complementary subplots that reveal other points of view or considerations, but come together with the main line of storytelling. A beginning. A middle. An end. A surprise or two. A point. And here's the greatest complexity of all: it's not life, but everyone expects it to be just like it, whether you're talking about hobbits or rabbits or revolutionaries. Or a blended family.
"That's the way they became the Brady Bunch." (We hear the music, don't you?)
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
About E-Publishing
KNN has run across a couple of interesting articles about the e-book phenomenon. People in very high-profile sources are talking about electronic publishing, but we aren't sure they're thinking about it very much.
Amanda Katz's piece in The Boston Globe from July 17 is fascinating in many ways. The thing that concerns us is that the structure of the piece seems to feature an implied or expected conflict between electronic and printed material. Why is that necessary? Does it have to be all or nothing? A no-holds barred cage match? Can't we have both?
Likewise, the piece in the New York Times on July 15 about how the structure of a non-traditional summer class introduction to the publishing industry is changing because of e-books is interesting as well. The focus is the course, but KNN has a concern. It's the blase nature of the business concern for the publishers that e-books create. Of course, they're not going to come out on stage in front of a bunch of students and yell the business equivalent of "FIRE!!" But no one quoted in the article wanted to make any sort of pronouncement about the future effect of e-books on their business. Or what their businesses plan to do about it.
It seems to be too soon to do much open thinking about this phenomenon, at least for publishers. The sense we've gotten is that the publishing industry just wants e-books to go away and they are ready for them to do that. But the Katz article shows that people are using e-books in a variety of ways, from sampling a book that they'll later want to buy a paper copy of because of ownership issues, to full replacement of paper works. Businesses of all stripes will need to get comfy with e-books or they'll inadvertently provide their competition with a technology gap that can be exploited for little or no hard investment.
KNN would like to state for the record: electronic books will not completely replace paper books. Nope. Not ever. Bank on it. But the time is now to prepare for the loss of market share that publishers will face as a result. It's coming. E-books are too convenient and too adaptable to individual choices to just go away. The market won't stand for it.
Amanda Katz's piece in The Boston Globe from July 17 is fascinating in many ways. The thing that concerns us is that the structure of the piece seems to feature an implied or expected conflict between electronic and printed material. Why is that necessary? Does it have to be all or nothing? A no-holds barred cage match? Can't we have both?
Likewise, the piece in the New York Times on July 15 about how the structure of a non-traditional summer class introduction to the publishing industry is changing because of e-books is interesting as well. The focus is the course, but KNN has a concern. It's the blase nature of the business concern for the publishers that e-books create. Of course, they're not going to come out on stage in front of a bunch of students and yell the business equivalent of "FIRE!!" But no one quoted in the article wanted to make any sort of pronouncement about the future effect of e-books on their business. Or what their businesses plan to do about it.
It seems to be too soon to do much open thinking about this phenomenon, at least for publishers. The sense we've gotten is that the publishing industry just wants e-books to go away and they are ready for them to do that. But the Katz article shows that people are using e-books in a variety of ways, from sampling a book that they'll later want to buy a paper copy of because of ownership issues, to full replacement of paper works. Businesses of all stripes will need to get comfy with e-books or they'll inadvertently provide their competition with a technology gap that can be exploited for little or no hard investment.
KNN would like to state for the record: electronic books will not completely replace paper books. Nope. Not ever. Bank on it. But the time is now to prepare for the loss of market share that publishers will face as a result. It's coming. E-books are too convenient and too adaptable to individual choices to just go away. The market won't stand for it.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Evolutionary Biologists Should See Someone About That
From BBC: Worms' Sex Life Yields Advantage Over Parasites
Our favorite quote from this story is "Sex has long troubled evolutionary biologists." KNN subscribes to the following corporate policy about such matters: live and let live, but spare us the details.
Subscribes. Really. We can show you the receipts. Money reeeeeally well spent.
Our favorite quote from this story is "Sex has long troubled evolutionary biologists." KNN subscribes to the following corporate policy about such matters: live and let live, but spare us the details.
Subscribes. Really. We can show you the receipts. Money reeeeeally well spent.
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