This all is about to change very fast now. As the BBC reports below, the first non-Latin URLs are now introduced. What this means is that, for example, the Arabs do not have to type in the Latin URL for the site of their favourite newspaper, but can do it in Arabic. So can the Chinese readers for their Chinese sites, etc. This makes it practically impossible for the English-speaking users to access such sites. If you are using a Mac, you have the needed fonts on your machine, but who would bother trying to do it — except professional readers, such as research experts and spies.

I am rather ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I am against the dominance of any one language and/or culture. On the other hand, it was nice for a few years (almost twenty, realistically) to believe that the world could really come to a better place through improved understanding. Some seed that has already been planted will probably remain: NGOs from different continents and within different language spheres will likely continue to work together, some interest groups (geeks, terrorists, peaceniks, criminals, evangelists of all kinds — you name it) will keep talking because they have to or want to. However, the beauty of stumbling upon something interesting from another culture will at least partially be lost.

And, imagine the Web in another 20 years from today: it is easy to see how the trend of diversification will grow. There will be large areas of cultures foreign to your own (whichever it is), and — to make things worse — due to a different set of signs pretty much inaccessible to you.

How will we remember this first period of the Internet?

As the era of hope, probably. And as the decades that at the same time helped the English language and endangered it. Visit any chat, or any discussion group, and you will know what I mean: the language pretending to be English, on those sites, is so heavily distorted that it is not even a ‘lost in translation’ situation. It is more a ‘never found in English’ phenomenon.

Look, even I was encouraged enough to start writing in English. What an utter catastrophe.

BBC News – Historic day as first non-Latin web addresses go live .

We live in times when Twitter is a significant means of information for a large number of people, and it is also a perfect metaphor for the way we are consuming our information today: give me a story in 140 characters, give me the news in a SMS form, tell me about the Apocalypse in short. I know that you will bullshit me, so at last don’t waste my time while doing that. On the one hand, we need that speed. On the other, that is a channel that should be consumed only in times of crisis, not on a daily basis, not as a main source of information.

Amateurs do not produce good information, period. If someone believes that a good blog, or a thousand good blogs, or a million great blogs can replace a source such as the Times, or the Wall Street Journal, they are delusional. If someone really believes that a million monkeys typing for a million years can produce Shakespeare—I wish them to get all their education, news and entertainment from that same workshop.

We need professional journalists, writers, editors. Now it seems that their product on the Internet will get behind a pay wall. Junkies like me will pay to enter, but there are hundreds of thousands of smart young people, or smart old people, who would love to be able to get the Times content, but won’t be able to pay for it (take the name of the newspaper here only as a symbol; I’m not crying for NYT!). What they will have to do is get their info from unreliable sources, get their news from Twitter, learn about life from Facebook. This, of course, will guarantee an increased number of those who will be prime targets for easy manipulation of all sorts: religious, political, sexual—you name it.

In case you stopped buying printed news and are reading the Internet versions exclusively, you are probably getting about 20 percent of the content, and you are missing the best commentaries and in-depth articles. In short, you are missing the vitamins and are being fed on burgers. But those burgers are still filling the empty stomachs on rainy days, and arm you with enough knowledge to protect you from malicious politicians, insurance companies, multinationals, pharmaceuticals. Or if not protect you, then at least give you some chance to fight. You did not get the whole picture, but those 20 percent of the pixels were enough to create a sketch. In the future, it will be one percent or a hundred percent.

Essentially, this business model already exists on the Inernet. Go to RapidShare site and try downloading something. You will be served with two options: free and paid. In the paid version, your download is coming from ultra-fast servers and it is really flying; once you click the ‘free’ button, you are exposed to a humiliating torture consisting of (combined) a waiting period, a choked server, pauses in downloading, denied access, etc. If they could find you, they would probably slap you, too. And very soon, you learn: when you pay, you get a powerful tool; when it’s free, it’s only a plastic toy.

Suddenly, state-funded institutions like BBC or CBC become very important. Suddenly, countries that have strong, healthy institutions of this kind, like the UK and Canada, find themselves more influential on the international scene than before. And my prediction is that this is the only chance we’ve got: that the new state-funded behemoths will start to pop-up. I simply don’t see how Putin can live without RBC.

New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers — Daily Intel.

Doing research for my new book, I’ve discovered earlier today this site. I’m probably late – you might have known about this – but I think it’s terrific. Mr Ariel Malka is a free lance programmer, interested in “software experiments exploring the relation between text, space and time”. Some of his experiments have found way into public sphere through other means (his “The Book of Sand” has become the ubiquitous “Sand Game” – although I find it more interesting in this reincarnation here), and I presume there will be much talk about his work when the iPhone experiments hit the road. For now, please take a look at least at his Babel Tower, and you can also check out the other stuff.

babel tower reader on the iphone from Ariel Malka on Vimeo.

Posted by Wordmobi

The above link contains a story. The Guardian had wrongly advertised it as JG Ballard’s last short story, which it isn’t (it was published  in 1996) – and they have corrected their mistake in the meantime – but the background of this short piece really doesn’t matter. It’s clean, clear and sharp.

Ishiguro has this take on interviews:

“I’m told that in war situations when people are interrogated, you’re supposed to build up two or three layers of story about who you are and what you’re doing, so that if you’re caught by the enemy, they torture you and after 10 days you finally break, then you’re trained to come up with your second layer; and then they torture you even further until you break down into the next one. When you’re just a shrieking skull, you’re shrieking the third prepared story. That’s apparently how you’re trained to do it.

“But I’m not suggesting, by the way,” he laughs, “that I have a second or third layer. I’m just always reminded of this because of the layers; interviewers read past interviews, so when you come out with the same stuff as before they treat it like your first cover story, and they want the next layer. And after about the 90-minute mark you start to say OK, yes, it was all based on my childhood trauma!”

Is that the same process we tend to use in everyday situations? As in self-defence, as in “Oh, you’re getting too close to my inner sanctum, here, take this bone fast and chew on it and please do not go further!”

Cover of Pjesme uz koje ne plešem

A few days ago my new book, titled Pjesme uz koje ne plešem (The Songs I Don’t Dance To), was published in Croatia (Naklada Uliks, ISBN 978-953-7306-37-3). It is a collection of articles mostly published between 1985 and 1989 in the Rock Magazine, in Belgrade, fortified (or weakened?) with some previously unpublished pieces. There are 17 titles in there, varying wildly in length, unified by the general idea and the form of writing. Each of them is talking about one particular song I love and respect so much I would never dance to it, and each is somewhere between an essay and a confessional story.

At the time when these stories were published they achieved some reputation, but — to my surprise — they continued gaining readers even afterwards, in spite of the war that came and the complete breakdown of Yugoslavia (in both political and cultural sense). For many years after the last story from this series was published I was getting letters from unknown people, some of whom wanted to thank me for writing that material, some of whom just wanted to share their thoughts with me (the most curious letter came from a young woman from Sarajevo, who wrote it just before the siege of the city started, and sent it somehow when the siege was already imposed) . The series itself inspired at least two other serials, published in other magazines and by other writers. In short, The Songs I Don’t Dance To have achieved cult status.

It stayed like that for two decades. At one point, a folder with the old typed stories fell on my head while I was writing something else and, taking that as an omen, I gathered the stories, retyped them, cleaned them up a bit, and offered them to a publisher in Belgrade — but he showed no interest, and then I gave up completely. There were other books to write, other things to do. Then, several months ago, I got an email from an unknown man from Croatia. Mr Miro Božić sad he was a publisher and asked me if I was interested in having The Songs collection published with his company. I still did not pay much attention, but did send him the material he asked for. From there, it all progressed very smoothly. Two months later the book was already in production, and now it is in the bookstores. As far as I know, it is sold in Croatia and Bosnia.

There is something that makes me very proud of this book. I’ll try to explain:
I wrote the original stories in Belgrade, in what was then still Yugoslavia. I published them in a magazine that was Yugoslav by its orientation and ideology, and covered all the republics of Yugoslavia — today all independent states. When it happened that the book containing all those stories was published first in Croatia and not in Serbia — as I would expect — it just showed me that my generation was right in believing in the unity of that cultural space. I said once, and I will keep repeating: the borders are not where the politicians draw them, the borders are where the language changes. For me, there never was a border between the Balkan states where people speak languages that need not be translated. Yes, my book is in Croatian, not Serbian, but I still understand every word in that “translation”, and so will every reader in the Balkans.

Posted by Wordmobi

The corner of Yorkville & Yonge; Le Pain Quotidien

Yorkville was our comfort area when we came first to Toronto. We lived close by, and frequently walked to here for an espresso and some desserts in JoJo’s, a small bakery on the corner which smelled motherly of hot cookies. Yorkville looked slightly European, and less controlled.
In the place of JoJo’s there is a cafe today (Nervosa), and – although they are serving the best pizza in the world (pecoraia), it doesn’t feel the same. The whole Yorkville is different. Today it is a lair of the rich, and houses have been replaced with condos, ugly at that.
Neither is Pain the same. Today it is heading fast towards becoming the Starbucks of bread and waffles.
Oh well. I guess this particular spot is reminding me of two things I used to love.
The promo tour is over, and I’m travelling back to England tonight. Catherine did what she could, I did what I had to, and I hope there will be fruits out of it all. Peaches, please.
It was great to see Anne Collins and Jen Shepherd again and be reminded how fantastic the team I’m working with is. With Anne, Jen and Catherine every win is a collective win and every loss only mine.
Kisses, my dears.

Posted by Wordmobi