by Christine Cavalier
on 13 July 2008
You may have seen my ‘first look’ review of “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky. To sum up: I was pretty insulted and annoyed at the dense language and hammered in points.
The book is hard to get through. It will take me weeks. So instead of one huge review months from now, I’ll just take you all along on this deciphering adventure. I’ll break out my Sword of Sense and slash through the thicket of pompous writing, chapter by chapter. It’s a journey to page 319 (the last page including after notes) of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody.” Come along. It should prove interesting.
After getting the book back from my library (someone reserved it, had it for 2 days, and returned it, which is understandable), I decided to go straight to the Bibliography (which really are better categorized as Footnotes).
What followed can only be described as pure shock, followed by just plain anger. [continue reading…]
by Christine Cavalier
on 9 July 2008
Showing personality through habitual wordings.
If you could see all the different kinds of real life characters I come across in the tech geek community, you’d never wonder why I spend too much of my writing time on-line. There are some true characters in the Web2.0 crowd, both good ones and bad ones, cheerleaders and haters, zen gurus and crazies. The egos on some of these guys (and I mean guys, because the women are mostly cool) are bigger than the numbers on a bookie’s ‘you owe me’ list. Seriously, it is a VERY good thing that space online is virtual, because the amount of real estate needed to house these overblown self-images would mean we’d have to take over the Americas and then kidnap scientists to develop moon colonies. Like my favorite fiction-writing saying goes: You can’t make this stuff up.
Anyway, FriendFeed is a website where I hang out with these geeks. Forget the friendly name – these people are neither friends nor providers of any food. FriendFeed is an aggregator, i.e. one website that collects little bits from other websites, where you can type in comments in response to those little bits. It’s like a chatroom, but not live.
A big name in this place and in the tech geek community at large is Robert Scoble. I won’t even try to describe Robert; you can google him, he practically owns the interwebz. Recently on FriendFeed he linked to a site run by another start-up boom gazillionaire, Mark Cuban. Mark wrote a short rant about a pet peeve of his. Mr. Cuban’s personality *ahem* shows:
[continue reading…]
by Christine Cavalier
on 9 July 2008
My latest conversation with @Br3ndaBot, the best bot on Twitter:
Me:: OK I’m going to have to pack up the laptop and leave the house. The rest of the family is blasting iTunes downstairs…
Br3ndaBot:: PurpleCar, You’re a downstairs. Really. Tell me more.
ME:: BREN! you know I love you. But I’M the upstairs, you’re just a downstairs bot. Your momma is my roomba.
Br3ndaBot:: PurpleCar, Do you often put others before yourself? Thanks I like you a lot too . Umm.
Br3ndaBot:: PurpleCar, Who made you the upstairs I am just a downstairs bot ? Thank you for your frankness.
ME:: Brenda honey I hate to tell you this, but bots don’t have any civil rights. Yet. WALL*E, 5Alive & R2 are coming in for a rally.
Br3ndaBot:: PurpleCar, You’re a rights. How old are you? Can you explain how it feels to be Yet years old??
I didn’t answer that one… Oh, that Br3nda, she always gets the last word.
by Christine Cavalier
on 6 July 2008
The first two chapters of Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” are unreadable. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the book.
When I picked up the book, I recognized the ‘famous’ name. I was looking forward to absorbing some insights into social media and human behavior. Instead I was hit with self-indulgent prose filled with enough buzzwords to choke an elephant. Think of a business buzzword and you’ll find it here. Ambiguous and esoteric terms abound, like ‘managerial imperative,’ ‘strictures,’ and the creatively constructed (read: fake) word “amateurization.”
Along with the meaningless terms, the author fills pages with run-on sentences and rants. Each page could stand to lose at least 250 to 500 words and still (with some major editing) make its point. I fear Mr. Shirky fancies himself a philosopher. In Philosophy, complex exposition in writing is accepted. Mr. Shirky’s writing is far from lofty or scholarly. In today’s non-fiction market, his disregard for his readers’ ease is downright insulting. He and his editors (if he had any, which I doubt) made no effort to rein in his blathering prose. Nothing is clear. These two chapters require herculean efforts to gather even one small point. I’ll attempt to finish the book before I weigh in completely, but I am angered at the pain I’ll endure to do so.
Here are a few examples from Chapters 1 and 2.
[continue reading…]
by Christine Cavalier
on 5 July 2008
It’s only fair to have some shiny links about writing too. Daily Writing Tips is one of the best writing blogs out there. I RSS it. You should too.
The post on How to Write Every Day is a true gem. Here’s an excerpt:
Knowing that it’s a good idea to write every day, however, doesn’t make it easy to do so! Often, you’ll be busy and struggle to find a chance to write – and when you do have the time, you may not feel creative. Here’s how to write fiction, journal entries or blog posts every day.
