On a weekend visit to my parents I leafed through some editions of the Lyd og Bilde (Sound and Image) magazine. An issue from 2009 is ancient in the world of consumer electronics, and I found an interesting example of the troublesome birth of technological innovations...
The headline reads "Remote control is a TV", and the case in point is Samsung's then new remote control, which also works as a secondary portable TV screen and can handle images, music and video via a wifi-connection that also enables Internet access. All in all, it seems like a prototype for Samsung's Galaxy tab, right?
The first Galaxy tablet was demonstrated by Samsung on 2 September at the 2010 IFA in Berlin. It sports a 7" screen, just like the remote control/tv and looks practically identical. The device featured in Lyd og Bilde was bundled with the purchase of a Samsung's LED/LCD TV screen, hence the clumsy term remote control/TV. In 2009 the tablet segment of digital devices had yet to be defined. As we are aware, it was not until Apple released the iPad in April 2010 that tablet computers were recognized as a market niche.
Naming in itself is hard. Even though "tablet" or "tablet computer" seems to be the preferred term, the jury may still be out on what shall be the generic term for devices such as the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. And the issue raised inadvertedly by the note in Lyd og Bilde goes beyond the naming game, and speaks more profoundly of the nature of technological innovations and how to define multi-purpose devices.
The complex origins of a technological innovation is not a new discovery. The history of radio technology and radio broadcasting is a well-known example of technology and its uses being unpredictable and changing. There is a long way from the early military uses of radio signals to today's morning radio shows.
So the difficulties Samsung (and Lyd og Bilde) had with defining the 7" LCD device are perhaps not so odd. After all, it took a company with the combined marketing and innovation skills of Apple to establish the tablet segment of the consumer electronics market.
The eight and final Harry Potter film has premiered and apparently there won´t be any more Potter books. So, has the Harry Potter saga come to an end?
Naturally there will be more Potter, or Pottermore, to be exact. J.K Rowling announced the website pottermore.com this summer, and July 31st 2011 the site opened for registration. I tried to be an early bird (owl, I suppose), and registered through some intricate channels including a riddle that I had to google for the answer to. I am no Harry Potter reader, so my interest in the subject is mostly professional.
Professionally speaking, however, the Harry Potter phenomenon is thrilling. This is perhaps the biggest commercial success in media history. The Atlantic calls Rowling's Harry Potter series "a unique commodity in the modern book trade". The success cuts across national borders, genres and formats. A generation of readers grew up alongside Harry & co. There really was no way that it could end after 13 years, seven books, eight films, computer games and a host of toys and memorabilia. The brand must go on.
What it is
So what is Pottermore? I´m not entirely sure. The launch of the site was preceded by a stylish youtube video featuring JKR in a chesterfield couch, boasting of "an online reading experience unlike any other". The site is free for access, and reader participation seems to be a key point. "Pottermore will be built, in part, by you, the reader", JKR announces. "The digital generation will be able to enjoy a safe, unique online reading experince built around the Harry Potter books", she says.
Although I registered and was given a wizardlike like username of sorts, I have not been able to access any content yet. Some aspects of the content are yet to be revealed, but there seems to be a multiplayer game-like experience built around the Potter universe, puzzles and quizzes, and also lots of background info that the author left out, perhaps in the form of an online encyclopedia. Last but not least, the site will from October on, for the first time, offer digital audiobooks and ebooks. And Rowling promises that the ebooks will be available for all reading devices!
JKR has been holding back on ebook offerings for an astonishingly long time now, and it could be suspected - based on earlier statements made - that this was out of technology caution, fear of piracy or nostalgia for the printed book. I think not. I hold with Austin Allen of the Big Think blog:
"But somehow I suspect that J. K. Rowling bows to no one and nothing, not even the wizardry of modern technology. I think she’s a tremendously savvy woman, and I think she and the franchise she’s created have timed this business move very precisely". Equally impressed by her "marketing genious" is the Guardian and the Atlantic. In any case, the timing of the launch of Pottermore seems too calculated to be the outcome of some accidental strategy ("It was time to give something back", as the video says). Close on the heels of the final film, and in keeping with the global ebook trend, Pottermore comes at a good time.
Pottermore and the book industry
So what is the impact of Pottermore? Will it change the face of modern publishing? No, it's not a game changer, says Rachel Deahl of Publisher's Weekly. "Pottermore could shake up digital publishing in three ways, says Laura Hazard Owen of paidcontent.org.
Naturally, it is early to predicate the exact implications of the Pottermore extension of the Harry Potter brand. I think we need to divide the issue into smaller parts, asking about the artistic impact, the commercial impact and the implications on publishing business power relations.
We do not know much about the artistic innovations that may be hidden on the servers of pottermore.com, but I'm quite sure that it will earn JKR a lot more dollars, pounds and kroner. As for the power aspect, that can become quite interesting to see unfold. It involves a possible shake-up of the relationship between publishers, retailers, digital resellers and tech providers, authors, agents and readers.
The Pottermore venture sidesteps both traditional publishers and retailers. Although publishers Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic (US) are involved and will receive a cut of sales, the dominant partner is Sony. Even the digitally empowered Amazon and Apple are pushed aside by the magic wand. If the ebooks are actually available for all reading devices that means JKR has found a way to end or circumvent the format "war" that marks digital publishing today (Epub/AZV/PDF & Flash/HTML5). Interestingly, the rights holders for the Harry Potter films and games, Warner Bros., holds no stake in Pottermore. Furthermore, JKR actually changed publishing agency in front of the digital launch, parting ways with longtime agent Christopher Little.
As for the fans and readers, they seem to be getting both more content on their hands and a platform from which to discuss Harry, but perhaps at the expense of getting caught in JKR's commercial web? Potter fans are an resourceful and creative bunch that have previously been in legal disputes with JKR and her lawyers. How will they cope with assimilated social networking on pottermore.com?
Finally, there's the authors: Wired has likened the strategy to Radiohead´s self-release of In Rainbows, emphasizing the disintermediation of middleman publishers. However, as the analogy with Radiohead indicates, this is not a strategy for everyone. Rowling is quite aware, as she stated in a press conference:
"I am lucky to have the resources to do it myself and I think this is a fantastic and unique experience that I could afford to take my time over to make this come alive. There was really no way to do it for the fans or me than just do it myself. Not every author could do this, but it's right for Harry Potter. It is so much fun to have direct content with my fans. It was an extension of the existing jkrowling.com."
This aspect leaves it somewhat difficult to make longterm predictions on the book industry based on JKR and Pottermore. Exactly how many authors of her commercial calibre are there? Nonetheless, if this venture were to shake the industry profoundly, it could later pave the way for other single-author initiatives taking advantage of weakened publishers and retailers. Perhaps a Jo Nesbø or a Stieg Larsson publishing company (The Scandicrime Consortium)? Stephenie Meyer's twilighter.com?
I'd like to add to yesterday's post with a short remark on William's definition of culture. I was reminded, during some easter book-cleanup that RW worked with a threepart definition in his book The Long Revolution (1961). Briefly, the three general categories of culture are 1) the ideal, 2) the documentary and 3) the social.
This blog is named after a 1958 essay by Raymond Williams. It’s a catchy phrase and a good name for a blog. It’s also something like a source of inspiration, or a mind opener, you could say. I’ll try and explain how and why.
Williams was a marxist-socialist academic, writer and critic, and one of the forces behind the formation of the Cultural Studies school of media research. Coming from someone who spent his lifetime studying aspects of culture, “ordinary” may seem an odd choice of words, but hang on – it all makes sense.
I do not subscribe to nearly all aspects of Williams’ opinions. His ideas were born out of different times (1921-1988) and a different place (primarily the UK). Although it is possible to draw a few comparisons between Williams and myself – a non-academic background, coming into media studies through literature – I would probably feel a stranger next to him.
But then, there’s this view of culture that I really find interesting. Williams wrote in Keywords (1976) that “culture” is one of the most complicated words in the English language. (We might add, so it is in Norwegian as well.) It’s complicated because it carries different meanings and those meanings change with different contexts, but not the least because it’s so widely used. It’s one of those complicated terms that we actually use in everyday language.
If we stick to the uses of culture employed in the humanities, I believe we are left with three definitions, or senses of the concept:
1. Culture as a set of shared practices and values (in the anthropological sense, the culture of the Aztecs, Norwegian culture, but also in more narrow contexts, cf. subculture).
2. Culture as in cultural phenomena, consumption goods and leisure activities: Books, paintings, movies, television drama – but also in the extended usage of culture in connection with sports, fashion etc.)
3. Culture as the utmost of human artistic achievement, cf. high culture, Culture as Civilization.
In addition, we should add the overall distinction between culture and nature as significant for an understanding of the concept.
Despite all the depth and richness and conflict and confusion surrounding the concept, Williams states: “Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact”.
And further:
“Every human society has its ownshape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land”
This notion of culture writing itself into the land is significant. It is connected to the observations the author makes about seeing culture in the landscape itself.In “Culture is Ordinary”, Williams describes a journey, from the village and the contryside to the city and the factory, from the cathedral to the university, from the teashop to the pub. The landscapes he experiences all carry different meanings: Culture writing itself into the land. (This brings to mind Pierre Bourdieu’s and Marcel Mauss’ notion of habitus, as cultureanchored in the body).
Williams sees two (rather than three) senses of culture, and he argues that we need to value the “significance of their conjunction”. Thus, in order to fully understand def. 1, we need to grasp def. 2 and 3 and vice versa. Culture is the sum of its definitions.
Raymond Williams is a great writer of prose, his style is concise, succinct, personal.Another brilliant academic also wrote on the subject of bringing together of the various notions of culture, but Pierre Bourdieu’s style is more Proust than Hemingway. I really enjoy the following passage from the opening pages of Distinction (1979):
“One cannot fully understand cultural practices unless ‘culture’ in the restricted, normative sense ofordinary usage, is brought back into ‘culture’ in the antroplogical sense, and the elaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the elementary taste for the flavours of food”.
Once more, then: Culture inscribed in the body, incorporated.
Let’s go back to Williams: “The questions I ask about our culture are questions about our general and common purposes, yet also questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.”
To me, this is a call to keep your eyes open to culture in all its forms and to remember that culture carries significance both on a societal and personal level. Culture is the air that we breathe, and we tend not to think about the existence of oxygen on a daily basis, but it’s nevertheless a good thing to be reminded of what keeps us going. There is a lot of crap out there, Williams reminds us, but are the people we meet vulgar?, he asks. Let’s at least examine the matter at hand. This is the force of media studies, the way I know it, it doesn’t discriminate. I believe it was Cicero who said that “I am human, I consider nothing human to be alien to me”. A great motto, not only for Montaigne, who supposedly carved it into a roof beam in his study, but also for media studies in general. Culture is ordinary, therefore, do not shy away from academic examinations of any cultural expression, high, low or middle brow.
It’s a tall order, I know. But remember: Culture can also be extraordinary.
As you can see from the archive, I launched this blog five years ago (on my 29th birthday, for some reason I can't remember). Since then, it's been stone dead. Like so many other blogs. But now, from the ashes arises the Culture is Ordinary blog!
Why? And why now? I guess the answer must be that I feel I should give something back to the Norwegian taxpayers who fund the Ph.D I recently began at the Department of media and communication at the University of Oslo. (You wonder what my Ph.D is about? I'll save that for later.) Or perhaps it is that I now feel the need to communicate with the world outside my crammy office? Or perhaps it's a touch of mid-thirties vanity.
Anyway, expect somewhat more frequent postings on CiO in the coming period. As it says in the banner headline thingy, I will use this blog for several purposes, personal and academic, but the common denominator will be issues cultural. So what does it mean, that Culture is Ordinary? More on the origin of this blog's name tomorrow - or sometime soon, anyway.
