Archive for the 'Autodidact' Category
February 2nd, 2012 by jdsawyer
I spend my life cultivating and exploring questions at all levels from the inane to the putatively profound. Part of my job is asking questions–in fact, if you squint hard enough and look through enough lenses, you will be able to find a question or cluster of them behind every story I write.
As I prep to tackle the next round of The Antithesis Progression and another pair of SF novels later this year, I’m having fun wrestling with some biggies. Long story short, I thought it would be fun to share some of them with you guys, partly for the fun of the conversation, and partly to give you a peek behind the curtain for those of you who are interested in seeing the process that begins with a question and ends with a story or a novel.
So, to kick it off, here’s my nomination for one of the biggest questions anyone has ever asked.
“Where is everybody?”
Biggest question…seems kind of a grand claim, but I’m going to go a step further: I think it might be the single most terrifying, and the single most exciting, question anyone has ever thought to ask.
To illustrate why, I’ll give you a little context. This is the question that a man named Enrico Fermi asked when he turned his radio telescope at the heavens to listen in on television and radio broadcasts from alien civilisations, and found only static.
The universe is a big place. If carbon chemistry is common (as it seems to be), and if life bootstraps really easily, (which is now virtually certain), then in a big universe there should be at least some other folks out there who are building civilizations, and since all civilization is defined by energy use, they should be making some noise.
So…where is everybody?
It only took humans one generation between the invention of the radio (the ability to make cosmic noise) and the nuclear bomb (the ability to silence that noise forever, without reprieve). What if everybody eventually, inevitably, succumbs to self-destruction? Terrifying, isn’t it?
On the other hand, what if we’re the first? What if we are truly alone? This one’s terrifying too, but it sure is exciting–there’s a lot of universe out there that’s not being used, and oh, the places we’ll go!
But there are other answers, and some of them are very intriguing. Certainly, we haven’t figured out all the potential answers yet. I’ve got some ideas that I’m exploring in projects I’m currently working on, I’ve even got a few opinions.
It is a big question, though, maybe one of the biggest. Because whatever the answer is, it will forever define our relationship with the universe around us, and will profoundly affect the way our civilization unfolds as it winds out into the solar system and beyond.
Read more about this question here, then tell me…What do you think about this question?
September 30th, 2011 by jdsawyer
In the great search for other earth-like planets, things have oscillated between encouraging and downright weird. So few of them seem rocky at all–mostly just gas-giants–but we’ve assumed that it’s just because the detection methods we’ve been using (gravitational wobble) are biased toward finding gas giants in close orbit.
That seems to be true. But it’s not the whole truth.
Continue reading ‘Interstellar Synthesis’
July 18th, 2011 by jdsawyer
Because this one deals a lot with the law again, the usual disclaimers apply: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is one man’s opinion on how business is done. Always consult a qualified legal professional when seeking legal advice.
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Previous chapter: Embrace Your Inner 2 Year-old
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It’s come to my attention that in some of my business posts I’ve inadvertently fed an unspoken, and erroneous, business assumption shared by many people in the arts (and, frankly, most people in society at large). It goes something like this:
“Corporations are all-powerful. They have bigger lawyers than you do. You’ll never find a lawyer to take your case if one rips you off, so you’re just going to have to roll with it if your record label cooks the books, your movie studio subjects you to creative bookkeeping, or your publishing house pads their returns. You’re only the talent–you should expect to be the victim. The talent always loses.”
In other words, you can’t fight City Hall.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a con. You CAN fight City Hall. And you can win. But you have to be savvy.
First Things First
When I say things like “You don’t want to be a test case,” as I did in my chapter on the Peggy Lee decision and its implications for artist contracts everywhere, it’s easy to hear that as reinforcing the erroneous idea I’ve delineated above–an impression for which I owe some of you an apology. It’s true that in untested areas of law, a dispute on a point that’s not entirely clear is a test case, by definition, and that these kinds of cases are a pain in the ass. It’s also true that these kinds of cases are, by their nature, uncertain in their outcome. However, by stating that being a test case is a pain, I don’t mean to advocate fear of lawsuits, or a strategy of folding before parties who have bigger lawyers than you do. Not at all.
What I meant to advocate, and what that chapter will more clearly advocate when these chapters are edited and collected in a book, is a basic principle which I’ll call “Defensive Business.”
“Defensive Business” has its analog in “Defensive Driving” rather than in “paranoia” or “social defensiveness.” You don’t have to be paranoid or live in fear to practice defensive business–in fact, paranoia will usually lead you to rash behavior that can get you into trouble.
Continue reading ‘Principles of Contracts: You CAN Fight City Hall’
July 15th, 2011 by jdsawyer
You hear a lot of talk of “discovery writers” and “outliners” in the writing world. The “pantsers” and the “plotters,” respectively. It’s true that there are a lot of people that fall into both categories–including many of my friends–and human nature loves dichotomies, but I’ve never fit comfortably either, and I suspect I’m not alone.
Last night, I had occasion to have a long conversation with a new writer who’s vexed and confused by the options before him when it comes to writing process, and saying “you have to find your own way” only left him more despondent. I know that look–I’ve been there many times when faced with a new field of endeavor with so many options that at once feel constraining and non-specific. So, in the hope of letting those new writers who don’t comfortably fit a category know that they’re not alone, I’m going to describe my method.
Continue reading ‘Playing Jazz With Words’
July 7th, 2011 by jdsawyer
I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was four year’s old. I’d been a fan long before, thanks to the read-along books and the action figures, but actually seeing the film mad equite an impression on me. One of the things that bugged me, though, were the references to the off-screen “Clone Wars.”
I did not, after all, have the faintest clue what a “clone” was.
Eventually, after struggling mightily with the word to see if I could wrest meaning from it, I asked my Dad what clones were.
He said “It’s a process where you can make a copy of someone by taking a piece of their skin and turning it into a baby twin.”
I said “Wow, you can make a copy of me, just with a piece of skin?”
“Not really,” he said, “it’s just a cool idea for a story.”
Already having some idea of how science fiction worked, I asked the next logical question: “So…is it possible some day? Or is it just pretend?”
“It’s just pretend,” he said. “Some people think it might be possible in a hundred years, but that’s a long time–longer than you’ll be alive.”
In the intervening decades, cellular biologists have discovered a whole class of cells called “pluripotent stem cells.” These are cells that are created in the first generation of pregnancy–a zygote is a pluripotent stem cell at fertilization, and the first few generations of replication produce more pluripotent stem cells until the cells start differentiating.
Funny thing, though. In the last couple years induced pluripotent stem cells have been discovered, refined, and perfected–in Argentina they’re now using them to clone cows from the ear tissue of a parent cow. If that weren’t wild enough, how would you feel about turning your skin into brain tissue to cure you of Parkinson’s or other neurodegenerative diseases?
I love living in the future–it’s been a quick hundred years!
July 5th, 2011 by jdsawyer
My gripe session about Dropbox’s new TOS and my presentation (wherein I all but came out and shouted that it’s stupid to use a free cloud-based backup service) understandably rankled a healthy percentage of the commenters. My fellows in the hacking community, who eat, sleep, and breathe security issues, described my post as a “breathless rant,” an “overreaction,” etc. And what’s more, if my post were written up for LinuxJournal or for an IT rag, they’d be right.
But it wasn’t. It was written with writers, musicians, and other creatives squarely in mind–an audience that, by and large, is not highly conversant with all the ways around lawyers and moronic service providers that we hackers and power users have built up into a reflex. When you tell a writer who only uses a mac (who’s not otherwise a computer geek) that they need to encrypt their backups, they’re likely to look at you like you’re speaking Latin, then shake you off and continue right on doing whatever gets in their way least.
So, in the interest of being part of the solution rather than just part of the agitation camp, I’m now going to get into the things about cloud-based computing that, if you don’t know them, can make the whole enterprise very hazardous. I’ll also suggest a few ways to minimize these hazards and the hazards it can pose–and the benefits it can offer–for writers and other creative non-hacker types who use it.
So, here are some things you need to know about using any cloud-based computing service:
If The Service is Free, You Are Not The Customer
If you’re using a service, it’s natural to assume that you’re the customer and the service provider is the vendor–and there are a lot of companies (like that book about the fronts of peoples heads) that count on the fact that you’ll continue to think that.
Why? Well, if you assume that, you’re going to be inclined to several reflexes–you’ll assume that the vendor will try to treat you well, for example, and you’ll be more likely develop brand loyalty to an insane degree, because we’ve been trained to think that “the customer is always right.”
The trouble is, with these services, you’re not the customer. You (and your data) are the product.
The customers are other parties–in some cases, they’re advertising, demographics, and political firms. In other cases, the free service is a test bed for a commercial product and you’re essentially an unpaid QC person.
If this is sounding negative, it’s not because I don’t approve of the business model–if you understand what you’re getting into I’ve got no problem with such things. The trouble is that the Internet is full of people who think that that nice guy from Nigeria really does need help, and it’s not because they’re stupid, it’s because they don’t have any idea about how the economic situation works on the net. People (like me) who’ve literally been on the Internet since before it was the Internet tend to forget about that.
What this all means is that the service provider has a lot less incentive to keep you happy, and a lot more incentive to do things that annoy you while advancing their own interests with regards to serving their primary customer base. These things that annoy you often turn up as rights grabs for your data, sudden changes in Terms of Service, sudden discontinuance of a service you’re relying on–and, when there’s a big public outcry, sometimes a marginal backing off combined with very loud self-flagellating apologies and protestations about how important their customers are to them (which is true–but the customer isn’t you. A fact they usually fail to mention).
In some cases, it can get worse than that. Some companies have (or believe they have) the incentive to use your intellectual property free of charge to make money. Facebook, for example, uses your user pictures in their advertising, and they don’t pay a dime for it. You’re obligated to let them unless you specifically opt-out every time they change their TOS. They’ve also, from time to time, tried to claim copyright or free license to all the text posted on their site (your words) and to all the text linked to from their site (which will never stand up in court).
Which brings me to the court test and the other reason you actually need to read your TOS: A lot of them disallow court cases. In them, you agree to binding arbitration in some po-dunk jurisdiction that doesn’t have robust laws regarding intellectual property or Internet business–a jurisdiction often pre-selected because of its statutory or cultural bias against consumer protection, in favor of enforcing binding arbitration, or of not enforcing claims of individuals against corporations. Get screwed over by a company that does this, and you have two court cases in front of you: first, to get the binding arbitration clause ruled out of order, and second to actually pursue action against the company.
On Putting Things In The Cloud
When you park your car on the street. It’s possible that someone might come along and make off with it. Two things protect people in such situations:
1) They lock their cars (which makes stealing them inconvenient–but not impossible)
2) They have cars that are unremarkable
The same holds true for your data. Most of the time, if you post your work online for free nobody’s going to steal it–frankly, most work isn’t special enough to be worth the bother. Most work is the Yugo of online car theft. And the other kinds of data that some sites collect–the demographic, behavioral, large-scale statistical data for resale to advertisers–isn’t individuated enough to worry many people.
The story changes a bit, though, with things like financial data, or unpublished manuscripts, or raw tracks. Stuff that either has intrinsic value (all financial data does, even if you personally don’t have any money) or statutory value (intellectual property).
Unfortunately, even people who are driving the Internet-equivalent of expensive cars tend not to lock them, unless they’re people who are otherwise interested in hacking and security for its own sake, and this is where you get into trouble.
When you use a cloud-based backup service, you’re gaining some useful things: data portability and off-site fire protection spring to mind. But you’re also putting your data on someone else’s server–you’re trusting your intellectual property to the good graces of an organization whose interests might not align with your own tomorrow, even if they do today–which means that if you want to keep yourself safe, you’re going to have to be checking the service’s user relations blog and TOS pretty regularly–and that’s a headache.
You’re also trusting your data security to a corporation whose security practices you can’t practically audit (and, in the case of a new company, whose practices aren’t well-established enough to have earned them a reputation you can check). The company might respect its users privacy, but if they don’t have their servers secure, then Lulzhack or Anonymous or the Russian Mob or an overzealous high schooler can waltz in and have their pick of what’s there.
VW or Aston Martin, Use A Kill Switch
So, say you need the benefits of a cloud-based data service, what are you going to do? There are a few things that can make the enterprise a not-entirely-foolhardy one:
1) Encrypt your data using the strongest available encryption
This is non-trivial if you’re not in the habit, but it is actually the only way to secure your data against most attacks. GPG, and TrueCrypt are both open-source, community enterprises and are the gold standard in data encryption. PGP has several commercial implementations of the same encryption schemes and algorithms GPG uses, and they have some slick front-ends that make it easier to use. There is a learning curve here, but it’s worth it.
2) Select a data service provider that does not have access to your data
This is the standard of professional practice in the data services industry–your data is stored on a TrueCrypt-style drive to which the hosting company doesn’t hold the keys. They can delete it, but they can’t read it. Since this claim is difficult to verify, though, you should also encrypt the data you upload.
3) Select a data service provider that does not share data
You basically want a company that won’t allow anyone–including the FBI–to access your data without a court order.
4) Select a data service provider with decent lawyers
The shitstorm over last weekend was, on the most charitable reading, caused by bad lawyers. So to be very clear: what you store on a server is no more business to your hosting provider than what you keep in a rental house–and I’m sticking to that unless and until the law says otherwise (which, at the moment, it doesn’t). When you upload to a server, you are granting the implicit right to archive, store, back up (which involves making copies) and display your data to the extent (and only to the extent) required by normal data management operations–these are all technical tasks. You are not implicitly granting the right to create derivative works, to publish, to distribute, or to sublicense the content (and if you’re looking at a service that demands that right because they use a subcontractor to handle their data farms, avoid them.
5) Pay for it
You’re going to be in a much better position if you’re using a paid service, and the paid services are not expensive. You spend more at Starbucks every month, even if you don’t drink coffee. This puts the customer/vendor relationship on the proper footing. Don’t, however, neglect points 1-4 just because you’ve paid.
6) Notice of changes to TOS
Always select a service provider that gives at least a billing-cycle’s worth of notice to changes of their TOS. This is something Dropbox did right, and with all the grousing I’ve been doing about them it’s only fair to give kudos where they’re due.
Blessed Are The Pessimists, for They Have Made Backups
The best solution of all, though, is to do it yourself. There are a number of programs available, such as PogoPlug, which make it easy to set up your own cloud-drive that you can access from anywhere. A lot of NAS appliances also include web servers that let you access your files from anywhere. Get something like this, set it up in a friend’s closet (so you have the “off-site” part of your backups covered–important in case of flood or fire), and you’re miles ahead of using a cloud-based service from a company whose politics and business incentives you have no control over.
Of course, doing this, you are parking your Aston Martin on the street, which means you need both a lock (a good firewall) and a very good kill switch (encrypt everything on that shared drive)–and if you have any sense at all, your cloud drive must be on a dedicated appliance or computer, not on your desktop or laptop machine. Isolating it from the rest of your network protects the rest of your network from the Internet, exposing only your (encrypted, right?) cloud drive on its own well-secured machine (device, spare computer, whatever).
Concluding Thoughts
I got a LOT of comments, and a lot of blog posts, commenting on the panicky, breathless nature of my initial post about the Dropbox debacle by people who figured I ought to “know better.” Those people were all either 1) hackers who already know how to navigate this weird world, or 2) people with a good understanding of cyberlaw but a poor understanding of copyright law. Most of them were very intelligent and the comment stream (and cross-linked posts) are well worth reading–but this post is not for them. The first group are already well-equipped to take care of themselves, because they have the “informed” part of “informed consent” nailed. The second group are intelligent enough that they’ll likely be fine too, though I’m nervous about the folks who take advice from them.
If you’re a creative type, your work is your livelihood. You need to be fully conversant in Copyright law, or you’re gonna get fucked. You also need to be moderately conversant in security–i.e. you need to understand the basic concepts, even if you don’t understand the technical details. And you need to apply both to the way you deal with data you put online.
This is a world of informed consent, and most people on the net are consenting without understanding the paradigm or the implications. For most people, the worst that will happen to them from operating uninformed on the net is a little identity theft. Occasionally, one of them might get implicated in a crime through no fault of their own–annoying and unlikely, but possible. But for creatives who are using the net for business, the ballgame is different–if a creative walks through this world as a naive, he risks a lot more headache and wallet ache. It really is worth the time to get savvy.
If you find this post useful or thought provoking, please consider donating to the tip jar at the top right of this site, or buying a copy of any of the books you’ll find listed in the right sidebar. Writing is how I make my living–I enjoy it and would like to keep it up!
June 21st, 2011 by jdsawyer
Writing fiction in the age of the Internet can be fraught for the author who values authenticity–particularly if you write historical or technical fiction. Since the glorious thing about writing fiction is that you essentially make shit up to entertain other people, there are a range of opinions about the technical rigor to which writers should aspire.
I’m one of those poor tortured souls who is a stickler for detail, to the point where I’m rarely able to meet my own standards when I write–but, let’s face it. If anyone wrote like that, they’d either write only in their area of historical specialty or after years of research. The trick with writing is to create a successful illusion, not a master’s thesis. Besides, the vast majority of readers aren’t the kind of obsessive compulsive pain in the ass that I am–a lucky thing!–so there’s a certain amount we authors can count on getting away with.
Still, I can’t help but think there’s some level of rigor that one ought to aspire to. Some minimal standard–particularly since the stories we professional liars tell often form people’s view of the past long after their high school and college history classes are long-forgotten–must surely be in order. Something that we can at least hold up to keep ourselves from being embarrassed at conventions when a fan calls us out on an obvious boneheaded anachronism?
There might just be one. Let’s call it “The Wikipedia Test.” Continue reading ‘Failing the Wikipedia Test’
June 11th, 2011 by jdsawyer
Disclaimer: What follows is a rant about something that can screw up the creative process. This post is more esoteric than is normal for this blog. It contains a lot of jargon, and talks a lot about academic politics and social history, and it won’t interest everybody. Don’t worry, though. It doesn’t signal a change of direction for the blog. I’ll be back on Monday with more stuff about contracts, stories, podcasting, and my general flavor of nutiness.
Last night on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog I made a snarky comment about the deleterious effect of a Literary Studies degree (or, in my case, 90% of a Lit degree) on creativity. The comment went something like this:
A Literary Studies course is the worst thing you can do for your creativity, other than bashing your skull in with a mallet while reciting the lyrics to “The Song That Never Ends”
Needless to say, this caused a minor row in the twitterverse among my fellow literati, and I received a few demands to justify myself (which is not easy to do on the best of days, let alone in 140 characters or less), so, in the name of entertainment, here goes, in no particular order:
Continue reading ‘Literary Studies, Anyone?’
June 7th, 2011 by jdsawyer
So, Megan Cox Gurdon of the Wall Street Journal is concerned about the darkness in YA literature. It seems that such stories (written, as they are, for teenagers) might introduce unnecessary dreariness and misery into the otherwise sunny time of adolescence.
It raises the obvious question: At what age does an adult undergo a mandatory brain wipe and forget about what it’s like to be a teenager? Even teenagers with nothing evil happening in their lives directly know friends who have awful things going on. More than that, teenagers are coming to grips with mortality and sex in two important respects: in both cases, they are confronting both the knowledge that they can make decisions that will give them power over the death and over the sexuality of other people, and with the equally uncomfortable realization that other people can have that kind of power over them (and that, at least with death, there will eventually be nothing they can do to stop it). This is to say nothing about their own desire both for sexual gratification and for some (safe) experience of violence and danger. Sex and death, folks. It don’t get more real, or dark, than that.
Continue reading ‘Unsuitable for Children?’
January 10th, 2011 by jdsawyer
It’s mid January, and time for your vegetables. This year’s first link salad is here–I hope you enjoy this sampling of my weidrness and wanderings from around the web!
Continue reading ‘Link Salad, Jan 10, 2011′
December 27th, 2010 by jdsawyer
Time for your vegetables again — these are some of the highlights of my research journeys hither and yon in the great wasteland of cyberspace. Hope you enjoy!
Continue reading ‘Link Salad 12/27/10′
December 3rd, 2010 by jdsawyer
Time for your vegetables again. Here’s some of the fun stuff that’s flitted across my desk in the last few weeks.
Crazy Silly Creative Things
To start off with our garnish, you could do no better than watching this 3 minute video about what Welshmen really do with sheep. Don’t worry, it’s work safe–but you won’t be while watchign it. This is seriously, amazingly cool.
Johnny Carson presents The Great Flydini, an utterly silly and borderline obscene magic act that will leave you in stitches. Don’t let obscene put you off — it’s work safe.
While you’re at it, put down your drink before reading this story about the trials of moving house with a pair of neurotic dogs.
Continue reading ‘Link Salad, Dec. 3, 2010′
November 29th, 2010 by jdsawyer
If 2007 was the year I got serious about writing, then 2010 was the year when attitude and education caught up with intent. Think of it as the difference between declaring a major (2007) and doing your first internship in a Ph.D. program (2010). Up till this year, I did one book a year and a couple short stories, maybe a screenplay, plus a lot of sketches, articles, and reading (in additional to the normal load of producing).
This year, I’m on track to do 6 short stories, 1 novella, 3 novels, 1.5 nonfiction books, and 15 articles. Fully 1/9th of my lifetime’s word output has happened this year. And I also landed a collaboration deal for a nonfiction with one of the veterans in the business (you’ll hear more about this during Q1 of next year).
During the same time, I upped my education a lot. I’ve gotten my footing in what had previously been a bizarre and foreign business to my way of thinking, learned how to apply past lessons to the current domain, and taken several other business projects forward specifically because of the gaps this education has filled in.
One of the things that surprised me is the lesson I learned ten years ago at the beginning of my time in and around independent film is even more important in the writing business than the film business. I’m henceforth calling it Sawyer’s First Law of Apprenticeship:
Continue reading ‘Sawyer’s First Law’
November 29th, 2010 by jdsawyer
I’ve taught about a dozen people to drive so far, and it’s not because I’m an adrenaline junkie or a glutton for punishment. It’s because, all things being equal, I prefer the company of people who are competent, empowered, and self-possessed, and there are few things in this world that can undercut those thing as effectively as crappy instruction. And with driving, crappy instruction puts other people’s lives in danger.
Continue reading ‘Why I Don’t Drive an Automatic’
October 15th, 2010 by jdsawyer
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Welcome to the second of several Down From Ten Feedback shows. This one is episode ten, part two of the Dealing In series of feedback shows, where I and several friends answer your emails and talk about whatever comes up. This time, I’m joined by Metamor City and Down From Ten cast member Chris Lester, New York Times Bestseller Gail Carriger, and producer/actor/cartoonist Kitty Nic’Iaian. What do we talk about? An incomplete list, in no particular order:
Food
Pacing
Screenplays
Chekov
Soulless
Racism and bigotry in the Victorian world
Douglas Adams
Thomas Mann
Cultural change throughout history
The Death of the Author
Focault
Deride
Shakespeare
The Royal Shakespeare Company
POV characters
George R.R. Martin
Neal Stephenson
Shakespeare
Employing Symbolism in writing
Tee Morris
