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Innovation not Limitation

In Hannah McGregor’s history of publishing class, we often talked about how new technology doesn’t “kill” old technology, that they can in fact live alongside one another. Spotify exists, so do record players, both are forms of listening to music, both offer different experiences and both are great. There’s this fear with digital reading that the print book will become obsolete, a fear that it will disappear. On top of that there’s this added fear of the new technology. It’s a habit we humans have. When Gutenberg’s print book was “invented” they called it witchcraft and lamented for the handwritten books of the scribes. When the handwritten book was “invented” they mourned the loss of the scroll. When people started writing stories down Socrates said it would melt our brains and we’d never be able to remember anything anymore… that oral storytelling was the way to go. My point is, “reading” (storytelling) is an ever changing form, that all forms past and present count, and no form is more “pure” than the rest. I also argue it’s more important to look at it as storytelling instead of reading and that it’s our thirst for an entertaining narrative that spurs innovation.

When reading online I tend to have a difficult time settling into a longer reading, and am instead used to skimming for pertinent information. Even when I’m interested in what I’m reading, I find myself wanting to skip forward and get to the point. It’s only when I force myself to slow down and focus (hypothes.is helps accomplish this) that I can connect with the longer form of online reading. Then again, it honestly hurts my eyes if I stare at a screen for too long (Digital Eye Strain). This is more about personal preference than anything, and I prefer print if I’m doing long form reading.

Of course, online reading is good for quickly disseminating information. While there has been a rash of fake news, there’s also credible sources (NY Times, Kottke, Shatzkin etc.) out there that are able to produce reliable articles. Plus, even the longer articles are pretty short in the grand scheme of things. There’s also the ability to update information if someone is able to disprove a “fact”, or there’s at least the ability to have a conversation around it (in the comments). Aside from the standard Medium sized article (pun intended), there are micro stories (tweets and tweet threads) or lengthy, novel sized stories (fanfiction). Both have their own tone, and allow for different levels of detail and expression.

Technology doesn’t limit the stories we can tell, it allows us to be even more innovative than before. From Twinscapes to Twitter, humans enjoy sharing narratives and are hungry for them in any form they present themselves. Some forms work better for some people than others for a variety of reasons. Audio books (oral narrative) work better for people who want to multi-task or enjoy the “company” of someone telling them a story. I prefer print books because they don’t strain my eyes and force me to focus more on the narrative. Other people prefer ebooks because they’re cheap and easy. Here’s the best part, you aren’t limited to one form or the other, you can enjoy all forms of narrative as many people do.

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Reflection time

What is a tech course doing in a publishing program? Before this program I would have thought it strange to find such a course in a program that is supposed to be about the book etc. business. Now I can see that the course accompanies it nicely, that books are fish in the tech sea and they’ve got to figure out how to thrive. Technology is ubiquitous in our lives; it became so rapidly integrated into our everyday in a very short period of time that we often don’t think about the implications and consequences of that. This course really forced my eyes open to the world we’re living in and the road we’re going down with tech. With a fair bit of background knowledge from the first semester with John in PUB 800, I went into this course not knowing what to really expect other than going even deeper into the tech realm. Two aspects of the course which I enjoyed the most were the throwback days of the 90s/00s bloggers and the open web, plus the more contemporary possibilities of using data mining and reader analytics for good, while two critiques I have are the digression from publishing and the book world to the much heavier tech world that wasn’t related back to the industry and the lack of incorporating the online discussion into the physical discussion. Through discussing both sets of my takeaways, I intend to address each of the learning objectives, both explicitly and implicitly.

Despite the internet only being roughly 30-years-old, it sure has gone through a lot of changes. As someone who grew up alongside it (literally, we’re almost the same age) it was interesting to also reflect back on the internet’s childhood and to dive into those idealistic views of the web. The web was meant to be an open space with endless possibility, however a Capitalist society cannot sustain something so free. It feels like the story of the Wild West all over again, with people carving out their plots of land on the internet landscape and then corporations came to put everyone in boxes. Now we fall at the whims of our benevolent overlords and hope they don’t take away the things we like (here’s looking at you Tumblr). The Alex Singh’s Twitter thread on feudalism for that week was an interesting metaphor for this. However, this metaphor of the Wild West just takes me back to thinking of the internet as a physical space we each inhabit, that each URL has its own “feeling,” which was articulated in one of my favourite articles of the semester, Frank Chimero’s The Good Room.

After we explored the terrifying might of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the following weeks and the struggle for artists to make a living off the few sites that are supposed to help them (Patreon), I was definitely not optimistic about tech. Something so powerful can be used for good or evil, but which do you think the mega-data-collecting corporations are going to choose? Well, there are glimmers of hope in ventures like Jellybooks or the studies being done on the structures of stories and how data mining can help the writing instead of hinder it. I stand by the idealistic view I hold in my blog post on the matter. In the end, for better or worse my new understanding of the complexities of the tech world leads to opinions that are no longer indifferent or neutral. I also feel that if new technologies spring up (as they do) and current ones continue to flourish and change I will be able to better interpret and analyze the events and trends that coincide with it.

Onto the (small) critiques. While I understand that the tech world is integrated into the publishing world, and that Google, Amazon, and Facebook effect our industry I just felt that we digressed from the book conversation most of the time. Our thesis is “books and publishing” with a tech lens, and the points we discuss should always be referring back to the main thesis. These topics of course did more for my general knowledge and education (a positive), but I would have liked to have more publishing examples tied more into certain weeks, especially in the discussion. Yes, at least one article (often more) each week was related to our industry, but I found we avoided talking about it in class.

Speaking of class discussion, I did love using Hypothesis and engaging with my peers in an online discussion of each reading. I felt we were really able to flesh out ideas, musings, perspectives and gain more collective knowledge on a reading. It was always a safe space where I didn’t feel like it was high-stakes to develop and express my thoughts and ideas. Now, Hypothesis offered a preliminary round for thoughts on these readings and I would have really liked to expand on them in class. There were ideas my peers brought up in their annotations that I would have loved to dig deeper into. However, it often felt like even if these annotations were brought up in class they were only acknowledged and not developed. It felt like we’d had these rich and interesting conversations online and then when we came to class they felt more like a fever dream or something we were all aware happened… but that was in a different world. The discussion online just felt disjointed from the conversation in class, but I’m happy we had both.

Overall, this was a class that challenged my outlook on technology and its uses and it opened me to the different ways we can interpret and analyze something that is prevalent in our lives. Digital technology is here to stay, and I imagine it will only become more integrated into our lives. With what I’ve learned in this class I know I won’t be able to accept things at face value anymore and feel prepared to assess whatever new tech trend is on the horizon. Now, it’s time to ride into the sunset of the not so Wild West.

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Digging for Gold: Reader Analytics and Data Mining in Manuscripts

As a publisher, if I had an all access pass to book data I would concentrate on my authors, their writing and my editorial team. I’m not talking about producing blockbuster after blockbuster, but simply having more hits than misses. Plus, only so many people read so many books a year which means the amount of blockbusters is finite. If I only wanted to be producing blockbusters then I’d be putting out two or three books a year, and somehow having a drastically reduced field of competition. No, I don’t need to sell a million copies of my author’s latest work (although that would be nice) but I do want to give their book the best possible chance to make it. How would I do this? By using reader analytics and data mining of course. Other publishers have already acknowledged the advantages.

A perfected Jellybooks would be my tool of choice. Being able to pin point where a reader struggles or stops reading would be beneficial for both the editor and the author to know. If the majority of readers are calling it quits after chapter three then some changes need to be made in the writing. My editor knows this book is a winner since the ending is spectacular, reflective, and thought-provoking, except no one is going to know that unless they get to the end! If the book lulls and you lose your audience (who is far less trained to recognize real talent and art, the je ne sais quoi of good writing than my editors and their gut) then it doesn’t matter how good the potential of the book is. Maybe all it will take is a little tweak to keep readers hooked.

Wouldn’t the authors have a problem with this? Sharing their precious baby before its ready for the cold world when it still needs some time to incubate with their editor. Yes, writers are sensitive and having their work picked apart by a bunch of strangers certainly doesn’t seem appealing and there are mixed opinions on beta reading. I would encourage them to reconsider, and to look at it as an investment in beta testing and although it may be painful it would at least give their book the best chance it could get before being released to the real cold world. Wouldn’t they appreciate a test-flop before a real flop? At least they have the time to go back and tweak their manuscript some more.

Plus, there are only six basic emotional arcs of storytelling and by data mining the manuscripts my editors would make sure that they keep on track with patterns readers are familiar with. Of course, this doesn’t mean the stories can’t break rules, and it’s possible to build complex arcs by using basic building blocks in sequence to create something unique. If my editors are able to catch a dip or spike in an already established arc, then it would be easier for them to hone in on the problem area and adjust it accordingly. Data mining manuscripts offers editors a map to the potential problem areas, and the chance to dig in and use their editorial training to adjust these segments. Generally, a good editor would be able to find these problem areas and lulls regardless, but an algorithm speeds up the process and allows for more time dedicated to workshopping the section.

Data mining manuscripts and using reader analytics isn’t about removing the human element from editorial work, quite the contrary. Reader analytics is studying human behaviour with reading, while data mining manuscripts is simply expediting the grunt work editors would have to go through regardless. Editors can use these tools to streamline the process they need to take with the manuscript and combine it with their gut instincts and human experience to allow a book to reach its full potential.

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Orwell Would Be Proud: Privacy, Corporations and Data Surveillance

What’s the year? 1984. Not quite, it’s 2019 despite the fact that mega-corporation Facebook is running social experiments, the government is listening, and Amazon is watching. Multi-billion dollar corporations and the government are in bed together, and they’re clearly benefiting from each other and all the information they’ve collected on us. We’ve sold our souls (private data) to the Devil (Facebook, Google, Amazon) for eternal euphoria (funny cat videos). But we agreed to it, right? It isn’t spying if we consent to it, whether we’ve read every word of the terms and conditions or not. Maybe sharing your information with one corporation would be better? Let’s combine multiple platforms and just put all the data collection in a one-stop-shop, as Mark Zuckerberg is proposing. You only need one app, one platform, one secure place. You can communicate with your friends and family, make purchases, share images, whatever you like, and it’s all private (right?). Hey, it’s working for China, so why not North America and the rest of the world.

Worst case scenario? We live in an even more Orwellian future than we do now. One single source of information with one single entity in control who is watching us inside and out. Amazon has developed camera technology which they use in their Amazon Go store that can tell the difference between each product in the store and charge the customer accordingly. The fact that these cameras can tell the difference between a soup can and a bag of trail mix isn’t terrifying, but imagine if that technology advances to the point where it can recognize one person from the next. As per usual Amazon is as opaque as ever about what they plan to do with this technology, and there has been speculation whether they’ll sell it to other companies or not, even though they claim they have no plans to. Oh, wait! They’re already selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement and the US government. Better yet, it’s not fine-tuned which leads to more problems than solutions with racial and gender biases. Can you imagine these cameras on every street, watching every move and reporting back to the government (corporations)? Google already knows where you are, but know they’ll be able to see you too.

Best case scenario? We stand up for our right to privacy and put privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation in place, which is a decent start to getting these companies to being more transparent. Whether we like what we see when we actually get to see it is another story, but at least we wouldn’t be blindly consenting (which is the biggest paradox) to the kinds of data collection they’re doing and who they’re giving it to. It’s not like all data collection is bad, and it can feed some algorithms (but not all) that help us with discoverability but we need to take the time to examine the ethics involved in data collection and the predictive analytics and data that result from it. There are concerns of social inequality, discrimination and privacy that data mining brings and that have very real effects outside of the digital world. As a society we need to think more critically of who is controlling the algorithms, the data collection and what they’re doing with it because every corporation has their own motives that they’re not keen on sharing with us.

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Stairway to Court: Copyright Infringement, Sampling, and Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin almost made it to heaven, before being dragged back into the courtroom September 2018 for a revisit of their 2014 court case with the band Spirit. Led Zeppelin has been accused of plagiarism by the band Spirit for infringing on the copyright of their 1968 instrumental track “Taurus” and using the guitar riff in their 1971 classic-rock staple “Stairway to Heaven.” Spoiler, the court ruled in favour of Led Zeppelin. However, when you listen to the two tracks, Spirit’s “Taurus” sounds rather familiar and I can definitely make out the cords that Led Zeppelin hijacked. Except, it’s only a very small portion of the song that sounds borrowed… maybe 10%? Fair dealing, right? But that’s for a judge to decide. The thing is that music, like many other art forms, has been a practice of creative borrowing, building, and remixing since the beginning and in the digital age we live in it’s so much easier to go on Youtube or social media to see (or rather hear) that everything sounds like something else.   

Lawsuits within the music industry and the infringement of copyright on songs is nothing new, and artists are constantly borrowing from others to remix their own new tunes. In a society that wasn’t so bent on turning a profit and more focused on exploring artistic expression this kind of sampling and remixing wouldn’t be seen as such an issue and artists would be able to build off one another to create new and interesting songs. Even doing covers of songs is a popular method of “copying” which can result in some really great tunes that are sometimes better than the original.  Of course what separates that from blatant IP stealing is getting the permission from the artist (and their record company) and paying them off to use their original content. Where it becomes murky is when artists borrow and aren’t transparent with where they got their content from (intentionally or not) and the song becomes a hit. Then there are the artists who simply shrug off the similarities while others give extensive credits.

Whether they are doing it as an homage to the original artist or if they’re just ripping them off, one of the most problematic methods of borrowing in music is called sampling. Sampling is taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or element of a new recording, and hundreds of famous artists sample from others, there’s even an app called WhoSampled that helps you uncover the DNA of your favourite songs. There are two camps in the world of sampling: those who view sampling as a lack of creativity or those who see it as a sincere form of paying homage to previous works. The record labels are always in favour of grabbing more money, and when music is sampled without permission they’re happy to sit in the first camp.

Musicians will continue to borrow from one another and the lines are becoming increasingly blurred which points to a revision on the copyright laws surrounding music. The fear for smaller, unknown artists is that their work can simply be ripped off by the bigger, multi-million dollar artists who borrow riffs that become iconic without a penny going to the artists who originally wrote the lyrics or set the rhythm. Once again, it’s money that becomes the sore point for artists.

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None of the Above: Patreon’s darker side and an alternative solution

Patreon appears to have good intentions, claiming that artists who use this crowdfunding service “have a direct relationship with [their] biggest fans, get recurring revenue for [their] work and create on [their] own terms.” Plus, for handling all the nuisances of hunting down declined payments, shielding you from chargebacks, handling patrons’ questions and catching fraud before it hits your balance while also acting as a simple conduit for cash to creator they only take a 5% cut, plus that 5% transactions fees average. As a creator you get to keep 90% of what was given to you by your patrons. It’s not a horrible deal, but it could be better so why don’t the artists take back all the control and get rid of the middle man? Yes, I’m talking about a creative co-op for all these self-starter artists. Plus, that 5% cut for Patreon is only the tip of the iceberg of their not-so transparent ways.

Brent Knepper railed against Patreon in his article on The Outline, and believe me, I can empathize with the pains of being a starving artist. Patreon presented itself as a saviour, and hey, look at all its success stories! Except as Knepper points out, only 2% of creators make the equivalent of federal minimum wage. Knepper claims that Patreon began to consume his downtime, as he tried to attract his followers to his Patreon page. The Economist article about Patreon also criticized it for “not [creating] large new avenues to be discovered by unwitting fans” and that Patreon is the equivalent to the open guitar case buskers use to catch spare change. Yes, Patreon gives the overly-optimistic impression of being able to live off your patrons, and the reality of that only comes true for the top 2%. As creators it is better to just assume Patreon as your second or third revenue stream instead of a primary one.

Except there are more problems than what Knepper and the Economist article point out. Things haven’t always gone smoothly with payments, when they were accidentally flagged as fraud and through a series of banking errors and issues within internal company operations some creators were denied 50% of their earnings and weren’t even able to access the money that did make it through. If a creator depends on this income for their rent or paying out their team this has much larger implications. Plus, it’s not a matter of if Patreon is bought by Facebook or Google but when. While Patreon’s CEO claims the business model isn’t sustainable with the rapid growth its seen in the last six years, this is still a business that has seen investors flock to it like gluttons to a bottomless buffet. Patreon’s popularity and rapid growth make Goliaths like Facebook and Google salivate. This is more of a problem for creators and their patrons as the service distances itself from them and instead gives the product of its bounty to its new owner. And if Patreon goes down then how are you going to get your patrons to follow you to the next medium? It already took so much effort to get them to convert to your Patreon, so you can say bye-bye to revenue and hello to square-one.

There has to be another option for artists to be supported by their fans, and one that doesn’t take the same amount of effort as the Memberful plugin (it’s like Patreon except the creator does all the work, from customer service with your patrons to cases of fraud or bounced payments). So what’s the solution? Take out the middleman. Patreon “extract[s] value and distribute[s] it to shareholding owners who seek a return on investment,” but if artists band together to create a platform co-op where ownership and management of the enterprise would be distributed to those using the service. With this model the artists would actually be prioritized and wouldn’t have to rely on another benevolent overlord. This could also be a solution for creating a real community of artists and a network of discoverability for the patrons who fund their favourite creators. What it’s going to take is a small group of determined artists who are willing to put in the elbow grease to make a co-op happen. Take that energy you put into Patreon and really invest it back into yourself and your fellow creators.

Sources

Patreon, Kickstarter and the new patrons of the arts

No one makes a living on Patreon

Patreon

Patreon creators scramble as payments are mistakenly flagged as fraud

Patreon CEO says the company’s generous business model is not sustainable as it sees rapid growth

Comparing Patreon and Memberful

A Shareable Explainer: What is a Platform Co-op?

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There’s No Place Like (A Digital) Home


When the web was in its nascent years I was too young to understand the possibilities it held. Although I did grow up digitally, and I think it helped that my dad was a computer programmer and our basement was packed full of PCs (at least 6 or 7) that he was constantly rolling his chair back and forth to. The whir of the fans was audible from the hall. Aside from coding he also ran a blog, one of those original blogs that Kottke reminisces over. According to my mom it was a place for him to vent and rant about all the things he disliked about the world, and there were other bloggers who hyperlinked to him and joined in the conversation. These are the times Derakhshan, Kottke, Meyer and Kolbert are nostalgic for, that they remember as golden years where the web was the next open space to pioneer. My personal anecdote was taking place in the late 90s and early 2000s to give context. To me, reflecting back on this now I see my dad as the equivalent to a cranky old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn (digitally). At the time, I was none the wiser and was tinkering away on my own digital expeditions, dutifully typing in the URLs I knew by heart to take me to the websites deemed safe by my parents.

Since I was five-years-old I was learning the way of the World Wide Web and discovering the places I fit in. There was always something tangible about the web for me, that each webpage had its own feeling and some were more welcoming than others, so when reading Frank Chimero’s “The Good Room” I deeply identified with connecting physical space with digital space. At eight-years old I was already coding my Neopets page to my liking with simple HTML (putting in a little MP3 player, changing the background and type colour etc). At 10-years-old I was starting to explore beyond the designated websites to meet my curiosity and needs. I was (and am) a writer, and I wanted to find other writers because I wanted to get feedback and not feel like I was just writing into the void. A need to find a digital space that meets my current creative needs is always what has pushed me to migrate from platform to platform.

This is when I found a community of writing RPGs, where you could collaborate with other writers and develop your characters in the agreed upon setting. The platform we used was a repurposed chat-board (for the life of me I can’t remember the platform’s name), but the URL would look like www.RPG_name.platformname.com. There were limits with the look and construction of the website, but as I got older and found more digitally experienced communities it went from the default structure and colours, to a more customized platform where programmers had worked their magic with HTML to the point where these platforms barely retained their original structure. Of course, this added to the “feel” of the place, but what made the website home or not was the community who existed on the platform. We never knew each others real names, only our created monikers (which is a whole other tangent I could go on, about having the ability to rename yourself and create a persona that you want without judgment). But what we did know, was that we were a supportive network of likeminded writers who helped each other hone our writing styles. Where are they now, who knows? And those URLs have long since expired or turned to digital ghost towns.

With the fallout of these RPGs I migrated to Tumblr at 15-years-old, where I began to code the digital nook I’d carved out for myself. The complaint here, as discussed by Alex Singh, is that this nook isn’t really mine, that this nook that I’d created really belonged to Tumblr and I was a visiting guest while they profited off the content I created. Which is true, because look at that nook now. Since Tumblr went on a censorship kick it removed over half of the content I’d curated, and so what if I’d spent hours coding my “blog” to look and feel the way I wanted it to because Tumblr didn’t care. They don’t care about artists’ creative expression or the need to have a community to express that, all they (aka Yahoo, who owns them) care about is turning a profit and getting back on the App Store. These benevolent overlords are only benevolent so long as it serves them, and this is what happens when they decide a venture is no longer profitable: you get kicked off your digital plot of land. Now here I am, wandering the digital landscape again. I’ve been a nomad all my life, and the metaphor I’d use is more like a traveling bard hopping from village to village… and moving on when I either get evicted or the village burns down.

As time goes on I find myself seeking more and more “open” spaces where I’m free to build the place and community that I like, or to at least create my space where an already established community exists. This is why I currently feel un-homed, because for the first time in nearly 20-years I don’t have a digital space that feels like my own. Alex Singh’s twitter thread claims that we’re working under a digital feudal system––Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. where we create the content and the platform reaps the reward. Alex pines for the time of digital nomads, where we were free to roam. I can understand the desire to have a non-commercialized webspace that is that limitless space of possibilities it once claimed to be, instead of feeling like your choices are limited to bouncing between the various social networks. Because what happens when you don’t fit into one of those networks? Where does your digital-self belong? I’m still searching.

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The Good, The Bad, and the Ever-Waser

It’s easy to put sets of beliefs into neat little categories, and I’m not saying this is a bad thing when Adam Gopnik does this in his article “The Information.” It’s a natural thing for us to do, to try and make sense of a complicated and confusing world by simplifying it. Our relationship with technology is complicated, so there’s relief when we simplify society’s relationship with it into three camps. On one extreme of the spectrum there’s the Never-Betters who hail the power and innovation of technology––they’re positive and optimistic. On the other extreme there’s the Better-Nevers who mourn for the past and fear the rapid change of technology––they’re negative and pessimistic. Right in the middle there’s the Ever-Wasers, who like the neutral party they are, believe that technology has always been a thing in modernity and that some people are going to enjoy the change and some people won’t, that these advancements bring positive effects and negative ones.

Like many binaries in life (sexuality or political preference for example) this Never-Better-Better-Never-Ever-Waser categorization falls on a spectrum, a sliding scale if you will and you can fall anywhere in between. These socially constructed binaries are a way of simplifying complicated relationships, and while they’re nice and easy they’re only a start to understanding these relationships and that while we may fall on the spectrum, we can also fall totally outside of it.

I’m not going to spend this blog post deconstructing binaries, and if we’re using Gopnik’s Never-Better-Better-Never-Ever-Waser binary then I’d have to say I fall in the Ever-Waser box, with a slight inclination to Never-Better (but I don’t sport rose-coloured glasses). As for society as a whole, well they’re all over the map and I don’t think you can make such a sweeping generalization to where they fall on the spectrum (or outside of it). As for myself, I don’t believe in new technology being inherently good, and I also don’t believe in it being evil. New technology simply is, and it depends on how we use it that makes it good or bad.

Whenever we’re debating the positives and negatives of our relationship with new technology I always have Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man running through my brain. Yes, this is crazy dated since it’s from the 60s, and wow times certainly have changed, but I think the core of what he was saying still remains. Mark Federman breaks down this phrase in his essay “What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message.” The “message” is not “the content or use of the innovation, but the change in inter-personal dynamics that the innovation brings with it.” The “medium” is any extension of ourselves, something that allows us “to do more than our bodies could do on their own.” The point that McLuhan is trying to make is that we can understand the nature of these innovations through the behavioral changes they create within our society. It’s not the content of the internet that matters, it’s how it changes our behaviour that reveals something about us and therefore the medium (the internet). The medium is neither good nor bad, it’s how we interact with it that decides that.

Which brings me to Frank Chimero’s piece “The Good Room,” where he writes “technology’s influence is not a problem to solve through dominance; it’s a situation to navigate through clear goals and critical thinking. Attentiveness is key.” It’s this critical thinking that is key when we engage with technology. We need to consider if what we’re doing is for the betterment of society or not. Unfortunately, what a “better” world is depends on the person you ask. This blog post is not going to deconstruct the values of good and evil and the subjectivity of that either.

Technologies live and die, change and evolve and they are always going to benefit someone, and simultaneously be a detriment to someone else. It all depends on who you are and how you’ll use the new innovation. One can hope for that utopian vision of open knowledge and the infinite expansion of the mind, and hopefully prevent a Terminator-esque robot take-over dystopia but in the end the choice is yours.