At ScienceOnline today, I moderated a spirited session on the future of books. I kicked things off by talking about where we stand at the moment. Ebooks may still constitute a small fraction of book sales, but that fraction is swelling fast. While many ebooks are simply digitized text-dumps of the books you can find in physical bookstores, new kinds of ebooks are emerging. With new services like Smashwords and Createspace at Amazon, the real possibility has emerged of blogifying books–that is, writers publishing books for themselves without a spot of ink touching a single piece of paper. I described my own experiences with Brain Cuttings, which made clear to me that even in this new world, it still helps to work with people who know how to make books.
Author: Matt Kristoffersen
At his website, Edge, John Brockman asks a big question each year and fields responses from scientists and writers (and scientist-writers).
This year’s question is “What scientific concept would improve everyone’s toolkit?”
My answer is, “Life as a side effect.”
As of this writing, Brockman has 155 other answers, too, so peruse and muse to your heart’s delight.
Originally published January 15, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
The latest blizzard socked us pretty hard here in New England. If the streets and runways are clear enough tomorrow, I will be attending a conference called ScienceOnline in North Carolina for the next few days. One of the sessions I’m supposed to moderate is called “Death to Obfuscation.” Ed Yong and I concocted it as a workshop in which we would share our thoughts on good science writing. I’m going to lay out some of my thoughts here in advance, partly to clarify what I’m going to say–Ed and I are a bit nervous that what we thought would be a pretty basic session has exploded into a 60+-person crush, infiltrated by seasoned journalists. And if, on Friday, I’m still stranded here, the whole undertaking won’t have been a complete waste…
Here’s my quick visit to TV land this afternoon. I do wonder why my face is in a permanent scowl. On the inside, I can be very cheerful, honest!
Originally published January 11, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Another week, another snowpocalypse.
With a foot of snow looking like a sure thing tomorrow, the Guilford Free Library has rescheduled my upcoming talk to Monday, January 24.
As I mentioned yesterday, the talk is called, “Step Inside Your Brain.” I’ll be discussing some of the cooler nooks and crannies of our skulls, drawing partly on my new ebook, Brain Cuttings.
The talk is free, but you’re encouraged to reserve a spot. For more details, check out the library web site.
Originally published January 11, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.