Tom Slee has an announcement to make

by Henry Farrell on June 23, 2008

I am excited to announce that I am finally ready to write my next book. It’s going to be great. And here’s the best thing of all: you can help me write it! It’s about the Internet and how it’s changing the world. I’ve got the outline done and I was just thinking I need a research assistant to fill in the details. Then I thought – well, why just one? There are a million research assistants out there – let’s crowdsource!

Any book about the Internet needs a big idea. Not just a kind-of-big idea either, but a Great-Big-Fuck-Off-Massive Idea. The kind of idea that is so big you can’t get your head round it, and yet which you can put in a short phrase so you can trademark it. My Idea is that there are _now more ideas in the world than ever before._ What’s more, these ideas are not just stuck inside people’s heads doing nothing, but thanks to the Internet everyone is putting their ideas out there for the world to see. And then these ideas spark other ideas. So with more ideas than ever before, and better ways of getting ideas acted on, the future just has to be insanely great.

More … much more … to be found “here”:http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2008/06/my-new-book-explosion.html. The title of Chapter 6 (With Enough Eyeballs, All Ideas Are Shallow) is especially cruel. For years, I’ve been planning a vaguely similar book, which would aim at selling millions of copies to both the pop-business-sociology and ev-psych markets. It would be entitled (tada!) _The Blink Slate._ My fundamental problem has been figuring out a way to use deprecated HTML tags on hardback book jackets (sorry oldstyle Internet Explorer users – you’re not going to get the joke). Perhaps I too can crowdsource this problem to the masses of CT readers …

{ 12 comments }

1

Nick 06.23.08 at 2:59 pm

Oh dear. Shurely he meant – Things are more like the way they are now than they ever have been before . . .

2

harry b 06.23.08 at 3:16 pm

The description of chapters 7, 8 and 9 is the cruellest bit.

We should do more to promote his first book.

3

PolishAlice 06.23.08 at 3:47 pm

I think Carl Sagan already covered the infectious and exciting world of “extra-somatic knowledge(TM)”

Maybe “There’s no ‘S’ on Internet: How decentralization is fueling the new top down economy”

4

Righteous Bubba 06.23.08 at 3:48 pm

The Blink Tag (properly or cursedly blinky version at link)

I have never seen, I think,
A tag as lovely as a blink.

A tag whose “open” sits right next
To sweetly fulminating text;

A tag that blinks out “God” all day,
Should we desire to virtually pray;

A tag that may in summer swear
“IT’S TOO HOT TO FUCKING CARE”;

Upon whose closure sweet relief
For snobby coders with a beef.

Lou Montulli made the blink,
But only you can make it stink.

5

Righteous Bubba 06.23.08 at 4:05 pm

Note that your blinky cover can be achieved via appropriately tacky lenticular printing.

6

Jeff Rubard 06.23.08 at 4:21 pm

My Idea is that there are now more ideas in the world than ever before.

Well, at least he’s not a nativist, eh?

7

"Q" the Enchanter 06.23.08 at 4:25 pm

Personally, I’ll be waiting for Bubba’s forthcoming book of html poetry in the style of Alfred Joyce Kilmer.

8

nnyhav 06.23.08 at 7:26 pm

Clearly he wants to be aware of all internet traditions.

9

GeoX 06.23.08 at 8:12 pm

I have a new theory about the brontosaurus.

10

Henry 06.23.08 at 9:11 pm

Clearly he wants to be aware of all internet traditions.

Whereas John McCain is merely “aware of the Internet”:http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/The_Google.html.

11

nnyhav 06.23.08 at 11:41 pm

Senior advisors have told McCain to beware of all internet traditions.

12

vivian 06.24.08 at 2:38 am

Wow – just change a few dates and you’ve got Accelerando (a good book despite my snark).

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