isen.blog: The bind in Google Unbound

isen.blog: The bind in Google Unbound: "isen.blog

David S. Isenberg's musings about loci of intelligence and stupidity.
Friday, January 19, 2007

The bind in Google Unbound
Yesterday, at Cory Doctorow's rather public BoingBoing invitation, I went to Unbound, Google's look at the future of publishing. It was absolutely excellent, with Chris 'Long-Tail' Anderson, Seth 'Permission Marketing' Godin, Cory 'BoingBoing' Doctorow, Stephen 'Freakonomics' Dubner, and Tim 'O'Reilly' O'Reilly, a bunch of other good speakers (including friend David Worlock) and an audience that was 80% traditional publishing industry and 20% BoingBoing readers.

Wow, if you have never heard Seth Godin speak, do yourself a favor next time you get the chance and go. Cory's even better; somebody should follow him around doing audio-video because every Cory moment is a genuine original. These guys are the masters of our era.

The day's theme was about the Deep Structure of publishing. To wit, publishing is not about printing and selling paper with black markings on it. It is not even about authors and bookstores. The enemy isn't piracy, but obscurity. The Long Tail needs to be discoverable. The publisher of tomorrow convenes communities around people and ideas. Freedom of the press is about attention, not presses.

The audience was docile. sessions were short. There was a tension in the room because nobody wanted to offend the host, no matter that Google has announced its intent to paint the neighborhood flaming purple with lime green polka dots.

What could have been the climax of the day belonged to Tim O'Reilly, an extraordinary convener of people and ideas, who was explaining why Google Book Search was in most publishers' interests. Finally a questioner from the School of Traditional Publishing spoke up to ask Tim why Google thought it had the right to create Book Search even when the publisher of a given (copyrighted, DRMed, otherwise pwned) book objected. Hey, there's a big, gray, smelly ELEPHANT in the room.

Unfortunately for most of the audience, the microphone carrier never made it over to the questioner's chair. So most of the people didn't hear this most important question. Tim answered, the questioner followed up in an animated fashion (I didn't even get the gist, thanks to the absence of amplification), Tim got cranked up to respond . . . but the moderator cut off discussion!

Boy, howdy, did Google ever blow that one. The chance to have The Discussion On Everybody's Mind went by the boards. Readers of isen.blog know I really trust Google not to be evil. I still do, in a trust-but-verify kind of way. I also trust Google not to be closed or ignorant, and I was more than a little disappointed by what could have been a great learning experience for all at Google Unbound."