The Great Seduction

Review of John Lanchester's I.O.U

A couple of years ago, while doing background research for a novel, the British writer John Lanchester discovered the global economic crisis. Realizing that he'd "stumbled across the most interesting story I've ever found," Lanchester began to follow the crisis closely. I.O.U: Why Everyone Owes Everyone And No One Can Pay is the result of his observations. We all owe Lanchester a nonquantitative debt of gratitude for this lovely little book: I.O.U is a must-read for anyone with even a cursory interest in the reasons for the most serious global economic downturn since the Great Depression.

As the author of works such as The Debt To Pleasure, his Whitbread and Hawthornden prize-winning debut, Lanchester brings a novelist's wit, narrative skills, and appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition to today's financial crisis. While a 19^th-century novelist like Balzac spent his creative energy writing fictional accounts of systemic financial impropriety, a 21^st-century novelist like Lanchester finds himself composing a factual account of a story so unbelievable that, were it presented as a novel or movie script, would be dismissed by critics as ludicrously far-fetched.

Yes, Lanchester tells a truly tall tale....

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Internet Freedoms and Internet Radicals

Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a commendable speech about Internet freedom at the Newseum journalism museum in Washington, shifting the focus of American foreign policy from the analog certainties of the 20th century to the digital confusion of the 21st century. Clinton laid out a new focus of American foreign policy, prioritizing the open digital network, what she called “the freedom to connect,” as a central value in determining the credibility of overseas regimes.

While Clinton spoke optimistically about the power of the Internet to create an open society, she also recognized the profound economic and political problems created by the digital revolution, acknowledging that “those who use the Internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities” and that “governments and citizens must have confidence that the networks at the core of their national security and economic prosperity are safe and resilient. … Our ability to bank online, use electronic commerce, and safeguard billions of dollars in intellectual property are all at stake if we cannot rely on the security of our information networks.”.....

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On Amazon versus Macmillan

The problem with much analysis of the old-versus-new media wars (including some of my own, I confess) is that we always assume that there’s a moral struggle going on, that the real battle is between fairness and injustice, and that, in the best Hollywood tradition, good will eventually triumph over evil.

Take, for example, last weekend’s battle between Macmillan and Amazon over e-book pricing. The real story is amorally simple: Macmillan, one of the world’s big six publishing multinationals (and, full disclosure, the publisher of my next book), wanted Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) to conform to Macmillan’s so-called “agency model” arrangement for selling electronic books, which involves Macmillan determining e-book prices (from $5.99 to $14.99) and giving Amazon a 30 percent commission on each sale.

Amazon, which currently sells all e-books at $9.99 and pays a 50 percent of the list hardcover price commission on each sale, refused. So Macmillan threatened to pull its e-books out of the store, which, in turn, resulted in Amazon pulling all Macmillan’s physical books from Amazon’s entire book store. After some obligatory huffing and puffing over the weekend, Amazon eventually backed down and put Macmillan’s physical books back into its e-commerce store......

READ ON AT INTERNETEVOLUTION