I hope to have a somewhat similar experience with this class. Maybe not with the singing, but with a newly discovered talent and lots of money in the end? I'd be down.
This class is much different than any other general I’ve
taken! I’m pretty excited that at the
end of the semester, we’ll actually have a finished product to show for
it! After thinking long and hard about
how to organize our chapters and where my book, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor, fits in, I decided
on a few potential ideas to research.
My first contribution to the project will be about how
piracy is becoming more and more prevalent due to the availability of books
online through such platforms as Amazon and Goodreads. I did a little bit of digging online and
found this one slideshow that talked about the rise in piracy since the rise in
eBook popularity. There’s definitely a
correlation there, since hackers are amazing and know how to download
everything and turn it into a PDF that’s easily available for public consumption. This causes authors and publishers to suffer
because it’s really hard for them to keep a hold on their content and digital
rights. To me, this relates to how the
Logan family, in my book, struggled to retain their lands while their white
neighbors tried to take them away. The
white neighbors felt like the land should be their own property, just as the
current internet users feel an entitlement to content online today. It’ll work together, I promise.
My other idea, definitely not as well developed, would be
how Cassie, a young girl growing up at the time, has to reconcile a collision
of worlds around her, and how that relates to students or the younger
generations using Goodreads and Amazon as study tools and reliable, trusted
sources, rather than the traditional study methods (dictionaries, solo work,
etc.) I’ll admit, I’m not quite sure how
to research this one yet. But I’ll get
there! I think there will be a lot of
papers on online research, the benefits of it, and how to reconcile/make the
most of the old and the new.
As far as putting together the actual book, my real concerns
are only making sure that everything is cohesive and supports each other. What if we have two contributors with
different viewpoints on a similar topic?
Is that allowed? Does that take
away from our book, or does it add to the validity by exploring all the
options? These are just a few things I’ve
been wondering. But our class is pretty
good at coming together and getting stuff done, so I’m not worried!
Ha I love the High School Musical comparison! I definitely think that your ideas are unique for the book! One thing that your idea on piracy made me think about is how it's interesting that we can illegally download books now (our ancestors would have thought that's absolutely crazy!) but once we have them, it's possible still to read them on our devices such as our Kindle because we can put content on that isn't just bought off of Amazon. I wonder if they have a way to filter that to try to dissuade people from doing stuff like that? I don't know if that totally makes sense, ha it's just a thought I had!
ReplyDeleteI think our ideas are somewhat similar, but I'm focusing more on how the platforms are almost ideal for self-publishing. We'll see how that goes as I actually write it. I think Your chapter could go before or after mine because it might be a good transition between the rise of self-publishing and the effects piracy is having on publishers and self-publishers? Maybe?
ReplyDeleteI think your chapter could include a call to action to strengthen anti-piracy internet software, or at least that the Kindle should include some kind of anti-piracy software (that people who are more tech-savy than me would probably still find a way around). I also wonder about opposing opinions, but I think when we come together in class to establish what we want each chapter to say, it will be easier.
ReplyDeleteOpposing opinions or views on similar topics is a great thing to shoot for. No problems there. I'd be careful on the piracy issue, since it can be so easily reduced to broad cultural arguments that give more heat than light. I think Saren's comment about the issue of being able to load whatever we want onto a Kindle device holds some promise. Control is not just about intellectual property, by the way, but about standardizing practices. iTunes largely defeated music piracy by making it easy and desirable to shop and consume legal, paid music. Something similar is happening with Kindle. Even though you can get ebooks for free, it's harder. Why not pay a small amount and have it work seamlessly within your Kindle library?
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