IN SEARCH OF THE NEW FRAMERS – THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO FRAME THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeMining the Digisphere Department 
I’m continuing to squirrel away on work to do with marketing my books via the Kindle (to be followed by print) but the more time I spend in the DIGISPHERE - which I define as Internet + Computer Power + (a new wave of brilliant) Software + Mindset - the more I am convinced that we don’t as yet fully appreciate this extraordinary resource we have at our disposal. It’s much more than a giant encyclopedia crossed with instant communications technologies and leavened with multimedia entertainment capabilities. It’s a synergistic environment. The totality is vastly more powerful than the sum of its parts. It is also – both currently and potentially – a problem solving tool of unprecedented power and application.

But are we using it this way? My general sense is that we’re using it tactically to increasingly great effect – sometimes for good and sometimes to our detriment - but we’re not yet using it adequately to get to grips with our more fundamental problems. Yet I am convinced that the answers are out there and that with the aid of the digisphere, we can find them.

This viewpoint leads me to a number of conclusions: 

• We are neither asking the right questions nor framing the questions correctly. We are letting our various ideologies get in the way of our reasoning to a degree which is downright frightening.
• We haven’t given nearly enough thought to the fact the availability of the digisphere means we need to rethink how we do just about everything and particularly how we work. 
• We are absolutely failing to appreciate the sheer power of what we have at our disposal together with the fact that this power and its related capabilities is increasing geometrically. 
• We are in serious danger of letting this power be controlled by special interests to the detriment of democracy and the public good. 
• We need to change the Constitution to deal with this. NOTE: I’ll be developing these thoughts in a separate paper, but my essential point is that most of the big problems we are facing only exist because we are not bothering to solve them. They are no longer intractable. Our current addiction to ideologies – so much easier than thinking - may be an exception. 

Department of Incredibly Ingenious Solutions 
Want the font of your choice to appear in every just as you intended? Check out WebInk http://www.extensis.com/en/WebINK/index.jsp and drool. Being of a graphic turn of mind, I’ve been looking for something like this for some time.

Department of People Who Really Do Seem To Know What They Are Doing 
LinkedIn is a professional network made of some 80 million of the sort of people it tends to be advantageous to network with. It’s business oriented rather than social and, based upon my experience so far, surprisingly effective. However, I would have made much more progress if I had had a guide because it’s not entirely clear at first – or even later on - how everything works. Enter a lady with the rather glamorous name of Kristina Jaramillo who really does seem to know which fork one should use (metaphorically speaking) when in such illustrious company. - Kristina@getlinkedinhelp.com  and http://www.GetLinkedInHelp.com Her phone number is 609-306-6205

Department of Really Good Thrillers 
I hate to boast but since self-promotion is the American Way and this is my blog, I probably should. Let me compromise by quoting Cosmopolitan on Games Of the Hangman:

“The hunt for the Hangman drives the plot with all the urgency of the Indy 500, but the author never sacrifices character to action – a rare grace in this genre… A truly captivating, atmospheric, un-putdownable read.”

The new books will be Kindled very soon – and the wait will be worth it.

DRAGONS, FIRE & HORNETS; & THE DUMBING-DOWN OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC

Cover of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Dear You—

I’m just finishing the third book in the admirable The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series. It’s called The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest - in the unlikely event you’ve been stuck down a mine shaft and you haven’t heard of it. The second volume is The Girl Who Played With Fire. All are deservedly blockbusters.

Though I’m enjoying the book thoroughly – it is making me recall some of the thoroughly bad editing advice I have received over the years (I have received some good advice as well) and wonder about two things: the dumbing-down of America, and the amount de facto censorship – principally enforced self-censorship - which exists in this Land of the Free of ours.

The two are connected because one of the core beliefs of many mass market media U.S. editors seems to be that the American reader is too dumb and too ignorant to deal with anything other that genre books, and that virtually all exposition and introspection should be eliminated from a thriller (to give but one example) because the typical reader has neither the intelligence nor the patience to follow anything other than a formulaic storyline.

This arrogant attitude isn’t confined to the book business. It’s not universal, but it’s prevalent throughout the media and entertainment business, and, as a consequence, has become something of a self fulfilling prophecy. If you put out a steady diet of mediocre work, you lower the standard. Dumbness, it appears, is infectious and features a ratcheting effect. You don’t stay dumb. You get dumber.

For all our human imperfections, I have come to the conclusion that the American people are more being dumbed down than innately dumb. Indeed there is extraordinary talent here. But pockets of talent do not compensate for a population that has lost its sense of cognitive excellence and is content with bread and circuses. Crass commercialism focused on the lowest common denominator, and the most cynical abuse of the First Amendent by the Rich and Corporate Interests, solely for reasons of power and profit, have a great deal to answer for. And I write that as a believer in capitalism. I just don't believe that dumbing down your market is good business.

Clearly the author of the Dragoon Tattoo trilogy, Stieg Larsen, a Swede, writing in Swedish, was unconcerned with the beliefs and practices of American editors because he has violated just about every one of their commandments, and in the process demonstrated through the extraordinary success of his books in the U.S.,that many American readers may be a lot brighter than they are credited with being, and that maybe readers know best.

The following are just a small selection of the editorial mandates and prejudices that Stieg Larsen defied with such verve and vigor:

• Keep exposition to a minimum. 
• Avoid introspection.
• Don’t have too many characters.
• Make sure your main protagonists don’t do anything your readers would disapprove of.
• Make sure your lead is an American Set your story in America.

I could go on, but this mindset is too depressing; and yet these attitudes are typical of the people whose output pervades, informs and influences our lives to the extraordinary extent it does in this infotainment oriented economy of ours. I’ll expand on this theme in future blogs, but believe strongly that we need to wake up to the fact that the mass media are powerful, largely unconcerned with the public good, and playing no small role in pushing this nation into entirely preventable decline.

On could make a very strong case that dumbing-down - the poisoning of the public mind -constitutes a very real ‘Crime Against Humanity.’

The underlying reasons for Stieg Larsen's appeal is that he treats his readers as intelligent adults.




Victor.