http://www.davidworlock.com Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:07:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I am used to the questions . Many arise from a need to challenge or or a need for re-assurance or a fear of silence . So the person who asked , this week , " what is the technology launch that is the best indicator of media futures ?" ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/03/contains-no-nuts/ Phil Archer, senior patriarch of the BBC's fifty year old radio soap opera "The Archers", died this week.  One of the memories aired recalled his habit of talking his problems through with a favourite sow.  The therapeutic value of this cannot be doubted (think only of the Empress of Blandings).  ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/men-who-talk-to-pigs/ I saw a statistic the other day in the February edition of the splendid The Charleston Report (http://charlestonco.com/), which started me thinking , and I didn't stop until I reached a recent note on business directories from  InfoCommerce , and then read Chuck Richard's note for Outsell on competition in ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/only-connect/ I have to be "moved to speak", which is why the progress of this blog is so jerkily irregular.  A childhood fascination with George Whitefield, the eighteenth century hedge preacher in my native Gloucestershire, taught me about the compulsion to speak out.  Whitefield once spoke to a crowd of 10,000 ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/speaking-with-voices/ I am getting into serious trouble.  Previously kindly critics of this blog are ganging up on me. "Why all this Death, Doom and Disaster?" writes one.  "Are there no positive trends in your dystopic vision?" says another, "try hitting the keyboard after opening a bottle of wine".  And again, "You ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/taking-a-global-view/ I am writing a lecture this week on the future history of electronic publishing and it is giving me a creepy "deja vu all over again" sort of feeling.  For a start, when I came into the publishing business in 1967, before we had an "information marketplace" and long before ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/post-imperial-publishing/ I was working the floor of a trade fair the other day when I was stopped in my tracks by an old friend who said, rather wistfully I thought, "you see, we don't innovate here. The Board were all born before the middle of the last century, and I think ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/its-all-called-innovation/ Yesterday a new book was born.  The fact that we can still write that with a common conviction that we know what happens when a book is launched is one enduring phenomenon.   The fact that the book, which describes in loving detail the end of the line for one ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/02/the-master-of-newsonomics/ John Sargent is a good man and he is right.  I have been wanting to write that sentence ever since I read his full page letter to staff and authors yesterday which explained why Macmillan titles are no longer available via Amazon.  I shall go on searching out and selecting ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/01/we-who-serve-the-machine/ Well, OK , I haven't actually got an iPad, or been in the same room as one, but I did see the launch and the demos and I am left wondering.  At the same time, the annual Gartner predictions reached the top of the pile.  And since I still had ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/01/ipad-you-ponder/