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Lessig Revises Book With Public Wiki
Silent_E writes "Always wanted to see your words in print?
The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Lawrence Lessig is revising his book 'Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace' using a wiki-based, public discussion. The proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated. . All royalties are going to Creative Commons, plus the advance. "
Always wanted to see your words in print?
Mine are, usually after "How do you plea?"
Trolling is a art,
Think of the comments....
Because that wiki is about to be destroyed!
Open Wiki's still don't make sense and people still don't get it. Will there be Goatse on Lessig's Wiki?
I've always thought that writing a book collaboratively is an interesting idea. It's just an extension of the childhood game where you write a word on a piece of paper, fold it over, and pass it along.
However, I always thought about a fictional book.
Get your own free personal location tracker
This is like the domino effect. If America gives up property ownership in some cases, then the rest of property ownership will fall. We know what this means ... Communism !!!
Slashdot does count as "print", doesn't it?
Have you read my blog lately?
I can see the title of their chapter "Downloaders are dirty thieves."
Author's name should be revised to ..... Anonymous Coward
I think you have a freaking best seller on your hand there.
Hieraki is a project which aims to create a wiki with pages hierarchically arranged instead of interlinked like on a traditional wiki. It uses the notion of Books, Chapters and Pages.
Its the main means of documentation for the rubyonrails project and is used for writing documentation at several hosting services like textdrive and universities.
Disclaimer: I'm the author.
Nice. Two links, one with a pesky registration. The second is an entire book.
Meh!
Can someone who has read the book comment on it?
>I can see the title of their chapter "Downloaders are PENIS dirty thieves."
I laughed. I cried. I tore out the pages and used them for toilet paper.
If you're interested in reading it for yourself, you are welcome to my copy.
Professor's online publishing experiment
.com and edit them into a printed version of the book.
LESSIG INVITES HELP TO UPDATE 1999 BOOK
By Michael Bazeley
Mercury News
Further nudging outward the boundaries of online publishing, Stanford University Professor Larry Lessig will put his 1999 book ``Code'' online today and invite Internet users to help him write an updated version.
A noted copyright expert and proponent of free software, Lessig is putting the 297-page treatise about technology, culture and regulation on the Web in the form of a ``wiki,'' a site that can allow people to freely edit its contents. The law professor will take the contributions at http://codebook.jot/
``Code has become a part of cyberspace law culture,'' Lessig said. ``And what I found most interesting is that people outside of the academic world talk about it and use it a lot. I was really trying to find a way to encourage them to contribute to the evolution of `Code.' ''
Lessig said he also wanted to use the process to better understand the concept of wikis.
Lessig is the latest in a string of authors -- often from the technology world -- to open up their writings to the public. Former Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor published chapters of his book ``We the Media'' online as they were written and sought feedback. And East Bay author J.D. Lasica allowed online readers to edit chapters of his book ``Darknet: Remixing the Future of Movies, Music & Television.''
Similarly, a project called Wikipedia has been building an online encyclopedia almost exclusively from contributions of users.
Lessig's venture may be the most ambitious yet among book authors. Where feasible, he intends to use significant portions of reader contributions in the new edition. While he has not yet figured out how to handle authorship and credit contributors, Lessig intends to donate any book royalties to Creative Commons, a non-profit organization he founded to offer an alternative to traditional copyright licenses.
Palo Alto start-up JotSpot is providing the wiki space for Lessig's project.
Like Lessig, JotSpot founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer have an interest in consumer digital rights, dating back to their founding of the consumer-rights lobbying group Digitalconsumer.org in 2001.
``It was a nice alignment of the things I care about at a personal level,'' Kraus said. ``And it's an opportunity to showcase the technologies that JotSpot is developing.''
I might be using a voice-browsing-enabled PDA without a keyboard you insensitive clod!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Looks like they've only been sure about the version numbering in the toolbar on the right: "CODE v2" ... (which would be a strange kind of follow-up to a highly successful v1.0)
Everywhere else, with the strange notation of "Code v.2" it looks like this is about trying to write a work that will never make it out of beta, stalling at v0.2
While this may seem like a compelling idea, I suspect editors will be in much higher demand than contributors. I don't believe this is a successful strategy in producing a coherent volume, since paid authors have a hard enough time getting their works published. Accepting submissions from all comers, particularly those professing some "expertise" in the given subject, is bound to lead to massive quantities of unusable material.
I wrote a letter to the editor of Science Fiction Age magazine in 1993. Not only was it printed, it closed a long running debate about the contents of the magazine. I had gotten tired of reading letters complaining about the one 'fantasy' story in a 'science fiction' mag, and the supporting letters were annoying too. One month, three of the four letters printed were on this topic. So I wrote in and told the guys at the magazine to just make a decision, tell us readers what it was, and stick to it. They would then at least have our respect, if not our agreement. I think they kept the one fantasy story, and I don't remember another letter about it.
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
Shouldn't that be, "Public revises book with Lawrence Lessig" or better yet, "Lawrence Lessig Invites Public to Edit Book."
:D
The way they write headlines around here, you'd think Public is some fancy new ncurses based word processor
-theGreater Downmodded.
"Always wanted to see your words in print? The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Lawrence Lessig is hoping to get other people to do the hard work of revising his book 'Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace' using a wiki-based, public discussion. Feel free to contribute to his book safe in the knowledge there is no risk of seeing your name attached to it unless you write more than 4 new chapters"
[nt]
Not quite the same, but Neal Stephenson set up a wiki called metaweb to discuss and correct errors in his book, Quicksilver...
It's just an extension of the childhood game where you write a word on a piece of paper, fold it over, and pass it along, purple monkey dishwasher.
I think you have a freaking best seller on your hand there.
He then sold his book and made millions only to purchase an Italian, lesbian monkey who would...
Anyone care to finish?
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Given that Larry Lessig is on the board of the Free Software Foundation, it is a bit strange that he uses a wiki engine which is proprietary, even though free (and, in many ways, superior) alternatives such as MediaWiki (the engine used by Wikipedia) are readily available.
"The proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated. . All royalties are going to Creative Commons, plus the advance."
How about making that "The advance and all proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated to Creative Commons."?
Yeah its a nit pick, but I'm in that kind of mood. (Now watch while some smartass, finds something wrong with my post).
Paid Authors generally are the ones who get published. It's the unpublished unpaid ones who have it hard!
The web is often viewed as a great information source (especially since finding informations got easier via *working* search engines).
But it could be even FAR better, more correct, more complete, better interlinked, if publishing was easier, more collaborative and on a higher level than html.
This is exactly what a public wiki does so easily.
The main problem currently is, that about 95% of the web users still don't know wiki at all - it could make so much things so much more productive!
It is a building block of free information and free collaboration.
..brutilly rip your fingers off so you can never post again...
...only to become a new slashdot editor. No one would ever be able to tell the difference.
ok, so there is lots to say about authoring by a single individual vs. wiki-mediated hordes (and i suppose James Michener's enterprise falls somewhere in between?:).
but what does the slashDot crowd make of Lessig's ARGUMENTS in Code, about code? what should CodeV2 make sure to address? are you going to weigh in?
Finally a reason to say Kwisatch Haderach! This is a perfect description of Lessig. Come to think of it, we really don't have any other compact term that describes the rare combination of vision, talent and selflessness Lessig demonstrates. --At least none that I can think of anyway.
Good Call.
Blogging because I can...
There is actually an entire wiki dedicated to collaborative writing of books already.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.