(no subject)

Sometimes I think that I wrote better creatively, and more, without the distraction of the internet. It didn't exist for the first 30 years of my life, well it did, but not in its current form. At most, we had a few search engines and list-serves. I didn't get email until I turned 30. I remember a friend gave me a dilbert magnet, which I've long since lost, which said I've got email so I am or something to that effect. In law school, we had lexis/nexis - a legal database of court-cases and legal judgements, which you could access via a subscription on your computer or internet. And I used a mac, the computer was bigger than the screen. Windows didn't arrive until 1998. When I was on the cusp of 30.

Cell phones? Didn't own one until I turned 37. And I didn't own a smartphone until I was well into my 40s. Actually, I think I got a Kindle first, and that took a while. I even remember a discussion with a friend on a train way back in the 1999, about whether or not e-readers would ever take off. Neither of us could imagine reading the things. The first versions were so un-wieldly, this was before Amazon of course. Amazon sort of reinvented the wheel in regards to e-books, electronic distribution of products, and book selling in general.

DVDs didn't arrive until the 21st Century, I think. They may have been floating about here and there in 1999. The librarians on the list serve that I was on, were certainly discussing them. How CD's would go out of fashion (they haven't), tape or VHS would disappear almost completely (they have) and DVD's would take over -- because you could put so much data on them. [Although no one predicted that vinyl records would make a comeback.] Librarians think about data storage, organization of data, management of data and accessing data in a quick and easy way. Publishers or data producers worry about protecting their data, distribution of their data, and making money off of it. The two groups were in some respects diametrically opposed. Back in 1998-2002, I was on copyright list-serves with both of them, separate list-serves, of course. They'd have killed each other if they'd been on the same one. The Publishers were terrified that once their data became accessible electronically via the internet or web (at that time people were fighting over what to call it) and they were right to be terrified. Meanwhile the Librarians were fighting to make the data accessible to as many people as possible for free. (The Librarians for the most part, won that battle. I can't feel all that sorry for the publishers, they are greedy assholes who don't really care about the developers/creators of the data, the environment or people for that matter and think their role as distributors of data makes them King. Seeing them get kicked by the information age, and lose that power, has been a karmic delight. And by publishers - I mean music and book publishers.)

So, as you can see it wasn't until my mid-late thirties that this took off. Prior to that I got a lot more writing done and had a lot less distractions. Because the internet is crack for writers. It's also crack for evil marketing specialists and promoters, but that's a whole other post.

A woman spends a year reading a book from every country in the world

Watch on YouTube

What touched me or rather has stuck with me since reading the article and listening to the Ted Talk is :

In the fall of 2012, Ann Morgan was wrestling with a problem few of us can identify with. No matter how hard she tried, she simply could not find a book to read in English from the tiny African nation of Sao Tome and Principe. At a loss, she appealed for help on Facebook and Twitter, only to be deluged with offers from around the world to translate whatever work she chose from the Portuguese-speaking island. A small army of volunteers in Europe and the United States ultimately came to her rescue, translating chunks of Olinda Beja's 140-page The Shepherd's House into English.

The internet provides us with access to millions of minds around the globe, like-minded and otherwise. If we run into a fact-checking issue, we can ask if anyone knows or can verify an answer. If we are attempting to create our own language for a sci-fi novel, we can go online and a friend from miles away - can within a few hours, provide us with a way of doing it. If we want something edited? Go online and ask. And if we need something translated? We can go online and find translators.

People love to help one another in various ways, they just can't always find the right avenue.
The internet and correspondence/social media sites such as this one pave the way for that to happen.

I can't begin to list the number of times people on my correspondence list helped me out. Or the number of times, we helped each other out.

And I was thinking just the other night, how much I love reading journals and corresponding with people from around the globe. That I like being part of a "global" community. I love the diversity.
As a child, I used to have pen pals from various sections of the world. Every time an opportunity arose to write letters to someone from another country, I grabbed it. I had French pen pals (I was supposed to be writing in French to them...but sucked at it, so wrote in English, since they spoke and wrote English. They didn't mind -- it aided their English. But I learned all about the French educational system and judicial system from one pen pal, Natalie Regis, who was a Parisian and going on to law school to become a judge. ) Also had a pen pal from Turkey, who I adored. It's why I made an effort to visit Turkey in 2000, because I wanted to see the land and world that I'd read about as a teen.

The internet's gift is that now we can talk to people across space and time, with little effort. Share our stories, our travels, our picture, and our thoughts. Just the other night, I was flipping through an Englishman's photos of Dresden, Germany. A town that I knew two things about, outside of it being located in Germany. 1) It's the setting of Kurt Vonnegurt's novel Slaughter-House 5, and 2)it was the most bombed town in Germany during WWII. (OR so I've been told.)

And, we can learn not to mention access books, movies, television shows, and music from around the world without having to wait for someone to decide to distribute it. Without the internet, I'd have never self-published my book or gotten it distributed...it was far harder to do prior, and far more expensive. Nor would it have gotten to as large a readership.

Oh, almost forgot - HERE's THE BOOK LIST OF BOOKS IN EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT SHE READ

(no subject)

1. Queen Sugar starring Rutina Westley, amongst others, is a television series that is produced, written, and directed primarily by women, and a diverse group of women from all races and cultures. It focuses on an African American family in Lousiana attempting to save their dead father's sugar plantation, which is in heavy debt. It's not a melodrama or a soap opera, so much as a family drama about how people are struggling with racism, being disenfranchised, and finding their own place in the world. Took me a little while to get into, but it is rather good. And I find it holding my attention. It airs on Wednesday nights on OWN.

2. I've given up on Marvel Agents of Shield finally. For various reasons. The main one being that it sat on my DVR for the last six months and I couldn't be bothered to watch it. It no longer holds my interest and I just don't care what happens to anyone any longer.

3. Woman in Gold - movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren. While the performances are good, the movie is a bit stale and slow. I lost interest during it. I've admittedly grown weary of WWII films. Although the back story of a painting that I've seen in person a few times, was intriguing and it is a striking painting.

4. Star Wars The Force Awakens -- I re-watched this via Showtime. Liked it better the second time I watched it. Possibly because I could rewind and watch the interesting bits again. And hear the dialogue. Often in movie theaters, it's hard to hear the quieter moments or focus on them as well.

I noticed a few things.

( cut for spoilers in case there's anyone out there who hasn't seen the movie and wants to )

Fun to speculate in any event. That's what obsessed me about the first movies...the speculation. For years I wondered what had caused Anakin to become Vader. Then we got the prequels and I was horribly disappointed, mainly because I liked what I'd come up with better. Note to writers - don't give your fans too long to speculate or come up with their own version.

But the mysteries certainly lay the ground-work for a heap of fanfic. I was tempted to write fanfic while watching it.