ANALY ZE T H I S !
all of this ultimately dooms the human
species to a very sad and cataclysmic
ending.
Along the way, Lanier also wanders
off into pleasantly intense digressions on
a broad variety of somewhat related topics, including Aristotle, the tenure system,
biodiversity and the concept of local optima. He too clearly loves to read.
IMPACT ON PUBLISHING
While still digesting this thoughtprovoking book, I came across George
Packer’s recent article entitled “Is
Amazon good for books?” Taking a long
hard look at Amazon.com, the website
that perhaps most fully embodies Lanier’s
concept of a Siren Server, Packer finds
that many of Lanier’s more dire predictions are already playing out there.
Packer’s particular focus is Amazon’s
impact on the publishing industry, and he
believes that the stakes here are incredibly high: “In the book business the prospect of a single owner of both the means
of production and the modes of distribution is especially worrisome; it would give
Amazon more control over the exchange
of ideas than any company in U.S. history. Even in the iPhone age, books remain
central to American intellectual life, and
perhaps to democracy.”
I wholeheartedly agree.
Just as Lanier predicts, suppliers
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and consumers alike had originally both
rushed to embrace Amazon, for like so
many technologies it seemed to magically (that is, without cost) provide all parties
with something for which they hungered.
As Packer writes, “When Amazon
emerged, publishers in New York suddenly had a new buyer that paid quickly,
sold their backlist as well as new titles,
and, unlike traditional bookstores, made
very few returns” – generating fresh revenues for publishers with little incremental investment. Meanwhile, we readers
flocked to Amazon in droves for its convenience, its variety, and its low prices.
Amazon.com today accounts for
more than 40 percent of all printed books
purchased as well as 65 percent of all
eBooks, so it is probably fair to say that
book buyers by and large still love Amazon. For us as readers, this is fortuitous,
since the number of independent bookstores in business has declined by more
than 50 percent since Amazon’s founding. However, as its share of overall book
sales has ballooned, Amazon has taken
advantage of its market power to aggressively push the terms of its agreements
with book publishers dramatically in its
own favor, often through tactics reflecting Amazon’s famously secretive and
opaque corporate culture. Meanwhile,
Packer reports, the many publishers large
and small whose businesses are now
W W W. I N F O R M S . O R G