The Frankfurt Book Fair covers Collaborative Futures.

Whether this form represents a challenge or indeed a threat to publishing companies is viewed differently. The booksprinters themselves are convinced of it, at any rate. “What we are doing is just one of many forms of writing and distribution that threaten the publishing houses”, according to a confident Michael Mandiberg. Publishing consultant Ehrhardt F. Heinold holds a similar view. He can certainly imagine that the growing self-publishing culture will one day make the classic publishing company superfluous. “In the USA, self-publishing is already a big issue”, as Heinold has observed.

The Japanese magazine Pen covers Collaborative Futures, the IMA Design Village, and Berlin in general

Pre-Order – for pick up $12.00 Pre-Order – US mail $17.00 Pre-Order – international mail $21.00

March 4th @ 730PM, at EYEBEAM, 540 W 21st St, NYC

Upgrade! NY presents the Collaborative Futures book Launch and talk. Collaborative Futures is a book about free collaboration written collaboratively over five days during the 2010 Transmediale Festival. TM10 locked six writers and one programmer in a Berlin hotel room (pix) to collaboratively write a book about the future of free collaboration; the authors started with only the title, and ended the week with a book. Transmediale artistic director Stephen Kovats will be on hand to join Eybeam senior fellow Michael Mandiberg and Eyebeam honorary resident Mushon Zer-Aviv will discuss the process of writing this book and some of their discoveries throughout the collaborative process. Stephen Kovatz will also talk about the “Futurity Now” concept of Transmediale10 in general and particularly in the context of the Collaborative Futures book sprint.

This event will be your first chance to get your hands on a dead-tree version of Collaborative Futures. Books will be for sale for $15 at the event, but you can pre-order now for $12.

The “Collaborative Futures” book sprint was facilitated by Adam Hyde (FlossManuals.net) and authored by Mike Linksvayer, Michael Mandiberg, Marta Peirano, Alan Toner, Mushon Zer-Aviv and several additional collaborators using the Booki software (booki.cc) by Aleksandar Erkalovic.

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Pre-order here

The German newspaper Taz.de has covered our Collaborative Futures booksprint. (English translation here) There has apparently been a lot of buzz about the book during Transmediale. I have received a lot of emails about it, mostly from people who think I am still there and want to pick up copies.

The US release will be March 4th at Eyebeam. Pre-order a copy now.

I tweeted this just now, but I feel like it deserves a bit more context. This came out of an email with Adam Hyde (his coinage!) trying to convince him or one of our collaborators in Berlin to find and scan a print version of this article about our collaborative book project. I have found that the committees reviewing my materials for tenure not only frown on all forms of online publication, they also frown on printed copies of electronic versions of documents even if they also appear in print. A scan of the meatspace dead-tree newspaper is viewed as significantly more “legitimate” than a screenshot of the same text from the newspaper’s website. They are Dead-Tree-Huggers.

Pre-Order – for pick up $12.00 Pre-Order – US mail $17.00 Pre-Order – international mail $21.00

On March 4th, we will be holding a book launch for the Collaborative Futures Book at Eyebeam. The digital version is available here, and if you are at Transmediale, you can pick up a copy, but it not, this will be your first chance to get your hands on a dead-tree version of the book. Books will be for sale for $15 at the event, but you can pre-order now for $12 and help make the print run possible.

About the book:

Over 5 days in mid January 2010 the Transmediale festival locked 6 writers and 1 programmer in a Berlin hotel room to collaboratively write a book about the future of free collaboration; the authors started with only the title, and ended the week with a book. Transmediale Artistic Director Stephen Kovats will be on hand to join Eyebeam Honorary Resident Mushon Zer-Aviv and myself to talk about the process of writing the book, and some of our discoveries in the collaborative process. Stephen Kovatz will also talk about the ‘Futurity Now’ concept of TM10 in general and particularly in the context of the Collaborative Futures book sprint.

This will be your first chance to get your hands on a dead-tree version of the book. Books will be for sale for $15 at the event, but you can pre-order now for $12 and help make the print run possible. Click here to pre-order!

The “Collaborative Futures” book sprint was facilitated by Adam Hyde (FlossManuals.net) and authored by Mike Linksvayer, Michael Mandiberg, Marta Peirano, Alan Toner, Mushon Zer-Aviv and several additional collaborators using the Booki software (booki.cc) by Aleksandar Erkalovic.

I’m on the airplane back from the Transmediale FLOSSmanuals booksprint in Berlin. In five days, six core authors, one programmer, and a handful of additional local and remote contributors collaboratively wrote, edited, and published Collaborative Futures, a book on collaboration. We started Monday morning with only two words: the title of the book. As we raised a toast to our success with the festival director Stephen Kovats at 10PM Friday, we sent the book to the printer. It is due back on Wednesday.

We worked in a large hotel room in a arts compound in Berlin that was a former factory. The first day we just talked about our personal backgrounds, and the ideas and experiences we thought were relevant to the topic. We each knew the organizer, Adam Hyde of FLOSSmanuals, and I knew Mushon Zer-Aviv who is one of my colleages from Eyebeam, but I had never met the remaining participants, Aleksandar Erkalovic, Mike Linksvayer, Alan Toner, and Marta Peirano. We didn’t even know who the other participants were until a few days began the sprint. As we introduced ourselves, our job was to write down all of the topics that came to mind, or were embedded inside of each presentation. We wrote these on post-it notes and put them up on the wall. By the time we broke for dinner there was a rainbow of 100 post it notes arrayed on the wall. We went out for dinner, and returned to arrange the notes on the wall in groupings. By the end of the night we agreed on a very very rough and rather generic outline: Introduction, Definitions, Process, Futures, Epilogue.

As we drank to our success, Stophen asked us if we ever doubted whether we would accomplish our crazy goal. I said that I never doubted, but Adam said that he was really worried when he returned the second morning to 100+ seemingly random notes on the wall, and a truly vague outline. But we started writing, each taking on a topic we were personally invested in. We wrote from 10am to midnight, with a break for dinner. We did this the remaining four days. One day we left to go to the open air Turkish markets near by to get more food for dinner. The Berliners left for the evenings, but the rest of us slept in the compound. Other than that I only left once to see a friend for a drink. We worked hard.

At the outset, Adam stated that he hoped we would write aout 17,000 words, which comes out to about 100 pages. A respectable, but thin volume. The main goal was to finish *something* and that hopefully that something would be cohesive. We ended up writing 33,000 words. We restructured the book several times, moving chapters in and out of sections, renaming, adding, and removing whole sections. We discovered topics that we realized needed to be covered, and we ended up not writing about many of the things we initially thought to be important. I can’t say for sure, as I am still way too close to the initial writing (we only finished 36 hours ago), but I really do think it is cohesive. Despite only working with each other for a total of 5 days, we quickly developed a common language, a strong working methodology that was a version of disciplined anarchy mixed with an immediate trust in each other to peer review and rewrite anything we had written ad hoc.

The book was written by artists who work with technology, and writers who write about technology, so it does take technology as a presumption. The book is very much about Free Software, and Free Culture. But what surprised all of us is that we never really talked about either of these specifically. For example, we almost never talked about licenses. What we did talk a lot about were principles and themes that related to any collaboration regardless of technological involvement or topical focus. We spent most of our time talking about about trust, openness, fairness, attribution, respect, organization, and goals. This was a collaboration that had all of these principles, plus it had great collaborators. It was an incredible success.

Security Patterns is a studio visit installation of recent laser cut work. These sculptures and drawings are made from old books laser cut with poignant words, and drawings made from industrial patterns, all of which explore transformations in technology and their relationships to evolutions (or devolutions) in economies. Some choice examples include: two display bookshelves with an ever growing collection of 130+ investment guide books and get-rich-quick books (e.g. “Weath is a Choice” or “Investing by the Stars”) all laser engraved with the logos of failed FDIC Insured banks, A shrink wrapped bundle of 12 Yellow Pages that have been cut all the way through with the phrase “GOOGLE” and a dictionary with the phrase “OMG LOL” cut from its pages.

I have previously burned the OED, Atlases, and Phonebooks. I am interested in exploring books, especially expensive reference books, as a symbol of technological obsolecense and consumption culture. Once they were a huge symbol of prestige, now they are a sign of a era whose time has passed away. I burn them with word and symbols, as a way of commenting on their technological obsolescence, and simultaneously restoring their aura as precious objects.

More images on this blog post, or on James Wagner’s review of his studio visit