Greyscale Press co-founder Manuel Schmalstieg is speaking at the fourth Books in Browsers conference, hosted at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.
Abstract:
Would a time-traveling author from the past centuries stumble upon our everyday read/write tools, he would envision a techno-utopia that allows anyone to act as an archivist, librarian, content curator, or publisher. But the electronic publishing disruption comes with a couple of side-effects: print-on-demand spam is sneaking into our search queries, massively distributed authorship is taking the infinite monkey theorem at face value, while a generation of writers is turning SEO-aware. In that context, Greyscale Press – a post-digital publishing house – is crafting book-like artifacts, merging the toolsets inherited from 20th century modernist avantgardes, post-structuralism, the free software and copyleft movement, up to the latest crop of crypto- and cypherpunk activists.
Books in Browsers is a small summit for the new generation of internet publishing companies, focusing on developers and designers who are building and launching tools for online storytelling, expression, and art.
Books in Browsers 2013, #bib13, will be held Thursday, October 24 and Friday, October 25 at the Internet Archive in San Francisco; a hackfest will be held on Saturday Oct 26, at swissnex San Francisco on Montgomery Street downtown.
On the web:
http://bib.archive.org/
http://lanyrd.com/2013/books-in-browsers/