My name is . . . in China. I am asked to write an essay for my M Div on the subject of "what is Isaiah's Contribution . . .?" I surf the web and read Isaiah 1:2-20 Bibliography you wrote and with your expertise in that field, would you give me some insight relating to the my subject or introduce any books or articles that might be of help? I can't excess the needed resources for my essay because of the nature of the country I live and serve in.My only quibble, posted as a comment to his blog also is to add a qualification to the headline: "not behind (inaccessible) pay to view barriers". Many of the resources needed for an MDiv student are online already on the sites of the great and wonderful academic content aggregators (like EBSCO and ATLA).
But the cost is too high for this person's institution, and is too high for most individials. There is an increasing global digital divide is between those with institutional subscriptions and those without (whether because they have no entry to an institution, or because their institution is not wealthy enough).
Labels: biblical.studies.online, publication
¶ 12:06 PM
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A lot of these sites already have tiered pay levels. For instance, many majority world institutions can access JSTOR for free.
By 
Charles Halton, at
March 4, 2010 2:00 PM
They do indeed :) and that's a trend to applaud. Though a somewhat crude approach to a nuanced problem. My impression is that many institutions and individuals who have less resources do not (as a matter of fact and ignoring the reasons, which may simply include ignorance of such possibilities) have access to allow a Western style of scholarship "sitting on the shoulders of giants" to flourish.
By 
Tim, at
March 5, 2010 6:35 AM
Also very often readers in third world countries, even if they had the money to pay for these resources, would not be able to do so because they don't have internationally recognised credit cards - which may be unavailable, restricted to those with good regular salaries, or very expensive.
By Peter Kirk, at
March 5, 2010 6:46 AM
The web has become a funny place. Despite its ethos of volunteerism and culture of free, increasingly volunteer effort and time are not enough for worthwhile projects. Meanwhile borrowed money, cosmetic surgery, pornography, and other essentials of modern life can finance themselves, and even enable others to make a modest income from blogging.The latest illustration of this strange situation is Librivox. LV is a huge volunteer effort that In a mere four-and-a-half years, has made thousands of free audiobooks for anyone to enjoy. The site gets 400,000 visitors every month.One recording I did has already passed 10,000 downloads. Yet LV is appealing to its volunteers to donate money as well to pay for the system that enables all this. LV is deeply committed to the dream of free culture, so all its recordings are placed in the public domain. This ethos sits uneasily with advertising, otherwise a combination of Amazon links and/or Google Adwords would ensure an annual income of far more than the $20,000 that they are seeking (in the hopes it will cover the next few years of opperation).
There is a strange logic here, even a tiny payment from a few of the users who download and enjoy the books would cover the cost. Yet LV asks the producers of the content (well at least one group of them, the authors and original publishers are mostly dead, so they are not contacted by the appeal). So it is the readers, prooflisteners and project coordinators who must pay.
Perhaps in the gift economy and the culture of free this is the way it should be, with people covering the cost of publishing their work. But how does this fit with academic publishing? Academics (with a few, over the 20th Century a dwindling few, amateur scholars as exceptions to the rule) are mercenaries, we undertake our scholarship for pay. Yet even in this realm of "workers worthyof their hire" (we hope) publication has usually been free!
No, books and journals have not been free, but authors have most often given them away, it is usually only the commercial publisher of the work who makes any significant money (and then often barely enough to meet their costs) royalties on the average book (or even well above average like your latest one) are barely cover the coffee consumed in its writing.
There's the real paradox of digital publishing, a sector (somehow in this over-managed world we are always part of a "sector") that traditionally gave away its (or at least this) product is wary of the new culture of free and hides its work behind the firewalls of commercial publishers. Apart from hidebound inertia and fear of the new what explains this strange reality?
[See also this old post by Mark Goodacre.]
Labels: academic, biblical.studies, biblical.studies.online, culture, digital, publication, scholarship
¶ 10:04 AM
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Hillis suggests print enabled "the enlightenment" the Internet enables the "entanglement". In the enlightenment we became independent, in the entanglement we are becoming interdependent:
In an Internet-connected world, it is almost impossible to keep track of how systems actually function. Your telephone conversation may be delivered over analog lines one day and by the Internet the next. Your airplane route may be chosen by a computer or a human being, or (most likely) some combination of both. Don't bother asking, because any answer you get is likely to be wrong.He illustrates this discussing Internet Time Protocol the system that allows software to know what time/date it is now, so saving humans from needing to enter the time and date on bootup. The system depends on multiple networked devices, and few if any programmers understand it, we all use it. We are interconnecting not only when we are aware of it, but also and particularly when we are not.Soon, no human will know the answer. More and more decisions are made by the emergent interaction of multiple communicating systems, and these component systems themselves are constantly adapting, changing the way they work. This is the real impact of the Internet: by allowing adaptive complex systems to interoperate, the Internet has changed the way we make decisions. More and more, it is not individual humans who decide, but an entangled, adaptive network of humans and machines.
One item only from Hans Ulrich Obrist's (Curator, Serpentine Gallery, London) partial and multiple alphabet of an answer:
D is for DoubtYes! Now, can we encourage students to begin to understand this?
A certain unreliability of technical and material information on the Internet brings us to the notion of doubt. I feel that doubt has become more pervasive. The artist Carsten Höller has invented the Laboratory of Doubt, which is opposed to mere representation. As he has told me, 'Doubt and perplexity ... are unsightly states of mind we'd rather keep under lock and key because we associate them with uneasiness, with a failure of values'. Höller's credo is not to do; not to intervene. To exist is to do and not to do is a way of doing. 'Doubt is alive; it paralyzes certainty.' (Carsten Höller)
The ever stimulating Clay Shirky, Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher, provoked me most with this Contrarian gem:
It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. Scarcity means valuable things become more valuable, a conceptually easy change to integrate. Surplus, on the other hand, means previously valuable things stop being valuable, which freaks people out.This is the lesson Big Music is beginning to learn, the moving image industry has begun to face, that is freaking the publishers, but will change higher education beyond belief (one day, soon?). [See my Back to the Future: Virtual Theologising as Recapitulation especially the first section "Return of the Rabbi" 115-121.]
And, I am only about half-way through the articles :) What a cornucopia of stimulating thinking!
Labels: culture, digital, education, internet, publication
¶ 4:57 PM
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I am writing to ask in general if you are aware of any other dubious ethical practices used by this publisher, and in particular if anyone else has seen examples of comment spam from them?
For the record if the person who wrote the comment, even had they chosen to hide behind anonymity, had interacted with my material or other comments in some way I would NOT have deleted the comment. As it is I intend to cease recommending any works audio or print published by Nelson to students and churches if a viable alternative exists from a more ethical publisher.
Addendum: [in case you do not rerad the comments] this comment is posted below, in fairness to Thomas Nelson I am copying it here so that you can read it with my post:Michael Hyatt left a comment:Blogger, unlike WordPress :( does not seem to collect (or at least does not offer bloggers a chance to see) the IP addresses of commenters, and this one was "Annonymous" but I am glad to hear that such behaviour is not approved, though puzzled since another biblical studies blogger has had similar experiences advertising your company's products. I do NOT object to anyone linking to your product pages, IF they are relevant and add something to the discussion.
I am the CEO of Thomas Nelson. We do not encourage or promote comment spam. Like you, I hate it. I spend more time than I would like deleting it from my own blog.
If you have an IP address or other information from the person who commented, I will be happy to take the appropriate action.
Labels: audio.bible, podcast, publication, publish
¶ 9:07 AM
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I am the CEO of Thomas Nelson. We do not encourage or promote comment spam. Like you, I hate it. I spend more time than I would like deleting it from my own blog.
If you have an IP address or other information from the person who commented, I will be happy to take the appropriate action.
Thanks.
By Michael Hyatt, at
October 22, 2009 1:05 PM
Tim,
It is quite possible that someone in the marketing arm of Nelson thought this would be a good idea and either didn't clear it with their boss or the boss didn't think to mention it to the CEO. I know that our marketing people had some problems with a young and enthusiastic staff member making inappropriate use of one of the social networking sites. It was very rapidly stopped when the person's manager found out and it was made clear to all staff that it wasn't an appropriate use of the medium. It just hadn't occurred to the manager that anyone would think to do it in the first place. It sounds as though this is a similar incident.
By Judy Redman, at
October 22, 2009 6:34 PM
With some 500 employees, we may have a rogue marketing associate doing this; I don't know. Regardless, I have sent an email to our Bible marketing people, letting them know that this is inappropriate behavior.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Won't the translations be inaccurate?
Oh yes! But this is part of the attraction of the project, as well as being rendered in the mother tongue the out of copyright texts are also adapted (a little more than is usual in a translation – for all translations are also to some extent cultural adaptations) this makes them more useful. But it may mean that some sort of peer review process should be built in, to ensure that undesirable errors do not creep in. I doubt this needs to be formalised. Since the new “text” is semi-oral and since semi-oral cultures have a flexibility to adapt their texts, the pastor would rework and improve any chapter that their colleagues question.
How will we ensure that busy senior pastors actually find time to do the translating?
First, not a lot of time is needed, just read a chapter, then reread it a paragraph at a time and speak it in their mother tongue. Say two hours for a chapter, once they have done a couple during a training day, and done the first few more slowly on their own. Second, the laptop itself is a carrot. It stays under their authority as long as they produce an agreed number of chapters – becoming their possession after an agreed period. Third, the fact that they are producing this resource is a source of honour (mana etc.) and the fact that it is in their voice will also add to their authority in other things.
Senior pastors won't be able to master the unfamiliar technology!
How many senior pastors do you know who do not have children (and/or grandchildren, nieces, nephews...) in their household. How much training do you think those guys will need? But it is true not all will be able or willing to support the project. Many useful medicines cannot be tolerated by some patients, Penicillin is a well-known example, this does not stop their use among the rest of the population!
There will be a lot of new technology to break down and support!
Not a lot. Most of the distribution can be to existing mobile phones or MP3 players. So, for each district you are looking at one laptop (the OLPCs are designed to be rugged and if they are becoming the possession of the families there is an interest in protecting them) and perhaps several MP3 players (they are also very rugged and now quite cheap <$20 retail). You would naturally use the laptop model that is that is chosen for the national education system, or one for which support should be available. And anyway, how much does it cost under the old print system to get books to pastors? And they are culturally inappropriate books, in foreign languages!
This scheme gives the power to the local church!
Yes! Great isn't it :) Print allowed foreign missions, missionaries and ministries to produce “great” resources for the poor people people of the land. This way they get assisted to produce resources for themselves. If they start out doing Matthew Henry in Kisangali, how long do you think it will take before some pastors also produce their own “texts” dealing with locally raised issues? Where has print ever achieved that degree of localisation?
This scheme will reduce the motivation for literacy in places with low literacy rates :(
First, get your priorities right! What are you about? Helping people become clones of the West? Or deepening their understanding? Second, if you think this little project will have a bigger impact than radio, TV and mobile phones you have a higher view of its potential than I have ;) Literacy as we have known it for 500 years is under threat, but this project will not contribute much to the change, though it does work with it rather than resist... “Literacy” and “books” are not idols to be worshiped but a technology and skill that are no longer as dominant as they once were – do not make the dominant technology of the past a fetish object!
Labels: audio, bible, biblical.studies.online, copyright, digital, education, publication
¶ 7:32 PM
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If you want a free, objective way to check the reception in your area BEFORE you lock yourself with a specific carrier, you should really check out "Got Reception?" (http://www.gotreception.com).
By dave88, at
November 8, 2008 5:41 PM
Following on from my previous post The "book" of the future Theologians Without Borders has converted a comment to a stimulating post in Transferring Knowledge in a Desert of Books Jennifer Turner puts the experience of teaching in Africa where "libraries were very sparse, due both to shortage of funds and lack of materials in the local language" with the sight of an OLPC laptop, to generate the dream that we might "skip to the next generation of knowledge transfer" by putting a library on such a machine for village pastors. How about we put these two posts together, and then tweak the results a bit?
At selected centres (like theological colleges) someone provides a laptop stacked with out of copyright or e-texts for which permission had been given. Senior pastors with a good command of the "imperial" language (English, French or whatever) then read selected works a paragraph at a time into the built-in microphone, translating into their mother tongue as they go. It would not be an accurate translation, and it might well include explanation, but that would just make it more useful!
It is in the senior pastors' interest to help, because they get to base a laptop at their home (their kids will nag them into it) and the churches they are responsible for will respect them even more.
These audio books get loaded onto mobile phones (or MP3 players) for village pastors and others. The result semi-literate (and lets face it in much of the world village pastors are often either semi-literate or less than fluently literate) pastors get real solid stimulus and information for a fraction of the cost of print.
It is in the village pastors' interest to listen because they will seem better educated, without all the hassle and risk to their status involved in moving from partial to full literacy.
Do the maths! For a district with say 20 local churches:
- cost of one laptop, loaded with "books" $250
- plus 20 MP3 players @ $30 = $600
All we need are:
- enough people to catch the vision
- publishers of texts like the Africa Bible Commentary to be willing to see their print editions reach extended twenty-fold
- people to "sell" the idea to senior pastors
- a bunch of Western agencies to give up their fetish for print!
Labels: audio, bible, biblical.studies.online, copyright, digital, education, publication
¶ 11:30 AM
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So much more can be done with audio, esp. for people in oral societies. Print is good but it can stifled us, to some extent, in the West.
Thanks for posting this, Tim. I hope many catch the vision.
I just posted about "hearing" on BBB.
By Wayne Leman, at
October 24, 2008 12:05 PM
I might suggest working with TransWorld Radio and FEBA and the like instead. They have trained announcers working in many of the languages of Africa and anything they produce will be transmitted to a large population.
That proliferation of gadgets worries me...
By David Ker, at
October 24, 2008 12:23 PM
Thanks both!
David, I think minimal gadgets (one laptop per language and MP3 players where mobile phones are scarce), and do the radio stations actually transmit is tribal languages or just in the major trade languages? In Congo we had 5 trade languages but c250 mother tongues...
...and, anyway why not both and...
If only people would first publish with something like a CC license ;) so that adaptations were possible... still Matthew Henry tradapted (TM = adapted in the process of approximate quick and dirty translation) into Africa could be more appropriate than a modern print work translated accurately ;)
By Tim, at
October 24, 2008 12:37 PM
PS @David, if I read the statistics right 32% of Mozambicans mother tongue is not one of the several most-used languages in the country...
By Tim, at
October 24, 2008 12:40 PM
True, Mozambique is a special case with relatively few languages. I don't know what radio is like in a country with mucho languages. But my suspicion is that languages of wider influence are covered and possibly community radio transmits in the local dialects.
This is good stuff you're pondering and I hope you don't think I'm being disagreeable.
By David Ker, at
October 24, 2008 3:43 PM
I think Literacy Bridge aims to get suitable audio devices down to USD$5.
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By , at
October 24, 2008 3:46 PM
There are already several translation projects involving the Africa Bible Commentary. The French version for Francophone Africa will be released in early November 2008, and the Swahili translation will be ready in 2009. A Portuguese translation for Mozambique and Angola and an Amharic translation for North Africa are in progress. People are welcome to apply to the Board for translation rights into other languages.
These translations won't cover 600 languages, but they will cover a big chunk of Africa. And they will be fairly accurate translations vetted by experts in the language, which the recorded versions wouldn't be.
By , at
October 24, 2008 4:06 PM
Tim, see futurebible for anonymous' identity.
FootnotesNow most of this makes perfect sense, "Print all page numbers up to and including 99 in full, e.g. 16–18, 94–99" gotcha "for 100 and upwards use the least number of figures, e.g. 322–30, 522–3;" gotcha, "but write 116–18, not 116–8; 210–11, not 210–1 (where confusion might otherwise arise)" UH? What confusion might arise if I wrote 116-8? because from their own previous example if it was 116-128 I would have written 116-28.
Print all page numbers up to and including 99 in full, e.g. 16–18, 94–99; for 100 and upwards use the least number of figures, e.g. 322–30, 522–3; but write 116–18, not 116–8; 210–11, not 210–1 (where confusion might otherwise arise).
Now I admit the bright student and I are mathematically or scientifically minded, not really arty types, but where pray NZJH is your confusion?
If you are an arty type and can explain the cases to us so we can understand we'd be delighted :)
[Incidentally anyone who thinks footnotes and bibliography are not really fun should watch this short video ;) ]
Labels: publication, study-skills
¶ 4:46 PM
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My guess is that they're referring to confusion (or at least a jarring effect) that might result if you read those examples out loud; "five-hundred and twenty-two to three" sounds less odd than "one hundred and sixteen to eight" or "two-hundred and ten to one", so they suggest that you adjust what you write in those cases so that reading aloud gives "one hundred and sixteen to eighteen" and "two-hundred and ten to eleven". In my opinion, "five-hundred and twenty-two to twenty-three" would also be an improvement. And is space really so limited that they can't just let you write the whole number every time? Writing 522-523 instead of 522-3 uses just two more bytes, and very little extra ink and paper, which aren't that expensive.
<><
By , at
October 9, 2008 7:18 PM
I suspect it's only confusing if you're easily confused, or they didn't want to say "we want you to do it this way because it looks awkward". If your article goes from p 116 to p 128, or p 138, then you have to say 116-28 or 116-38, so 116-8 is inconsistent with all your other three digit references. I actually find 210-1 visually far less pleasing than 210-11, but not actually confusing.
By Judy Redman, at
October 10, 2008 12:53 AM
You both give explanations I can understand. Though yours Judy, which is what I had suspected (being high on the N of the Myers-Briggs scale - N = iNtuitive as opposed to T = thinking, rational), is not the sort of rule Ts could cope with, so though I like it I suspect it is not what the author intended ;)
TJM your explanation makes perfect sense, heard rather than seen even I can see there is a problem with the "teens" - but why could they not SAY that. It was the word "confusion" which confused us ;)
This is a rather nice example of the way minds that work differently are needed to produce clear communication. An "auditory" processor writing to a "visual" processor confuses ;0
By Tim, at
October 10, 2008 5:58 AM
I wish his website looked less "commercial" and I wish I could provide one of his photos here to show you how good they are. But to compensate for his uptight attitude to intellectual property Mike's book is thoroughly green, locally printed on paper made from sustainable forests ;)
Mike, if you give me permission, and I can choose a suitable photo, I'll do another post advertising the book in a week or two (even closer to Christmas).
Labels: nz, publication
¶ 8:04 AM
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