Who Invented the Elevator?

(Samuel Rysdyk) Usually concealed within the middle of buildings, and hidden behind sliding doors, the elevator is inconspicuous, so simple and comfortable that it can safely be ignored. 

Yet, this mode of vertical transportation is necessary to our modern skyline. The elevator is an invention that was 2000 years in the making. In 236 BC Archimedes used ropes and pulleys to create what we would consider an elevator. Yet, passenger elevators were not broadly installed until the second half of the 19th century. No particular individual invented the elevator. The modern elevator came to exist through a combination of evolutionary innovations. Mere mechanical parts were not enough to create the elevator; social “innovation” was needed as well.

The Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) proposes that social context is important to defining the role of technology. Relevant social groups take technological artifacts and give them meaning…. Technology just doesn’t “arrive”, it is created, manipulated, and enhanced by people to fill a certain desire. Vertical transportation had been around for many years, but it wasn’t good enough until it could be legitimately called safe.
   

 Read the whole thing.

The technology for ebooks has been around, arguably, as long as home computers…certainly as long as the internet. Granted, this isn’t 2000 years, but still, for ebooks, as for elevators, there’s no single inventor. Before ebooks could transform commerce in literacy, the social system for reading and exchanging them had to exist.

General NaNoWriMo Stats Round Up

General NaNoWriMo Stats Round Up

For NaNoWriMo main:

◦    341,375 participants, up a whopping 33% from 2011’s total of 256,618 writers.
◦    We wrote a grand total of 3,288,976,325 words, up 7% from 2011’s 3,074,068,446.
◦    This averaged out to 9364 words per person!
◦    We had 38,438 winners, giving us a 11% win rate!

For NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program:

◦    97,864 participants, up 21% from 2011’s total of 81,040. (Edited to correct an error in numbers!)
◦    We wrote a total of 419,152,844 words up 14% from 2011’s collective word count of 368,143,078.
◦    This averaged out to 5,077 words per person.
◦    We had 18,531 winners, giving us a 22% win rate!

This November, OLL had 37,120,542 pageviews, and a total of 5,939,711 visits: up 10% from 2011’s 5,384,040 visits!

Top 10 NaNoWriMo Cities (according to Google Analytics, based on number of November visits from these fine places)

1.    London 118,030
2.    New York 90,055
3.    (not set) 72,912 (Probably Atlanta?)
4.    Seattle 58,670
5.    Toronto 52,686
6.    Sydney 51,498
7.    Chicago 49,290
8.    Melbourne 44,689
9.    Los Angeles 43,511
10. Denver 41,574

Kobo On The Rise

(Forbes) Kobo is the major player in the ebook world that you’ve never heard of.

This little upstart from Canada is trying to compete with the likes of Amazon,Google, Apple and Barnes & Noble….

Making Merry

“Making Merry” by Tiffany Toland-Scott

The Captive (Short Christmas Story)

Benjamin wiped his forehead and squinted up at the dirty slit of light. The only sunlight he had seen over the past year had come through that grime-smeared window.

He reached for another screwdriver, one with a torx head. He carefully attached a wheel to the smiling toy car he was making, but accidently nudged another wheel, which dropped to the floor. It rolled away. Benjamin bent down and tried to reach it. He had to strain to the end of his chain, and the metal bit painfully into his ankle, but he retrieved the wheel, and set it back on the picnic table where he worked.

A crack of light appeared at the top of the steps. Benjamin cringed, even before he heard heavy footsteps descend.

Mr. Vorst stomped over to the picnic table. He snatched the toy from Benjamin’s hands.

“Please, Mr. Vorst, it’s not done yet…”

“Another stupid car, cheap plastic, rubber and paint…. I could buy one ten times better at the store. You keep promising me magic, elf. I want magic!”

“Soon, Mr. Vorst, soon! I told you, my magic is strongest on Christmas Day!”

Mr. Boese grabbed Benjamin by the cheeks and squeezed his chin painfully. Benjamin had always been slim, as most elves were, but a year imprisoned in a basement had whittled him away to gaunt. Mr. Vorst leaned in so close that Benjamin could smell his rancid breath.

“If I find you’ve been lying to me all this time, I will grind you up and turn you into dog food.”

Mr. Vorst dropped the car back on the table. He left a plate of scraps from his own dinner for Benjamin to eat, and marked off another day on the calendar on the wall before he left.

Benjamin devoured the unappetizing scraps, and drank some water from the basement sink. He kept working until his eyesight blurred. Then he heaved himself over to the metal cot with a sleeping bag that served him as a bed. His chain never came off, and it was long enough for him to reach just the bed, the table and the sink. He couldn’t even reach the far side of the basement, where Mr. Vorst stacked all the toys Benjamin finished.

It was a far cry from his snug little house at the North Pole.

He still didn’t know what dark magic Mr. Vorst had used to catch him, but last Christmas, Benjamin had visited Mr. Vorst’s house, thinking it was the home of an innocent orphan in need of a Christmas miracle. Benjamin was surprised to find a grown man, but Christmas miracles had no age limit, so the elf wasn’t too worried until he awakened chained to a picnic table in the basement. The cookies had been drugged.

Christmas had passed while Benjamin was unconscious, so by the time he woke up, his magic was at its weakest.

Mr. Vorst was disappointed he hadn’t captured Santa himself, but when he discovered Benjamin had toymaking magic (even during the year), he’d been gleeful. “From now on, elf, you’ll make toys only for me!”

There weren’t many days left until Christmas, but they seemed to pass with agonizing slowness. Yet, surprisingly, when the special morning dawned, Benjamin didn’t realize it at first. There were no bells, no carols, no delicious smells from homemade pies in the air, no elf children running in the halls, or shuffling outside the window from reindeer playing games in the snow—none of the usual heralds of the season, never mind the Day.

Just the monotony of the basement. Cot. Table. Sink. Big pile of toys.

Mr. Vorst stomped down the stairs. “WHERE ARE MY TOYS, ELF?”

He looked at the pile in disgust. “What’s this? Nothing’s changed! You mangy little elf, I’m going to…”

He raised his fist and stepped toward Benjamin.

Behind him, the pile of toys sparkled and stirred.

Suddenly, a raggedy doll came to life, leaped to the top of the pile and aimed her pink and purple plastic Gatling gun at Mr. Boese. “Meet my little friend!”

Bright orange foam darts rattled out by the hundreds, pelting Mr. Vorst. He threw his arms up to protect his face, and didn’t see the skateboard that raced under his foot. His next step sent him flying into the air. Meanwhile an army of gingerbread men licked hundreds of candy canes and stuck them to the floor, then scattered just as Mr. Vorst’s fat bum and broad back hit the floor. A pillow pet saved his head from a bump, but also snapped a velcro tail around his mouth.

“Mrrrrmmmmrf” cussed Mr. Vorst. He tried to get up, but the innumerable sticky candy canes kept him glued to the floor. The toy cars unfolded into robots and shot string ropes over him again and again to tie him up.

The raggedy doll grabbed a key from Mr. Vorst’s pocket.

“Got it” she shouted. She tossed the key to Benjamin.

“Thanks, dollface!” he said. He unlocked the chain around his ankle for the first time in a year.

As soon as the lock fell off, Benjamin was able to call Santa for the first time since last Christmas.

In a sparkle of magic light, Santa appeared. He shook his head at Mr. Vorst.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me I’m on the naughty list!” sneered Mr. Vorst. “Are you going to give me a coal?”

Santa said sadly, “I will indeed. Two pieces, in fact. You’re going to  need them… because your heart is made of ice.”

The toys and candy released Mr. Vorst. He jumped to his feet, laughing, thinking he was free. He didn’t notice that his fingers and feet and the tips of his ears were turning blue. Only when the sparkling blue and white magic reached his shoulders and belly did he cry out.

“Hey, what’s happening to me?”

“You’re going to take a nap, Mr. Vorst. Until your heart awakens from its prison of ice, you will sleep in a darkness as black as coal.”

“Hurry outside, Mr. Vorst!” urged Benjamin. “It’s your only chance to avoid melting!”

Mr. Vorst screamed and ran outside just before the magic transformed him completely …into a faceless snowman. Santa gave the snowman a peppermint nose, and drew a smile with a candy cane, which immediately sagged into a frown.

Santa handed two coals to Benjamin.

“Would you do the honors?”

Benjamin planted the two coals for eyes. “Do you think he’ll ever actually be able to see through them, Chris?”

“It’s up to him, Benny. As always, in the end, it’s up to him.”

Would you like to read this and other stories on your Kindle?  

NYT to Publish eBooks with Byliner & Vook

(Galley Cat) The New York Times has opened two publishing programs, turning its massive collection of reporting into short eBooks that will be published with Byliner and Vook. The paper will publish “up to a dozen” Byliner eBooks ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 words apiece and including titles about culture, sports, business, science and health.

The series begins on December 17 with the $2.99 “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” by New York Timesreporter John Branch.

Vook will work on the TimesFiles project, a “curated selections of articles” from the paper.

(New York Times) Esquire magazine announced on Friday a partnership with Byliner, a digital publishing start-up, that will have three distinct components accessible to readers through e-books: collections of short fiction by undiscovered authors, nonfiction works in the 15,000- to 30,000-word range, and monthly collections of the best articles from Esquire’s 80-year history along thematic lines like sports, war, politics and fiction…

 The first collection of original short fiction, titled “The Esquire Four,” will be published online at Byline.com on Friday and will be available for purchase through regular e-book retailers.

The collection includes four authors, including Matt Sumell, a recent recipient of a master’s of fine arts who is described by Esquire as having written about men in their 20s who think like arrested adolescents. One of Mr. Sumell’s stories will also appear in Esquire’s January issue with a notice telling readers where they can purchase the full book. If the collection does well, another will appear in six months. The authors will be chosen by Esquire and Byliner editors jointly, and the price of the e-books will be $2.99.