Hacking Complexity - Book/Magazine...

[Steve Smith]

I googled "Hacking Complexity" (as a quoted string) and only got 8 hit,
and only one two occurences were used as titles rather than verbs...

In the spirit of Wil McCarthy's novel "Hacking Matter", I suggest
precisely that title for a book title.

I should also mention (and I've talked privately with a few of you)
that Larry Archibald, the early publisher of Stereophile magazine
approached me about 5 years ago about his desire to start a magazine
that essentially featured all things "Infomesa and SFI".   He has a
reputation for high quality, professional-amatuer publishing...
Larry brought Stereophile to NM nearly 25 years ago...  and he sees
(saw?) the potential for something similar in this world...

I told him the time was not quite ripe, that as things evolved, I'd let
him know when they might be.   At the time Popular
Complexity/Non-linear Science, etc had peaked (as most of the
Employment sections in your resumes will indicate?) and things were
sliding toward a precipice of loss of financial, if not popular
support.

To whatever extent, we are now coming up out of the "bottome" this
might be a good time to engage him.

What do you think about a bimonthly slick glossy (maybe following on
the heels of a book) at the general technical level of Scientific
American?

Maybe there would be some motivation (call it pay and publication
record) for all of us to take our well thought-out contributions here
and turn them into something publishable in a more "Popular" venue.

Thoughts?
- Steve


On Jul 30, 2006, at 6:51 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

> I'll install MediaWiki on the Friam site unless someone has a better
> idea of how to start collecting content.
>

> -
> From: "Roger Critchlow" <rec at elf.org>
> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group"
> <friam at redfish.com>
> Sent: 7/30/06 6:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] FRIAM book
>
> Hmm, perhaps we should start with a "Complexity Hackers Dictionary"
> wiki?
>
> -- rec --

[Steve Smith]

> I googled "Hacking Complexity" (as a quoted string) and only got 8 hit,
> and only one two occurences were used as titles rather than verbs...
How did I mangle that syntax?
"only got 8 hits and only two occurrences were"
 

[Tom Johnson]

One of the fundamentals of start-up magazine publishing, at least in the
traditional ink-on-paper sense, is that you have to have a very good idea of
how large is your pool of potential advertisers, what is their advertising
budget and how far out is that money committed?  Forget about reader
revenue; subscribers are a minor factor when it comes to paying  the bills.
And even then, I wonder how big the potential readership would be for such a
publication in English?  150?  1,500?  5,000? ?Quien sabe?  (Steve Guerin:
How big is this listserv?)

Stereophile has natural advertising audiences, I suspect: recording
companies and equipment mfgrs.

So who would buy advertising in such a "publication" about Complexity and
related matters?  Yes, an occasional book publisher and maybe, in time, some
consulting firms selling Complexity as a solution to ??? but then.....

That said, traditional production costs look very different through the lens
of online publishing, eliminating much of the cost of traditional pre-press
(though good online publishing is still somewhat labor intensive; good copy
editors are a treasure) and all of the costs of ink, paper and distribution.

One approach might be to do the quality online publication with something
close to but not-rigid regularity, give away the content for the first X
days, but after that charge X dollars to download each article in PDF.  This
strategy, over time, would start to build a library of material that could
be used for teaching and by other interested parties.  Another strategy
could be to give away the first half of an article, but charge for the
remaining 50 percent.

In the distant past, I was the editor for Scientific American readers and
off-prints.  In the mid-'70s we were grossing about $1mill a year with very
little production cost (the content had already been paid for; resetting the
pages a minimal expense) and a couple guys in the warehouse doing the
picking and shipping.  I don't have the data, but I doubt that SA is even
doing the off-prints any longer.  Might it be that everybody in today's
digital universe expects to get what they need/want for free (e.g.
Wikipedia, or the Social Science Research Network -- http://www.ssrn.com/ )?

-tom johnson
(who still buys books and whose house overflows with magazines, some of
which I get around to reading)

On 7/31/06, steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> I googled "Hacking Complexity" (as a quoted string) and only got 8 hit,
> and only one two occurences were used as titles rather than verbs...
>
> In the spirit of Wil McCarthy's novel "Hacking Matter", I suggest
> precisely that title for a book title.
>
> I should also mention (and I've talked privately with a few of you)
> that Larry Archibald, the early publisher of Stereophile magazine
> approached me about 5 years ago about his desire to start a magazine
> that essentially featured all things "Infomesa and SFI".   He has a
> reputation for high quality, professional-amatuer publishing...
> Larry brought Stereophile to NM nearly 25 years ago...  and he sees
> (saw?) the potential for something similar in this world...
>
> I told him the time was not quite ripe, that as things evolved, I'd let
> him know when they might be.   At the time Popular
> Complexity/Non-linear Science, etc had peaked (as most of the
> Employment sections in your resumes will indicate?) and things were
> sliding toward a precipice of loss of financial, if not popular
> support.
>
> To whatever extent, we are now coming up out of the "bottome" this
> might be a good time to engage him.
>
> What do you think about a bimonthly slick glossy (maybe following on
> the heels of a book) at the general technical level of Scientific
> American?
>
> Maybe there would be some motivation (call it pay and publication
> record) for all of us to take our well thought-out contributions here
> and turn them into something publishable in a more "Popular" venue.
>
> Thoughts?
> - Steve
>
>
>

==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com               tom at jtjohnson.com

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
                                                   -- Buckminster Fuller
==========================================
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[Steve Smith]

On Jul 31, 2006, at 10:16 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

> One of the fundamentals of start-up magazine publishing, at least in
> the traditional ink-on-paper sense, is that you have to have a very
> good idea of how large is your pool of potential advertisers, what is
> their advertising budget and how far out is that money committed??
> Forget about reader revenue; subscribers are a minor factor when it
> comes to paying? the bills.? And even then, I wonder how big the
> potential readership would be for such a publication in English??
> 150?? 1,500?? 5,000? ?Quien sabe?? (Steve Guerin: How big is this
> listserv?)
Yes, this is an excellent point.
>
> Stereophile has natural advertising audiences, I suspect: recording
> companies and equipment mfgrs.
Yes...

>
> So who would buy advertising in such a "publication" about Complexity
> and related matters?? Yes, an occasional book publisher and maybe, in
> time, some consulting firms selling Complexity as a solution to ???
> but then.....
Unless it breaks over to Popular venues like Wired, or PopSci or even
SciAm...  which becomes lots of high-end products.

>
> That said, traditional production costs look very different through
> the lens of online publishing, eliminating much of the cost of
> traditional pre-press (though good online publishing is still somewhat
> labor intensive; good copy editors are a treasure) and all of the
> costs of ink, paper and distribution.
I don't know if paper and ink are dead yet... maybe they are for new
titles... I'm an early adopter of online in many ways and it hasn't met
my expectations at all... I still read paper and ink.   Would I pay a
premium subscription for "Hacking Complexity"?  I don't know...
$100/year... maybe... $29.95/year, surely... and could someone land
enough advertisers?  Larry could if anyone could.   But maybe it is out
of reach.
>
> One approach might be to do the quality online publication with
> something close to but not-rigid regularity, give away the content for
> the first X days, but after that charge X dollars to download each
> article in PDF.? This strategy, over time, would start to build a
> library of material that could be used for teaching and by other
> interested parties.? Another strategy could be to give away the first
> half of an article, but charge for the remaining 50 percent.
I think a hot product might make it, but the internet is more of a
morass than the magazine shelf at Barnes & Noble... it would be hard to
distinguish oneself.

>
> In the distant past, I was the editor for Scientific American readers
> and off-prints.? In the mid-'70s we were grossing about $1mill a year
> with very little production cost (the content had already been paid
> for; resetting the pages a minimal expense) and a couple guys in the
> warehouse doing the picking and shipping.? I don't have the data, but
> I doubt that SA is even doing the off-prints any longer.? Might it be
> that everybody in today's digital universe expects to get what they
> need/want for free ( e.g. Wikipedia, or the Social Science Research
> Network -- http://www.ssrn.com/ )?
>
> -tom johnson
> (who still buys books and whose house overflows with magazines, some
> of which I get around to reading)

All good points...  I just wanted to suggest this opposite the concept
of a book (complementary concepts) on complexity/nonlinear/emergence.

I came to LANL with a fresh degree in Physics/Math in 1980 just as all
of these concepts were about to grow and blossom in the fertile soil of
ubiquitous computing...   So I'm fascinated with where it has all gone
(and not) in this time.

- Steve
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