This third episode of the Department of Alchemy Audio Archive features a lecture by Ian Condry given at Harvard University on 13 November 2009. His talk is entitled “The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity & Japan’s Media Success Story.”

Listen below, or use the direct download here (1 hour 19 minutes 15 seconds).

Earlier this year, after returning from my semester in Kyoto, I decided to pursue the composition of a book. The idea of writing a book intrigued me, excited me, and inspired me to devote a “page” of this blog to my plans:

Otaku Movement Book

Working title:
• “Otaku Movement: The History and Fans of Anime in America”
• “Fan Tribe: The Cultural Economy of Anime in America”

“Otaku Movement: The History and Fans of Anime in America” is a future publication about the history of the anime fandom in the United States and its implications on media institutions, intellectual property, and cross-cultural reception.

I sent out a dozen emails to a number of academics and even met with Professors Ian Condry (MIT), Susan Napier (Tufts), and Henry Jenkins (MIT/UCS Annenberg) to discuss organizing research and arranging plans for graduate school.

During the spring semester, I decided to begin writing a lot about my personal interests, critiques, and analyses of anime & manga on this blog (which has previously housed the same tripartie then reserved for developments in digital media, Internet studies, etc.).

In May, I contacted the Convergence Culture Consortium, a major think tank in the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT, about potentially working there as a research assistant. Instead, and much to my surprise, I was awarded the opportunity to submit a proposal for a year-long research project of my own to pursue during the next academic year. Of course, I chose a focus on anime, manga, & fan culture.

This past Monday, my proposal was accepted, and I’m happy (and relieved) to announce that beginning in September, I’ll be working with the Convergence Culture Consortium, pursuing research and publications about developments surrounding and the maturation of the American anime & manga fandom. Basically, I was awarded my dream job (especially since after I applied for the graduate MA program in Comparative Media Studies in December ’08, Henry Jenkins announced his move to USC Annenberg, propelling the termination of the CMS program).

The news that I can announce right now is that this project (and any subsequent publications) will replace the book proposal (see above) that I initially hosted on this blog.

While the exact details of my project will be evolving over the coming weeks, I’ve posted my initial proposal below, in case anyone’s interested in reading it. We’ve narrowed the project down a lot from this foundation (Joshua Green, the head researcher at C3, stated that this proposal would form a solid 4-year PhD project, but was too broad for a “case study” in the Consortium).

Proposal

While Japanese popular culture has achieved relative popularity on an international level, critics have targeted fans — the loyal consuming audience of these comics and cartoons — as one potential cause of the currently faltering commercial market for anime and manga. Particularly in America, though, the relationship between audience and media has played an important role in the development of both the fandom and industry. Given the fifty-year history of this media in the United States, the developments related to the growth of the fandom and industry provide a historical context with which to analyze and assess the progress of contemporary convergence culture.

Unexpectedly, given the recent trends in declining sales of comic books and DVDs, attendance numbers at anime conventions in the United States have increased. Whether this increase depends on changing fan demographics or an evolution in fan-centric values, it provokes a new realm of thought that complements the narrative: What succeeds convergence culture? This white paper aims to construct a narrative of the development of value fans derive from media alongside the value assumed by the industry. While the report primarily attempts to examine a historical period in light of recent convergence culture discourse, the continual advancements in the American anime fandom may shed light on the direction in which this specific converged culture, as well as other converging cultures, will proceed. An account of the forty-year history of the American anime fandom provides critical analysis of a previously-established intersection between producers and consumers, with implications for both Japanese and American economies.

This morning, I got a chance to listen to Anime Pulse’s podcast of Professor Ian Condry’s panel from Anime Boston 2008, in which he relates his research on the production of Japanese animation in his upcoming book. I’ve known the following sentiment for a fair while, but Ian recalls a feeling that many Japanese animators of anime have expressed for a fair while on the topic of digital animation versus older, hand-drawn productions: the former doesn’t show enough of the human behind the creation. Of course, it comes down to personal aesthetics. But Ian says, “I had an interesting moment when I was in a cab with a couple of anime producers, and we were just coming back from a studio visit, and we were talking about Shrek. And they just marveled at the ways that flowing hair and the kind of detail that could happen in computer animation was really quite mind-blowing. But then one of the producers said, ‘But, y’know, for all the technical sophistication, we feel like it lacks a little soul. Right? It lacks something.’ And I think that’s one of the things that they said… Hand-drawn animation will continue in Japan.”

I personally had this feeling after recently watching the new release of the first episode of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (aka. the second season).

I must begin, though, by stating that the issue doesn’t come down to cel-animation versus computer animation. The first season of Full Metal Alchemist, released in Japan from late 2003 to late 2004 (and then broadcast in America from 2004 to 2006), relies heavily on digital animation. A number of sketch-based cels (as in non-painted cels) can be found online, but we can safely say that FMA is a digital production. Five years later, though, digital animation has surpassed the techniques of 2004, and we now view entirely different trends in more modern anime productions.

Because the art is constantly changing over time, looking at the evolution of anime (and especially manga, since it’s drawn by one artist rather than many members of a team) is fairly interesting. One cool thing about anime, for instance, is that since it’s made for television, you can see how the production studio’s team improved or worsened throughout the production, simply by watching the broadcast. For manga, it’s pretty much the same: compare later chapters of the manga to the earlier ones, and you’ll commonly see significant differences in the character designs, backgrounds, line work, etc. Such evolution is particularly present in Hayao Miyazaki’s work on the Nausicaa manga, which Takekuma Kentaro explained in a lecture this spring at Kyoto Seika University, entitled The Space Between Anime and Manga: #4: Why is the Manga Version of Nausicaa So Hard to Read?, which Ko Ransom skillfully translated over at welcome datacomp. It’s a must-read piece and provides particularly interesting insights on how art in manga operates in terms of story and content.

So, back to Full Metal Alchemist 2. I’ve only watched the first episode so far, but I have already noticed a distinct difference in character design and art style compared to the first season. Talking to my former roommate Kent last night tipped me off to an (apparent) opinion expressed online that the second season of FMA resembles the manga a lot more than the first season had. I wondered if this was true, and while watching the episode this morning noticed that the character’s faces were a lot rounder, the colors were a bit different, and the line strokes were a bit thicker than the first season.

Basically, I noticed three possible differences in the second season compared to the first:

1) The possibility that the design was changed due to digital technologies
2) The possibility that the design was changed to reflect the manga
3) The possibility that the design was changed because of, well, a new character designer

To start, I believe that the third point does not bear much importance in this discussion. It is true that the character designers changed from Yoshiyuki Ito to Hiroki Kanno, but ultimately the character designs do not differ; instead, the art design changes. However, the entire art team was reorganized for the second season, so I can’t make any solid judgments based on those facts.

The first point makes a bit of sense, but my argument is a bit weak. I want to assert that hand-drawn lines reflect a certain humanness that cannot be reproduced with a mouse and Photoshop, because the art programs used (probably something more advanced than Adobe’s products?) have been coded to resemble the human form already. Drawing a curved line of variable width on a computer program does not allow for the immediate human correction of said line’s skew or width by way of pencil and eraser, at least not on a similar scale.

For example, in this comparison (where the top image is from the first season of FMA, and the bottom image is from the second season), we notice that the use of bolder lines is particularly evident in the second season, namely the line of Ed’s facial structure. This, however, may be a reflection of the manga, as will be discussed later.

However, I feel that in terms of digital technology, one thing we can examine is the use and modification of color.

If we examine more modern anime, the colors seem bolder and brighter, by far. A basic look at the history of color in anime produces a few interesting points in a very indistinct timeline. Avoiding discussion of black-and-white anime, we can see:

a) Flat colors, as seen in the Cutie Honey intro from 1973

(However, this does not ignore instances of shading, as seen in the intro to Mazinger Z from 1972.)

b) The four-layer technique, probably begun in the ’80s, as seen in the movie, Macross: Do You Remember Love from 1984 (and advocated by Paul “Otaking” Johnson)

Which continued on into the ’90s with anime such as Trigun from 1998

c) Sometime in the new millenium, a return to flat colors, propelled by (IMO) digital coloring techniques, such as in the first opening of Naruto from 2002.

Nowadays, the colorization depicted in Example C appears to be the common trend in popular modern anime (my assumption is that it’s the easiest to produce). It’s certainly difficult to argue a difference between the first and second season of Full Metal Alchemist, because both seasons use the modern, flat colorization. However, with updates to technology, from my perspective I see those colors becoming much more bold and distinct. Perhaps this also has to do with the switch to digital broadcasting and HD technologies.

Here, we see Ed in the first and second seasons, from the top respectively. The first season’s colors seem a bit fuzzier or faded to me.

Ed ripping his shirt in Season 1 and Season 2, from the top respectively. Even the lines seem a bit more distinct in the second season. Comparing the color of the shading between seasons, I think that the first season’s shadows look a bit more realistic, while the second season’s seem more like a darker and more-defined layer of color.

Light shining off of Ed’s armor in the first and second seasons of FMA, from the top respectively. Again, like the shadows in the above image, the glint of the light seems more realistic in Season 1, because it gives off a blurred, dusty feeling. However, it may be argued that it appears that way as an effect of the metal or environment (eg., the second season is supposed to seem like more-polished armor).

Approaching the possibility of Season 2 resembling the manga more so than Season 1 might require a stronger argument. However, it is clear that the facial designs from Season 2 are a lot rounder than Season 1, and the line strokes are in places much deeper or bolder than the first season (look again at the images of Ed’s face [image 1 and image 2]). If we examine the manga, we can see the change in design that I mentioned at the beginning of the article.

Images from the earlier chapters of the Full Metal Alchemist manga.

Images from the later chapters of the FMA manga.

I chose two fight scenes from both the earlier and later chapters of the manga serialization, because the pictures contained a maximum amount of lines, providing us with some material for comparison. Just as Takekuma Kentaro in his lecture explains that Miyazaki later learned to adapt his images for manga and developed much bolder lines, so does Hiromu Arakawa, the artist and writer of the manga. The characters and their appendages in the later chapters are surrounded by much bolder, distinct lines, even if those lines are drawn with much more rigor (they appear to be more jagged). The faces of the characters also appear to have rounder characteristics. Even the background lines evolve: in the earlier chapters, all of the lines resemble each other and are arranged in a similar pattern; however, in the later chapters, the background vary, even though similar actions are taking place.

When I talked to Kent, he said that “people online” expressed their distaste for the new season of Full Metal Alchemist, because the art style was significantly different enough to notice. Whether or not that change is a reflection of the manga, I believe, does not matter, but if the cause of the change is actually an attempt to mirror the manga’s style, that would indeed be, well, awesome. It’s a neat tip-of-the-hat to the series origin, but it’s also a more subtler one than, say, the new Shin Mazinger Shōgeki! Z-Hen being shown on Japanese television this season, which attempts to retain a similar style of artwork and animation from its predecessors.

A response to coverage of the KRAZY! anime & manga art exhibit at the New York Japan Society and a preview of my lecture/presentation at the Popular Culture Association national conference on Wednesday 8 April.

If geeks had never thought of anime as cool, it would never have become popular in America. This is a basic but true statement, hands down. One intrinsic tenets of being a fan of something is that we want more of it. So when science fiction geeks back in the ’70s noticed this new thing called anime being shipped over to the States, they wanted to get their hands on more. Once they were able to do just that, the opportunity to discover more about Japan became a reality.

I’m not here to say that geeks in America were the first to jump on the “Japan is awesome” bandwagon. In fact, interest in Japan hit another peak of popularity before the ’70s, when ukiyo-e block prints were exported to the States (to end up primarily at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). It’s almost common knowledge nowadays that ukiyo-e were not respected by creators of high art in Japan; the Wikipedia page confirms this, describing the prints as “mainly meant for townsmen, who were generally not wealthy enough to afford an original painting. The original subject of ukiyo-e was city life, in particular activities and scenes from the entertainment district.” But artists — particularly those Impressionist painters in Europe, like Van Gogh, — thought the prints were cool (or at least different), picked them up like a frequent browser in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and brought them home to share with their friends. The story of art and the story of fans.

Even before the Impressionist interest in ukiyo-e, people have been viewing Japanese “stuff,” or really Asian “stuff,” with that “This is certainly different” perspective. Edward Said, professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, even wrote a book about it, On Orientalism (1978). “According to Said, the West has created a dichotomy, between the reality of the East and the romantic notion of the “Orient. The Middle East and Asia are viewed with prejudice and racism. They are backward and unaware of their own history and culture. To fill this void, the West has created a culture, history, and future promise for them. On this framework rests not only the study of the Orient, but also the political imperialism of Europe in the East” (Western Michigan University). From the quoted description, basically, foreigners place fantastic identities over the realities of the East. In other words, we look at the East as different, then identify the East based on our assumptions, perceptions, etc.

Susan Napier, author of Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (2001, 2005) and professor at Tufts University, attempts to tackle the obsession over Orientalism in her most recent publication, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West (2007). While Said presents the material in a relatively ambivalent tone, Napier takes a supportive stance on the matter, encouraging the Orientalist worldview. Almost in response to Said, she writes, “And yet Japan also shared one major element with its fellow Eastern Others, and that is its position as an object of fantasy to the West, or, more accurately, as the embodiment of a variety of fantasies to the West. I use the word ‘fantasy’ to suggest a range of connotations. Generally, ‘fantasy’ is interpreted in a positive light, as a wish-fulfilling dream…” (Napier 3). She goes on to mention the opposite, darker side of seeing the East as different (eg., “the fantastic term ‘Yellow Peril’”), but the comment is essentially dismissed by the following chapters of the book.

It may be a valid perspective to take on the issue of a “cool” Japan, but I do not believe that it is what Said meant to insist. Although he sees the study of the East as a positive reaction, ultimately the negative, sister-reaction is the imperialism of identity, or forcing extravagant, exotic, and overall exaggerated views on something like anime or manga. Yes, it’s true that Japanese culture can be weird, or pornographic, or violent, but 1) that’s not all it is, and 2) nowadays, what isn’t? That a book can be published twenty-five years after Akio Nakamori wrote “Otaku Studies” in Manga Burikko, calling Japanese fans “those kids — every class has one — who never got enough exercise, who spent recess holed up in the classroom, lurking in the shadows obsessing over a shogi board or whatever. That’s them. Rumpled long hair parted on one side, or a classic kiddie bowl-cut look. Smartly clad in shirts and slacks their mothers bought off the “all ¥980/1980” rack at Ito Yokado or Seiyu [discount retailers], their feet shod in knock-offs of the “R”-branded Regal sneakers that were popular several seasons ago, their shoulder bags bulging and sagging — you know them. The boys were all either skin and bones as if borderline malnourished, or squealing piggies with faces so chubby the arms of their silver-plated eyeglasses were in danger of disappearing into the sides of their brow; all of the girls sported bobbed hair and most were overweight, their tubby, tree-like legs stuffed into long white socks” (translation via Neojaponisme).

The problem today is that the Weird Japan perspective is still dominant in the American mindset. Perhaps it’s in part due to the proliferation of Japanese game shows in the early days of YouTube (and that, frankly, would be kind of awesome if it were the true reason). However, the fact that foreign policy is now dictated by seeing Japan as weird or cool is a bit strange and most likely the wrong attitude to take. Douglas McGray wrote his Japan’s Gross National Cool in 2002, stating that “Japan is reinventing superpower again [because] Japan’s global cultural influence has only grown” (in Foreign Policy magazine). When McGray quotes Toshiya Ueno (who recently spoke in a lecture at the Krazy! exhibit, which I will talk about more later) as confessing “I can’t always distinguish elements of traditional Japanese culture from Japanese culture invented for tourists,” I feel that such a confession proves Said’s point, in that America has looked upon Japan as an entity entirely different from its reality. To reiterate that point, I wonder just how many people think that anime is popular in Japan (because it’s not when you disregard the otaku — it’s seen as a kid’s thing, and if you’re in middle school you’d better not still be watching it unless you want to be branded as uncool). I could go on to argue that Japan’s governmental effort to export popular culture won’t work, because the fandom abroad didn’t grow on being fed, and that’s not how things become popular (just like how marketers trying to make something “viral” or “a meme” online will fail), but I’ll save that for another blog post.

But to approach the question I want to ask: Why do some people still see Japan as exotic? It’s been proved that we can look at the history of anime and fans in detail and with context — research that leads to well-founded results. For example, in 1999 in his book The Anime Companion: What’s Japanese in Japanese Animation, Gilles Poitras writes definitions in a faux-dictionary format for many Japanese and American terms that relate to fandom or animation. When he describes “otaku,” he does not illustrate the term à la Akio Nakamori, but writes, “The use of the term otaku has an interestig history. Literally, the word is written as a combination of the character for ‘house’ and the honorific prefix o- and can be translated as ‘your house.’ The word can also be used for ‘you’ as a very polite way of addressing another person in conversation. For many of the shy, socially inept young males who are anime and manga fans in Japan, such a safe way of speaking is common… The word sticks and is used by the media and fans to describe anyoe obsessed with a particular subject…” (Poitras 103). Clearly not a detailed elucidation, but fairly succinct nonetheless. The conflict occurs between the perspective of the fan (Poitras) versus the perspective of the media. Two years later, we still saw a popular media outlet like Wired Magazine publishing an article where even in the title, The Incredibly Strange Mutant Creatures who Rule the Universe of Alienated Japanese Zombie Computer Nerds (Otaku to You), by Karl Taro Greenfeld, the exoticism stands out. Perhaps it’s just the fact that the overall stereotype of the fandom today remains something like this:

I am not against people viewing Japan as cool. In fact, I support it, because Japan is cool. I went there; I know. Actually, the reality things there are so different (read: occasionally pretty f—ed up) makes the Japanese quotidian lifestyle, popular culture, food and sex and everything even cooler. It’s even better when people celebrate that fact. A few weeks ago I talked to Ian Condry (professor of Japanese at MIT, author of Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization, and founder of the Cool Japan Research Project lecture series at MIT) about graduate school and anime studies, and we discussed the Cool Japan project for a few minutes. It’s basically an awesome set of lectures to attend if you’re ever in the Boston area. And it provides great access to things that are cool about Japan; this academic year, for instance, the lectures have focused on anime, politics, mobile phones, robots, and being… well, uncool. The project’s goals are described: “The project presents colloquia, international conferences, and arts events to examine the cultural connections, dangerous distortions, and critical potential of popular culture. The goal is to encourage scholarly debate, research, and networking in the Boston area for faculty and students interested in media and globalization related to Japan.” But nowhere do we see anything about some amazing new thing from Japan that’s weird and will blow your mind away. Here, Japan is about interest, not surprise.

However, the Japan Society in New York has a different perspective. From Friday 13 March to Saturday 14 June, they’re putting on an art/film/music/a-lot-of-other-stuff exhibit called KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Manga + Video Games. Now, when I heard about this initially on the Anime/Manga Research Circle list, I was physched, because I’m still of the mind that greater access (to anything… usually…) is a good thing. What caught my immediate attention, though, was the name: Krazy! But not just that, because there’s also the blatant capitalization, the use of the word “delirious,” and the much-appreciated (read: much-sarcastic) application of plus signs. I guess I’ll go backwards to explain.

1) Not really sure why addition is a theme in the title of the exhibition, but since I can’t argue now, I can only explain. Perhaps the plus sign, up against the now-outdated (?) ampersand [&], is an artistic representation of the virtual future implied by Japanese animation and its related culture.
2) Delirious. Adjective. a) In an acutely disturbed state of mind resulting from illness or intoxication and characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence of thought and speech. b) In a state of wild excitement or ecstacy. — Not sure the reasoning behind the use of the word delirious, but besides the fact that it embellishes and hyperbolizes anime and its following way beyond their actual nature, my guess would be that most attendees to the exhibit can’t even define the word and just glaze over it. One more point scored for institutions of higher education.
3) Using “krazy” is probably my biggest gripe. Subtitles can, for the most part, be ignored. But a headline like KRAZY! is overkill. The exclamation point. The capitalization. The misspelling. It reminds me of modern advertising that uses the word “like” as if it were correct grammar, the intent being to try to draw in a younger, more “modern” audience. It seems like the same thing is happening here. For the kids, the title attracts. For the adults, and especially the parents, it intrigues. KRAZY! is modern marketing at its best (which means the history of advertising at its worst).

But I’m not here to dismiss the exhibit. In fact, I still want to attend (even though I probably won’t be able to until the end of April, or after graduation in May. What I want to express is my continual irritation with what I see as exotic anthropologizing. Anime isn’t mainstream (look for a post on that in the future), but it’s not like it hasn’t been around in the states for a few decades, or at the very least hasn’t been prominent in the media since Miyazaki won his Academy Award on primetime American television in 2002. I have to live with the fact that the media will continually see popular culture as a bad thing — be it video games as violent, anime as pornography, the Internet as unsafe — but grad school would be boring if this wasn’t happening, because I’m interested in cultural perspectives with regard to media. And also, it’s been the story of the term “otaku” in Japan, ever since the media pegged Tsutomu Miyazaki as the otaku killer.

My reaction to KRAZY! was propelled by fellow anime bloggers’ personal reactions. It all started with JP and Hinano over at 見ないで! ひとり言. JP makes an eloquent point: “It reminds of the kind of cultural dilettantism that rubs me the wrong way, where some culture (and more accurately, some random aspect of culture that gets to stand in for the whole) becomes “so in right now” and is then stripped of context, recontextualized through the dilettante’s cultural lenses, and then is discarded,” which essentially becomes an irritation about non-fans trying to explain anime fandom, whether in the US of Japan. Ian Condry and I discussed that during our meeting, and it came up in my five-hour conversation with Lawrence Eng when I met him at South by Southwest this past weekend. Essentially, the question is not if scholars have a right to approach these topics, but whether they can sustain study in it long enough that anime doesn’t become an academic fad. Eng did bring up the issue of writing from the perspective of a fan (and writes at length about it in his PhD dissertation on otaku and technology), but the current trend seems to dictate that fans are more willing to come at academic or generally in-depth studies from a more objective angle. More coverage of the event (and definitely more positive coverage) can be found at Omonomono and Ogiue Maniax (the latter who, happily for me, writes, “Overall I didn’t get too much of a “HEY GUYS! ANIME!” vibe from the exhibition”). The most interesting piece of press ended up in the New York Times, where Ken Johnson reported that “the show is, in some ways, more like a faddish boutique than a museum exhibition.” However, Johnson does go on to say, and this sums up my point, that because the exhibit “leaves out fine art, it doesn’t make a strong case for why nonaficionados should take seriously genres that appear to be aimed at children and teenagers.” What I mean to say is that it’s not about whether or not it’s high or low or middle art, but that it’s already been appreciated, so it should be cultivated.

I’d definitely support going to see this exhibit. It seems fun, and I feel that interesting incentives like a Yoko Kanno listening booth add much to an exhibit “about anime, manga, and video games.” It seems that, although the poster and media depend a lot on Afro Samurai as a main attraction, there’s a lot of obscure or overlooked pieces on display (see About.com‘s review).

Also, this article has been a little exploration into a topic that I’m presenting a panel-form lecture on at the Popular Culture Association national conference in New Orleans, Louisiana at the beginning of April. If you’re down that way, maybe you can stop by and check out the Japanese Popular Culture: Anime panel that I’m on (that is, if the PCA doesn’t charge $100 just to see one or two talks). Otherwise, I’ll post my paper here online after the conference. If you’re looking through the PDF of the schedule I linked to, you can find me under “Otaku and the (Un)popular Fandom.”

Instead, this is a small catalogue of books that I recently bought, borrowed, or brought to a close.

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins (finished) – A mashed potato of a book that works much better if you separate the chapters and read them as essays. Pretty much an anthology of modern, cool changes in media. Recommended. Will blog (hopefully) multiple times about this at a future date.

Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, Mimi Ito, et. al. (borrowed from the BPL, just started) – If I had the linguistic skills, I’d definitely do some further research on mobile culture in Japan when I’m abroad in Kyoto in the fall and early winter. Reads sociologically, meaning interesting yet dull language.

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, Lawrence Lessig (recently bought) – I figure that I need to start reading this, since I’ve firmly entrenched myself in this free culture thing for years to come.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yochai Benkler (recently bought) – Yochai laid the smackdown on Cass Sunstein at a forum/lecture that I attended via MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program. This is my thanks to him.

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Jonathan Zittrain (recently bought) – After Berkman@10 and two riveting JZ talks, I had to pick up this book. Besides, it’s at least a bit relevant.

Other relevant books that I want to read:
Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, David Weinberger
Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization, Ian Condry

Have you read any of these seven titles? Tell me what you think about them. Comment, btchz.