First things

We plan on starting with two very different projects—a networked version of Jonathan Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It and A New Book of Common Days, a selection of poetry from Jay Hopler, a recent Yale Younger Poet.

By placing Jonathan Zittrain's book on the CommentPress platform, we really hope to practice what he preaches. One of the main themes of his new book is that the Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity and that users are losing control of the web. We have to save ourselves. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia, Zittrain shows how we can develop new technologies, social structures, and strategies that will allow us to work continue working creatively and collaboratively.

Yale University Press has experimented with mounting books on a wiki platform before with some publicity and so far with mixed success. (See yalepresswiki.org.) Even from the beginning, we weren't sure that a wiki platform would be best for mounting long-form writing, but it was definitely worth a shot. It was really the spirit of collaboration and sharing that gripped us and our authors; but writing and editing wikis can be trying—even for those who've made the Internet their main subject of discourse.

As soon as we saw CommentPress and McKenzie Wark's GAM3R 7H3ORY project, we felt that the folks at the Institute were on to something special.

I'll speak to Jay Hopler's project in the next post.