Curiosity
May have killed the cat ...
… but it turns out it’s essential to human survival.
Greg Orme, counts ‘author’ and ‘speaker’ amongst his many talents and he joined me last week on the People First podcast to talk about his new book 'The Human Edge'. It’s not just any book, it won the 2020 Business Book of the Year - so I was delighted to welcome Greg on to the show.
If you know diamonds you know the ‘4Cs’ … cut, color, clarity and carat. Greg introduced me to his 4Cs; consciousness, curiosity, creativity and collaboration that he has identified as necessary to understand what we each need to do to maintain our humanity, differentiate ourselves from ‘the machines’ and not be subsumed in the race to automate. It’s less than half an hour - specifically edited to be short enough for you to listen to on even the shortest commute. Are you commuting?
And while we are on the subject of podcasts, it was interesting to read this week that Amazon has stuck its toe in the water and has announced that it too is now a Podcast distributor. (It’s a pretty big toe … it opened with 70,000 podcasts.)
The People First podcast is available through 18 channels - and counting, but Amazon is not yet one of them and there is a reason for that.
Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash
The reason can be best explained by listening to another podcast, this one by Cory Doctorow. You might know him as the author of ‘Little Brother’, ‘Maker’ and ‘Homeland’, but he is also very involved in something near and dear to my heart, Digital Rights Management.
I’m not going to dive into it all here. rather let’s use his words from a post he wrote a couple of weeks ago to highlight the egregious terms that writers sign up to when offering their book through Audible/Amazon (my bold).
This Kickstarter is one of the most important moments in my professional career, an experiment to see if I can viably publish audiobooks without caving into Amazon’s monopolistic requirement that all Audible books be sold with DRM that locks it to Amazon’s corporate platform…forever.
Cory Doctorow
Cory’s Podcast is a great listen and falls into two parts. The first explains exactly what is going on with Amazon, Audible and the rights of authors. (It also provides a foundation as to my concerns with making my Podcast available on Amazon. It might be much ado about nothing - after all, I am not sending the file to them, just the feed, so they can access the file - but that said - when/if I do it - I want to have both eyes open, not closed and hoping for the best - which seems to be what many people are doing.
The second part - totally unrelated - and yet very much connected - well - let’s use Doctorow’s own words
You’ve probably heard of ‘open source software’. If you pay attention to the politics of this stuff, you might have heard of ‘free software’ and even know a little about the ethical debate underpinning the war of words between these two labels. I’ve been involved since the last century, but even I never really understood what’s going on in the background until recently.
Cory Doctorow
Certainly educated me.
The whole thing is well worth a listen if you have any concern at all about freedom of the individual and unfettered corporate power - and if you are more of the reading persuasion, don’t worry - I’ve got you covered!
The Article Referenced In The Podcast.
The Article That Launched The Kickstarter.
My thanks and appreciation for your continued support, comments and attention. Please like the post, share through your social channels and forward the email to colleagues, friends and family that want to join us on this journey and do comment or email me your thoughts.
Newsletter established and growing. Podcast launched. Next step ... Community. Very nascent ... but if you want to join us ...