capitalism Archives - Page 3 of 6 - Home For Fiction

capitalism

Why I Decided to Offer All my Books for Free

February 20, 2023

book, capitalism, creativity, fiction, freedom, literature, writing

I’ve offered my books for free “always”. All you had to do was email me and ask for a free, no-strings-attached copy. Perhaps you remember one earlier post, on whether art should be free. There I said how I preferred this way over permanently listing my work online for free because I wanted my readers to make the effort and be proactive in showing they want my work.

Quite a few people have done this over the years – and we’ve had some pretty great discussions in the process. However, after deciding to offer all my apps for free some time ago – for reasons you can read about here – I began wondering whether I should do the same with my books.

The answer was obviously, yes – you might have noticed the blog menu has a new entry, “Free Books”. And this post explains the reasons.

Books for free — I want to reiterate something I wrote in my “No Ads, no Corporate Masters” post: I’m not perfect, but whatever I make is *mine*.

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The Smartphone Model Is Rotten: You Don’t Own Your Device

January 9, 2023

Society

capitalism, mediocrity, programming, society, technology

Let’s be clear, I’m not breaking any new ground here. The topic described by the heading has been talked about and analyzed a lot. And for good reason: The smartphone model – that is, the way smartphones are designed and sold – is rotten to the core. The subtitle might give you a hint why: You don’t really own the device you paid for and purchased.

What you own is the temporary, easily withdrawn right to operate the device for a short, undefined period of time.

Perhaps you’ve either realized this yourself or you’ve read about it elsewhere. As I said, I’m not breaking any new ground. Nonetheless, in this post I will share the… Kafkaesque experience I recently had with “my” smartphone – the model of which isn’t important; they’re all the same disaster.

At the same time, I will bring to your attention some menacing repercussions you might not have thought of, some news you might have not heard. Put simply, the… smartphone model of doing business is spilling over into other industries with potentially dystopian consequences.

How would you like not to own your car? Or, here’s a better one: How would you like the right to operate “your” car to be revoked if, say, you left a nasty review about the manufacturer?

smartphone model — There are many things to dislike about smartphones. One of them, they’ve facilitated a whole generation of people who take videos at concerts, missing the experience

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No Ads, no Corporate Masters

September 5, 2022

Home For Fiction, Society

art, capitalism, home for fiction, knowledge, society

The phrase of the title, “No Ads, no Corporate Masters”, is of course a wordplay on “No Gods, no Masters”. It’s also a phrase I use on Home for Fiction, for example whenever you try to access any of the apps (we’ll talk about this more in a moment) .

It’s a way for me to remind you that Home for Fiction displays no ads, and it’s controlled by nobody.

But why all this? Why do I refuse to put ads on Home for Fiction? The short answer is, for the same reason I’ve refused corporate masters (and as you’ll discover in this post, I’ve had many such… suitors): Because I can’t compromise on what Home for Fiction is – in terms of content as well as aesthetics.

The longer answer is something I decided to write this post about.

no ads no corporate masters — “No ads, no corporate masters” can be both lonely and liberating. There are no shortcuts – you can be either free or content; being both is impossible

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