How to Protect Bookstores and Why - Highlights - DANNY CAINE, Bookseller, Poet

How to Protect Bookstores and Why - Highlights - DANNY CAINE, Bookseller, Poet

Bookseller · Poet · Author of How to Protect Bookstores and Why · How to Resist Amazon and Why · Picture Window

The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? Bookselling captured my imagination and my heart as soon as I started working at the bookstore because I could see the potential for this great, amazing community-oriented work.

What Lies Ahead for Bookstores in the Age of Generative AI? - DANNY CAINE, Bookseller, Poet

What Lies Ahead for Bookstores in the Age of Generative AI? - DANNY CAINE, Bookseller, Poet

Bookseller · Poet · Author of How to Protect Bookstores and Why · How to Resist Amazon and Why · Picture Window

The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? Bookselling captured my imagination and my heart as soon as I started working at the bookstore because I could see the potential for this great, amazing community-oriented work.

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold? - Highlights - WENDY WONG

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold? - Highlights - WENDY WONG

Author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age
Professor of Political Science at University of British Columbia

One of the things that we need to remember is that we are data stakeholders and not data subjects. We're often called data subjects if you look at the way legislation is written and tech companies talk about the users of their technology as data subjects. Being a subject casts this sort of '“you can't help but have this happen to you” effect. But we're actually data stakeholders for the reason that data cannot be created without us. If companies were incentivized to follow data minimization for example, where they only collect the data they need, that would change the way we interact with digital technologies.

WENDY WONG - Author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age

WENDY WONG - Author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age

Author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age
Professor of Political Science at University of British Columbia

One of the things that we need to remember is that we are data stakeholders and not data subjects. We're often called data subjects if you look at the way legislation is written and tech companies talk about the users of their technology as data subjects. Being a subject casts this sort of '“you can't help but have this happen to you” effect. But we're actually data stakeholders for the reason that data cannot be created without us. If companies were incentivized to follow data minimization for example, where they only collect the data they need, that would change the way we interact with digital technologies.

Highlights - RALPH GIBSON - Award-winning Photographer - Leica Hall of Fame Inductee

Highlights - RALPH GIBSON - Award-winning Photographer - Leica Hall of Fame Inductee

Award-winning Photographer
Leica Hall of Fame Inductee · Recipient of the French Legion of Honor

I wouldn't be able to effectively delineate where my life ends and photography begins. They're one and the same. If my eyes are open, I'm seeing. If I'm seeing, I'm essentially in that valence within which, or from within which come the images. In that book, Self Exposure, one of the things I did realize as I was writing it: all autobiographies are chronological and anecdotal. That's the way they unfold. And I realized that there were certain decisions I had made along the way that were crucial. And there was really only a handful of them. But I was very fortunate because I had that initial desire to be a photographer. I don't even know if it was a desire. I think it was something much further beyond that. I would have to say it was more of a...I didn't really choose photography, it sort of chose me, you know. I mean, nolo contendere. I just did what I knew I had to do. There was a sense of devoir, you know, you just do it. Claude Lévi-Strauss the great social anthropologist has made this sort of thing clear: Society changes and with it the context through which we observe something has changed as well. And so I like the role of art in society and my relationship to my society and to art in my society. Now I'm interested in this phase of my life and how does the mind influence the mind? 

RALPH GIBSON - Award-winning Photographer - Leica Hall of Fame Inductee

RALPH GIBSON - Award-winning Photographer - Leica Hall of Fame Inductee

Award-winning Photographer
Leica Hall of Fame Inductee · Recipient of the French Legion of Honor

I wouldn't be able to effectively delineate where my life ends and photography begins. They're one and the same. If my eyes are open, I'm seeing. If I'm seeing, I'm essentially in that valence within which, or from within which come the images. In that book, Self Exposure, one of the things I did realize as I was writing it: all autobiographies are chronological and anecdotal. That's the way they unfold. And I realized that there were certain decisions I had made along the way that were crucial. And there was really only a handful of them. But I was very fortunate because I had that initial desire to be a photographer. I don't even know if it was a desire. I think it was something much further beyond that. I would have to say it was more of a...I didn't really choose photography, it sort of chose me, you know. I mean, nolo contendere. I just did what I knew I had to do. There was a sense of devoir, you know, you just do it. Claude Lévi-Strauss the great social anthropologist has made this sort of thing clear: Society changes and with it the context through which we observe something has changed as well. And so I like the role of art in society and my relationship to my society and to art in my society. Now I'm interested in this phase of my life and how does the mind influence the mind? 

Highlights - MARK GOTTLIEB - Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group

Highlights - MARK GOTTLIEB - Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group

Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group

There's a lot of apprenticeship in our industry because historically it had to be that way, otherwise what you would have in publishing - there's still a lot of this - is a bunch of English majors trying to make sense of how to run a business, right?Because book publishing or working at a literary agency - a talent agency for authors like I do - is at the crossroads of creative and business. And if you didn't have that kind of apprenticeship, someone to learn from at the company where you work, then we would all just be English majors just trying to feel our way in the dark.

I think that the important thing for people to really know about storytelling is that books are sort of like the oil paintings of the new media. It's a very fine art form, an old art form, and a story exists in everything, whether it's a photograph, a painting, a song, or a movie, it all began with a story. And stories have been here from the dawn of time. They're going to forever be in our existence, but I think people should just always have curious minds and seek out stories and storytelling and try to see the story in everything, not just look at things for face value.

MARK GOTTLIEB - Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group

MARK GOTTLIEB - Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group

Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group

There's a lot of apprenticeship in our industry because historically it had to be that way, otherwise what you would have in publishing - there's still a lot of this - is a bunch of English majors trying to make sense of how to run a business, right?Because book publishing or working at a literary agency - a talent agency for authors like I do - is at the crossroads of creative and business. And if you didn't have that kind of apprenticeship, someone to learn from at the company where you work, then we would all just be English majors just trying to feel our way in the dark.

I think that the important thing for people to really know about storytelling is that books are sort of like the oil paintings of the new media. It's a very fine art form, an old art form, and a story exists in everything, whether it's a photograph, a painting, a song, or a movie, it all began with a story. And stories have been here from the dawn of time. They're going to forever be in our existence, but I think people should just always have curious minds and seek out stories and storytelling and try to see the story in everything, not just look at things for face value.

Highlights - Johnjoe McFadden - Author of “Life is Simple” - Prof. Molecular Genetics, Assoc. Dean - U of Surrey

Highlights - Johnjoe McFadden - Author of “Life is Simple” - Prof. Molecular Genetics, Assoc. Dean - U of Surrey

Author of Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe
Co-author of Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
Professor of Molecular Genetics & Assoc. Dean (Int’l) · University of Surrey

I think that's what art is all about is communicating these big, complex objects, which are ideas inside our head, but in a non-dissected way in which the object isn't completely dissected, or it's dissected in such a way it can be reassembled in somebody else's mind. So you get a full experience of what the artist had or as close as he or she can make it. So I think that to me is what art does. It's a way of communicating these wonderful ideas and feelings that we have inside our heads. And they're trapped there, and art allows you - by playing music or painting, or writing poetry... - it allows you to communicate this in this holistic kind of way.

Johnjoe McFadden - Author of “Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe”

Johnjoe McFadden - Author of “Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe”

Author of Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe
Co-author of Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
Professor of Molecular Genetics & Assoc. Dean (Int’l) · University of Surrey

I think that's what art is all about is communicating these big, complex objects, which are ideas inside our head, but in a non-dissected way in which the object isn't completely dissected, or it's dissected in such a way it can be reassembled in somebody else's mind. So you get a full experience of what the artist had or as close as he or she can make it. So I think that to me is what art does. It's a way of communicating these wonderful ideas and feelings that we have inside our heads. And they're trapped there, and art allows you - by playing music or painting, or writing poetry... - it allows you to communicate this in this holistic kind of way.

Highlights - Bruce Mau - Award-winning Designer, Author of “Mau MC24…24 Principles for Designing Massive Change”

Highlights - Bruce Mau - Award-winning Designer, Author of “Mau MC24…24 Principles for Designing Massive Change”

Award-winning Designer, Artist & Educator
Co-founder & CEO of Massive Change Network
Author/Co-author of Mau MC24 · The Nexus · S, M, L, XL

I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.

Bruce Mau - Author of "Mau MC24…24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work”

Bruce Mau - Author of "Mau MC24…24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work”

Award-winning Designer, Artist & Educator
Co-founder & CEO of Massive Change Network
Author/Co-author of Mau MC24 · The Nexus · S, M, L, XL

I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.