Despite employing a small army of contractors to monitor posts, it’s clear the company is no longer fit for purposeWay back in the 1950s, a pioneering British cybernetician, W Ross Ashby, proposed a fundamental law of dynamic systems. In his book An Introduction to Cybernetics, he formulated his law of requisite variety, which defines “the minimum number of states necessary for a controller to control a system of a given number of states”. In plain English, it boils down to this: for a system to be viable, it has to be able to absorb or cope with the complexity of its environment. And there are basically only two ways of achieving viability in those terms: either the system manages to control (or reduce) the variety of its environment, or it has to increase its internal capacity (its “variety”) to match what is being thrown at it from the environment.Sounds abstruse, I know, but it has a contemporary resonance. Specifically, it provides a way of understanding some of the current internal turmoil in Facebook as it grapples with the problem of keeping unacceptable, hateful or psychotic content off its platform. Two weeks ago, the New York Times was leaked 1,400 pages from the rulebooks that the company’s moderators are trying to follow as they police the stuff that flows through its servers. According to the paper, the leak came from an employee who said he “feared that the company was exercising too much power, with too little oversight – and making too many mistakes”.... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This week, John Agard became the first poet to win the BookTrust lifetime achievement award. Here, judge Frank Cottrell-Boyce pays tribute to him. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-11 23:33:59 UTC ]
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BookTrust will today (9th November) present John Agard with this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony in London. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-08 03:20:40 UTC ]
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My father, John Hitchin, who has died aged 88, was a marketing and publicity specialist in the publishing industry who spent three decades with Penguin Books, where he was responsible for a number of innovations, including the first paperback gift set and the first display “dump” bin. As... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-10-28 19:33:32 UTC ]
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Entrepreneur Etan Ilfeld, owner of the Watkins Media Group, has bought John Hunt Publishing (JHP) for an undisclosed sum. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-24 22:51:13 UTC ]
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Social media firm announces deal after long-running battle with national and regional newspapers France has hailed a victory in its long-running quest for fairer action from tech companies after Facebook reached an agreement with a group of national and regional newspapers to pay for content... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-10-21 14:21:02 UTC ]
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Publishers shared insights at the Digiday Publishing Summit at the end of September in Miami. The post Publishing Summit Recap: Publishers establish infrastructure to future-proof data sets appeared first on Digiday. Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2021-10-19 04:01:00 UTC ]
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Paula Lichtarowicz's latest novel, inspired by her grandmother's life, has gone to John Murray in a pre-empt. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-13 13:23:16 UTC ]
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The best-selling writer’s new book, published 10 months after his death at age 89, delivers a thought-provoking story — and a warning. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-10-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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“Silverview” features a young bookstore owner in an English seaside town, caught up in an investigation involving two cunning spymasters. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-10-11 09:00:03 UTC ]
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Jarrett Adams recounts his grueling path from a wrongful conviction to a law career. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-10-08 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Former Walmart senior executive John Aden discusses opportunity, purpose, and plans for his new role as president and CEO of David C Cook, a Christian publisher and music company in Colorado Springs, Colo., Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-10-07 04:00:00 UTC ]
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We’ll get into why Facebook saw its entire business fall off a cliff on Monday, but first: e-readers.It’s a device category we don’t see much development in — probably because it’s very much a device for reading text and not much else. Amazon’s Kindle, thanks to its powerful online e-book store,... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-10-06 11:15:08 UTC ]
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From a civil rights icon, reflections on history and advice for today’s activists. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-10-01 12:00:00 UTC ]
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John Ziccardi, who led national sales efforts at Bantam and Bantam Doubleday Dell, died September 27. He was 78. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-09-30 04:00:00 UTC ]
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John Murray senior commissioning editor Becky Walsh has acquired Michelle Gallen's second novel Factory Girls. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-28 04:02:44 UTC ]
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Recently, we heard about Netflix’s forthcoming adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s famously banned book Lady Chatterley’s Lover (apparently it’s going to be raunchier than Bridgerton, which does seem only fair). To prepare yourself, you may want to start with this video of John Waters—or as William S.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-09-20 16:04:44 UTC ]
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Mary Shelley was goth before it was cool. She wrote Frankenstein—sometimes described as the world’s first science fiction novel—as part of a horror story writing game. She lost her virginity to Percy Shelley on top of her mother’s grave. (To be fair, it was one of her main leisure spots, but... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-09-17 16:41:12 UTC ]
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“Beautiful World, Where Are You” more than lives up to the promise of its predecessors and even exceeds the hype. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-09-10 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Decision rejecting appeal in Voller defamation case means companies will be likely to ban comments on more social media postsGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingSome of Australia’s biggest media companies have lost a bid in the high court to escape liability for defamatory... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-09-08 03:33:03 UTC ]
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Former publisher and bookseller John Hitchin died in August, aged 88. He is remembered by Tim Godfray and Dotti Irving. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-02 19:38:30 UTC ]
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