New Book Purchase: OurSpace - Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture, by Christine Harold

Finally, after a long period of time with nothing that I wanted to read (or nothing in print, anyway), I picked up a copy of the book mentioned above, about Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture.  Ironically, the only reason I bought it was that I saw it on the shelf at Barnes & Noble.  But I would have bought it at St. Marks Books or some other place if it jumped out at me from the shelf over there - which it never did.

I read some pages here and there in the store, and I greatly enjoyed much of the information and the prose.  It’s got some clumsy moments (e.g., those chapters that begin by saying, “In this chapter, I discuss” and “In this chapter I explore, ” a style that some academics employ that I was advised to steer clear of way back when, when I took some writing courses).  Nonetheless, overall, this seems like a very good read, because of the subject matter and the way that she explores it.

There is a nice description of the book over on a Web site that she set up called OurSpace:

 In OurSpace, Christine Harold examines the deployment and limitations of “culture jamming” by activists.  For Harold, it is a different type of opposition that offers a genuine alternative to corporate consumerism.  Exploring the revolutionary Creative Commons movement, copyleft, and open source technology, Harold advocates a more inclusive approach to intellectual property that invites innovation and wider participation in the creative process.

The site itself is interesting too; it’s a wiki page that asks people to contribute their own thoughts about the book.  However, I’ve encountered some puzzling things about this page and will need to figure them out. 

In general, I, myself, am confused by wiki pages, log-in procedures and all that stuff.  I suppose I’m not the only one; this is one information gap that might be a bit of an obstacle to maximum democratic access, especially for the technologically challenged and lazy.

Fortunately, I have gotten a pretty full idea by now of how to navigate through the procedures at wordpress.com, so  maybe when I finish this book, I will just post my own real review of it right here…