Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

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Pain and Its Alleviation (John Oakes, OR Books)

John Oakes is the co-publisher of OR Books, a publishing company that “embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business.”

(In which the publishing industry is compared to a dead Norwegian Blue parrot, and evolutionary theory is briefly discussed.) At the most elemental level, pain serves a purpose. It teaches those of us who survive the experience. If we don’t learn, we go on suffering—or we vanish from the earth.

In discussing contemporary publishing, there’s really only one mystery. Why does a collection of sophisticated, intellectually curious adults, many of them with substantial financial resources at their disposal, perpetuate a system that has failed? To quote John Cleese whilst attempting to return his deceased Norwegian Blue, publishing is “stone-dead,” an ex-parrot nailed to its perch, as it were, by sporadic bestseller and backlist sales. It hinges on guesswork and cronyism, on antiquated, environmentally and fiscally disastrous supply and production systems. The persistence of this system would be understandable if there were no alternative. But there is, and it’s not even based on proprietary technology. It’s primarily a matter of attitude, of being willing to try a new direction.

Not too long ago, I was reading about the “Red Queen Theory of Evolution.” A concept first put forth by the American evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen in the 1970s, it was named after the bloody-minded ...