Tasha Harrison

Royal Shakespeare Company Perform Romeo and Juliet on Twitter

The play started on Saturday, has a cast of six and will take place over the next five weeks. Being the first project of its kind, this is a tremendously exciting foray into social media for theatre.

The play is shaping up to be more of a soap opera as we are given an insight into each of the characters. We watch Juliet and her sister, Jess_Nurse, chat to each other about their dead mother, Juliet decrying, “It annoys me that i dont know as much about mum as you do I wish i could have got to know her better “.

We see Tybalt’s anger and hatred of the Montague’s, “Before I go just one more happy thought for the day – MONTAGUE SCUM!”

They’ve introduced a new character, Jago, who has his own Tumblr page. A classmate of Juliet, I suspect that he will become our chorus/commentator as events unfold.

We’ve also had a tour of Juliet’s bedroom, via a Youtube video:

As I’ve watched this unravel over the last couple of days I’m not sure that Shakepeare was the best choice for the first Twitter play. I was initially excited by the concept, but by taking such a well known story I’m more intrigued by how they’re going to do it, rather than what is going to happen. I already know the characters and they are all acting as expected.

There is also no detection of Shakespeare at all and out of all his plays, Romeo and Juliet is by far the most widely interpreted into other mediums.

Bring on the first play written just for Twitter!

You can follow the play via this Twitter list:
http://twitter.com/tashaharrison/r-and-j

A couple of other sources on the play:
Romeo and Juliet get Twitter Treatment
The Royal Shakespeare Company performs Romeo and Juliet via Twitter

Despite the fact that I love the Internet, read newspapers and magazines online and on my iPhone, never buy an actual printed newspaper and believe that in ten years time print will all but die out, I still love books. I love going to a bookshop, especially antique bookshops, I have a collection of three or four first editions of my favourite authors and one day will inherit an early 20th century edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Which is why I’m really excited about Google Books.

Bringing books back to life

Essentially, Google Books will one day be a database of almost every book ever written. According to Google, the project will bring books back to life, books that are no longer in print and have been forgotten. They will give users access to these books by digitising them, so we will be able to read them online. Authors, who never thought their work would be read again, will now be forever published in the giant database. Published books will be sold via the site, linking to Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwells etc. In the future some authors will be able to charge a fee if their books are still in copyright, but out of print.

The trouble is that this runs contrary to the established copyright laws that protect the intellectual property of authors, which pretty much undermines how the publishing industry is set up and how authors make money. So, unsurprisingly, they’re quite upset about this. Musicians and journalists are already suffering as a result of the perception that all media should now be available for free. The publishing industry probably thought they were immune, protected by their ancient laws.

Google are now the bad guys

Google, however, have little respect for the old ways of sharing information. They plough on regardless and only worry about the consequences afterwards. Google Books was first launched in 2005, but they’ve been arguing with the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers about how to deal with the problem of copyright. Finally, they have reached a settlement, which isn’t perfect, but is the first step to realising Google’s great plan.

Google have been made to be the bad guys here. Ten years ago they were this cool little search engine company, the darling of the internet, but they have become too powerful. People now fear them, worry that they will one day lay claim to all the information in the world. But it is the brilliance of their products, most of which are free to use, that has made them such a giant. Instead of trying to fight them, it is important to work with them, since they are almost undoubtedly the future of media across the world.

Last week there were two extremely important events in the world of technology. The first was the launch of the iPad, Apple’s netbook/giant iphone/small laptop type device, and the second was the first ever football match broadcast live in 3D.

No one is really sure what the iPad is for. Why do I want an iPhone, a laptop and an iPad? Possibly to read newspapers and books on the go. It’s certainly got a larger screen than the iPhone, but isn’t as big as my laptop, which means that it will fit perfectly in my handbag and I can easily read from it. But that alone is not enough for me to go out and buy one. Does it feels as though Apple have simply created the iPad for the sake of creating a new device?

The problem with the iPad is that society isn’t quite ready for it yet – we haven’t completely come to terms with the fact that we don’t need print anymore. One day, probably not as far in the future as one would imagine, we won’t really read printed material anymore. We will all carry around a device that will be much like the iPad.

And here lies the problem for technology. One day we will probably all sit and watch our televisions with glasses on, no longer wowed by the wonder of 3D, we will simply accept that football is best this way. Each person will carry around their own pair of glasses, ready for a mate’s house or the pub. It will become integrated into our lives.

You’re probably reading this thinking that you really like reading from paper and you don’t want to sit in the pub wearing glasses. The problem with this new technology is that we’re just not ready for it yet.

While the newspaper industry continues to debate the pros and cons of paywalls, Stewart Kirkpatrick, former editor of scotsman.com, has launched the first ever web-only daily. Named after Scotland’s oldest newspaper, The Caledonian Mercury, caledonianmercury.com challenges the perception that the internet will spell the death of the newspaper. By offering high quality journalism, it hopes to attract readers and advertisers through the quality of its content.

There has been much debate about whether such a venture can succeed given the damage the internet has done to the industry. With sites like the BBC and Sky News continuing to offer free news will there be a place for niche news sites? I think the problem that the Caledonian Mercury is going to have is that it is competing against many other niche news sites that won’t have the same overheads – the Scottish publication is going to be paying journalists, including many former staff from the Scotsman.

There are also question marks over the professionalism of the design. Built in WordPress, the site doesn’t exude the same professionalism as the majority of its competitors. Simplicity is always a good starting point, but the curious logo and tag clouds give it more the image of a blog. Perhaps this is what they had planned, but in the longterm it is a concern that they just come across as another blog.

It’s a great idea, but I’m worried that their approach may just prove that blogs will replace newspapers for well written and thoughtful commentary.

This is how far:

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