‘Darknet’ mini-book series begins today

Media will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 50 years. We stand at a historic moment when we’re witnessing the transition to a fundamentally new kind of mediasphere.

My two-years-in-the-making book, “Darknet,” has just been released. It’s not another book about the excesses of copyright law — not really. “Darknet” takes a look at the future of future of movies, television, computing, music, games, art and more — and the choice we face as a society.

In the next two months, I’ll be publishing stories and analysis from the book in regular weekly installments. Look for them every Monday on Darknet.com.

We think this is the first time this kind of “mini-book” — containing both installments from the book and new material — has been done on the Web. That’s appropriate, given that “Darknet” was the first mainstream book written with the help of readers on a wiki (in addition to those who helped out on the Darknet blog and in private forums).

Today I’ve published the first two installments of the mini-book: the book’s Introduction and a story about three teenage filmmakers.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading these accounts, regardless of whether you buy the book or not.

More importantly, I hope that the blogosphere helps stir a public debate about these critical issues, which have long languished in the recesses of academia and the political establishment rather than in the public townsquare, where these conversations belong.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.