In bizarrely synchronistic news, I was reminded last night of the Librivox project, my first (and only) contribution to which, I published here twenty years ago tomorrow…

I came across it again because I was looking up Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience (for, y’know, contemporary culture reasons). And the Wikipedia page references recordings on Librivox

I believe the Secret Agent project (and Librivox as a whole) was inspired by the AKMA-initiated collaborative reading of Lessig’s Free Culture – which happened in April 2004 just as conversations about podcasting were getting going.

At the time I recorded a chapter, podcasting was in full swing – we even had a conference here! I had achieved what little notoriety I ever would for making podcasts out of me talking to myself while walking around in London. I remember walking up and down the backstreets of Westminster trying to find a suitable location that was close enough to Scotland Yard to feel like it had some local colour. But it was too wet and windy even for my low production standards!

Speaking of production standards, there’s a very samizdat feel to those collaborative recordings that I think we’ve lost touch with in our need to make polished media for each other. Something about the content (yes the actual contents of the work) being more valuable than the presentation.