Gaia is the word for "unity-of-life-processes". The experiment here is to unify the various threads of voice and sense of self together into an undivided unity. Spirituality, economics, politics, science and ordinary life interleaved.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

On widgets, marketing matters, and title changes for the Gaia project

I have had a bit of a rush of ideas for widgets. I thought I would put them up here for a bit of an idea of how my dreambuilding's going. These are all possible widgets for The Biotech Age, formerly known as Return To Gaia before I cut the idea in half.

1. For purchases of the book, give access to three related short stories online for free.

2. Donate ten percent of the purchase of each book to a relevant NGO campaigning for responsible biotech.

3. The records here of writing the book can be condensed into an online record and used to market the book, and accessed for free.

4. "The Science Behind The Book", free online extra when you buy the book.

5. Publish an article on biotech in a Science magazine such as Scientific American.

6. Do an interview with Lynne Margulis, the microbiologist whose work inspired the book, and publish that free online.

7. Create an email list of visitors to the website for marketing future books of the series, in return for several of these free gifts.

8. Write a reader's discussion guide to the issues behind the book.

9. Write a short pitch for anyone interested in purchasing movie rights to the books - known as 'the elevator pitch', and put that on the site.

10. Make the titles of the books sound like blockbuster movie titles!

Now I took the original titles and fiddled them around to this:

Book One - The Biotech Age.
Book Two - The Gaian Age.
Book Three - The Space Age.
Book Four - The Solar Age.

Then I thought: they don't sound like blockbusters at all. So I came up with this

Blockbuster #1. "Life INC."

This neatly encapsulates the infringement of corporations and governments into a struggle for ownership of genetic code in the Biotech Age.

Blockbuster #2. "Earth (TM)"

The trademark symbol after Earth signifies the Gaian Age, where Gaia is a supercomputer with ownership of the planet to do as she wishes. It tells the story of the evacuation of Earth.

Blockbuster #3. "Spa(C)e" - where the (C) would be the copywrite symbol.

The copywrite symbol in space: this book is about struggles to copywrite, thieve, and protect software, genetic code, and neural and hormonal imprints of humans helplessly trapped orbiting an uninhabitable Gaian Earth with no other planet to go to.


and finally:

Blockbuster #4. "Soul OS."

This is a play on the Sol System, and the computer term OS, Operating System. The tale here of course is the Gaiaforming and colonisation by humans and biocomputers of the outermost regions of the Solar System. But it is also about the commodification of the human soul under interplanetary capitalism, and the twists in the fates of the downtrodden and losers in the deadly game of Space Capitalism.

LOLOLOL... what do you think?

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