Paranormalia

Pay-to-view

It will be interesting to see how Rupert Murdoch gets on with his campaign to establish a pay-to-view model for internet access. A lot of sites have tried this, but the weight of media opinion is that it hasn't worked so far. A fair number of people think it never will.

Murdoch apparently plans to launch the Sunday Times as a sandalone site in November, and hopes that other newspaper owners will follow his example. But experience shows that only a hard core of users are actually prepared to pay, and not enough to make it worth while for advertisers - a lose-lose scenario.

I have some interest in this as a journalist, as I spend a lot of time poking around online researching stories. And as a foreign news junkie - yes, there are such people - I'd be devastated if I couldn't waste time trawling Google news for the latest bonkers story about  Ahmadinejad (see this on his dangerous mystical leanings), China, whatever. I wouldn't mind paying a single moderate subscription fee to go on doing that, but the thought of having to pay for every site I access - well, I don't go there.

It's not just newspapers that want to charge for their content. Greg Taylor ran a campaign a year or so ago appealing for donations for his very excellent Daily Grail site, and that's just the sort of regular, consistent specialist service that deserves to get some income. I hope it helped, but I'd be surprised if it solved the long-term problem, which is how to get a return from all that effort and creativity, instead of having to fit it into one's spare time.

In the case of Paranormalia the idea of charging doesn't arise. It wouldn't work, and in any case, the site's a labour of love. If it comes and goes a bit, that's not really about money, it's about having something to say.  But there's a bigger principle at stake here. The Internet offers a fantastic opportunity to raise the level of the debate about psi, not just in terms of providing this sort of comment, but of opening access to primary sources that previously one could only find in specialist libraries. (The SPR's library in Kensington is practically deserted these days, apparently, since all the Journals and Proceedings were made available to download.) I think we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible, in terms of packaging content and offering it to help people answer their questions.

But of course there's a problem here for the organisations like the SPR which own and create so much of the content. The SPR is largely funded by membership subscriptions. While the Journal of Scientific Exploration has opened its archive to free access you still have to be a member to access SPR publications, even those which are long out of copyright. As far as I know - and someone correct me if I'm wrong - the American Society of Psychical Research is still reluctant to provide any kind of online access, for fear of weakening its income.

So, mixed feelings. The Internet offers lots of possibilities for open access to existing research and case studies, but the new research has to be paid for somehow. And how does that happen, if people can read about it for free?

Guests on Paranormalia

Since I seem to be on a sort of extended semi-hiatus I thought it would be a good idea to get other people to provide some comment from time to time. First up is Matthew Colborn, a freelance writer and artist with an MSc. in cognitive science and a doctorate in mainstream experimental psychology.

Although not blind to the problems of experimental parapsychology, Matthew thinks that there is more than enough positive evidence to justify serious research, especially given the lack of a convincing theory of consciousness.

Matthew posts below on Richard Wiseman's latest research.

Recession Blues

Things are getting a bit spooky. As a freelancer I normally get an average of 15-20 work-related emails a day. Three days into this week, and I've had none at all. Not a single one. Zilch.

No phone calls either, except for one with no one on the other end of the line. Perhaps it was my Mum calling from the Beyond. Just for encouragement.

An ideal time for blogging, you'd think. But it doesn't seem to work like that. It's an odd phenomenon which I've often noticed. The less I have to do, the less I get done.

I'm not completely unemployed, fortunately. But two days a week ain't enough. People ask if I'm available for commissions, as if nothing had changed - and then I never hear from them again. As I say - spooky.

Apologies for absence

I'm a firm believer in only writing when one has something to say, and not for the sake of it. But it occurs to me that my updates are becoming quite infrequent, which isn't what I intended at all - ideally I'd be posting something at least a couple of times a week. I don't want Paranormalia to become one of those deserted ghost-blogs, a curiosity only to cyber-archaeologists.

There are two reasons - one, which I've mentioned before, is that I'm still doing edits on my book Randi's Prize, although mercifully that's nearly done. The more serious reason is that as a freelance journalist a lot of my work has dried up in the recession, and commissions are few and far between. So I've been having to focus hard on putting that right, which means less time to think about psi-matters. There are starting to be some good signs, so hopefully things will start picking up soon.