my lovely wife got me a kindle 2 for the holidays, and I thought that I might do what nearly every person who has purchased the thing has done and write about it on my blog (writing on the internet seems to be the primary hobby of kindle owners).
After a few days of using the thing, what really surprises me the most is how different it is from any other digital device. It’s really impossible to do any kind of real comparison between an e-reader and an iphone or laptop or netbook or OLPC. For one, the Kindle is (as of yet) pretty much useless as a web device, due to the constraints of the software, connection, processor, and screen (in that order). it’s not impossible that it might be usable to email or search with some OS improvements, but the lag in typing and the difficulty in browsing means that, at best, it is useful for reading a few mobile news sites and wikipedia (it actually works quite well as a wikibrowser.)
What is does do extremely well is show text on a screen. I’m going to go ahead and say right now that I prefer reading on the kindle to reading a paperback. I’ve never been a fan of portable books – I always struggle with hand cramps and sore necks. This object is the right size, weight, and look for reading. I actually went back to a book last night and was kind of annoyed. It’s also fun to operate, has a good feel and good “cover” images (although the ability to customize would be nice).
The end result of all of this is that this might be the first digital device I’ve met that will actually end up slowing and concentrating my life rather than speeding and scattering. It’s fun to use so I’ll probably spend more time as a result reading novels, long-form magazine articles. Multi-tabbed browsing, skipping to minute 3 of a youtube video, quickfire rss feeding – this all now seems a little less important, and a little less fun.
It’s interesting that by changing the priorities and limitations of a device, one’s life can be subtly changed.
tech
scattermoonshot
I’m a bit late at this, but there’s been a lot of bemoaning lately (or is it just moaning?) about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. From Wired to Tom Wolfe, there has been a lot of furious agreement with astronauts and rocket scientists, that we really dropped the ball these last…four… decades. We should all be living on Mars by now, like Ben Bova wants us to! Like any proper nerd, I occasionally consider what it might be like to bring someone from the past – say, Benjamin Franklin – and introduce them to modern society. It gives one the ability to be amazing without actually doing anything, by piggybacking on two hundred and fifty years of technical and social progress. One gets to be the salesman that reveals your… new… future!
However, if instead of a founding father it’s, oh, Arthur C. Clarke, circa 1968, things get a little bit iffy. Then one has to explain how a colossal, colossal increase in computing and communications ability has made only subtle changes to our social fabric. How is it that telegrams and rockets can be so destabilizing to the status quo, produce a few World Wars and a subsequent world order on the other side, while similar technologies that are unbelievable improvements on connecting and computing lead to people working harder and a few stock market bubbles? Oh, and twitter.
Hulu is a great example. Why is Hulu so amazing? It roughly replicates cable TV, with slightly more interactivity, on a device that could land the population of Canada on the moon in LEMs, simultaneously. This is not an amazing use of your computer. It’s like getting Pavarotti to sing the Oscar Meyer Weiner song. What is amazing about Hulu is the business side – getting networks to agree to put their content online, the social side – selling it to the public, and the design side – the interface and video algorithms. And none of that is colossal.
perfect-bound ghosts of my past
I am speaking, of course of the full scans of the Useborne Book of the Future that surfaced recently on the internet. This, along with sister volumes featuring only transportation, or cities, or robots, were an odd imported staple of my youth. Basically, they stole every imaginable future prediction in the 60’s and 70’s, digested it for young minds, and illustrated it in completely awesome cutaway illustrations that I still remember in perfect detail. The arcologies, hydrofoils, wrist radios, and elevators-to-space still pop up occasionally in my dreams. I hope dearly that someday this, as well as other especially formative books from my childhood (The Children’s Iliad, the Illustrated works of Edgar Allen Poe, Farmer’s Almanacs, the Undabridged Grimm’s Fairy Tales) will someday be reconstituted in perfect condition in my bookshelves. Here me, Mom and Dad? I’ve left room…
[Found via Coudal Partners’ Blended Feed. Awesome.]
workhuman 
