There is no standard format for e-books like an mp3. While Kindle and Nook offer apps for the iPad, you can’t carry a book from one reader to the next. “In certain cases, you can’t read the electronic book you buy from one store on a device supported by a competing store. Similarly, you can’t read e-books you borrow from your library if you don’t have the right kind of device. And there’s a chance you won’t be able to read the e-books you buy today on the e-book reader you own several years from now.” (via.)
How to Frame the Internet II: Entertainment and Culture Post iPad
Mainstream since the 50s, but rarely used since the early 80s craze, 3D is now expected of every major movie these days.
Why? You can’t download 3d glasses, let alone an IMAX theater. It’s the staging of an event, a singular experience. Something that cannot be so easily replicated at home.
Likewise, in 2008, I wrote a post How to Frame the Internet, calling for the staging of events online:
The problem I see in terms of editing online content seems to be the absence of “frames.” Time frames as well as frames as a metaphor: ways of segmenting information so it doesn’t overlap with other content or ideas, complementary or not. Creating scarcity when there is abundance and understanding how to work with the desire that grows in anticipation of something.
I can’t remember the comedian — I want to say someone Saturday Night Live affiliated — but he was making a point about repetition in sketch comedy. You tell a joke once and it’s funny (well, sometimes, in the case of SNL.) Tell it again, it’s not funny. Tell it a third time it’s funny again. The next several times it’s really not funny, but if you keep repeating it after ten times and keep going, each of those times the joke is funny (this is, of course, a total perversion of the law of diminishing marginal returns.)
Art filmmakers are aware of the boredom they inflict when they hold a certain shot just a moment too long. Horror films especially are cruel games of anticipation. It is agonizing to watch the girl go down the steps to the basement tiptoe after tiptoe sooooo slowwwly.
The great change we are waiting for, the one that will make newsworthy information part of one’s daily media diet is online content that will acknowledge and work around a user’s lack of patience. This means creating an event out of what is being presented… Make viewers mark in their calendars for it. Make them miss it if they miss it.
Twitter often takes this role. For the past few years, I make a point of watching the State of the Union as it airs, rather than later on in the evening, at a time more convenient to my schedule. Only then can I keep up with the tweets and status updates from friends and bloggers I follow.
In terms of segmenting information, I’m very enthusiastic about the iPad. One aspect in particular is intriguing, and it is the very aspect that annoys Gizmodo so much: No Multitasking.
This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can’t listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can’t have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can’t have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.
- Gizmodo, 8 Things That Suck About the iPad
Here is the slow web in effect. The opportunity to focus on the one task at hand. Combined with the intimacy of the device, we’re going to see an entirely new way of interacting with information.
It is a more reflective way, one that might even correct some of the signal-to-noise issues we’ve for so long taken as a given of the digital age. Also in 2008, I wrote about how I feel the iPhone (and now the iPad) could gradually kill off some of the more inane youtube comments. From the post Reading Only Devices: Why iPhone, Kindle, and Tablet PCs Might Mean Smarter Blog Comments:
If more and more people start reading online media on mobile phones and Kindle, the incentive to leave a comment will go down dramatically. Do you really want to save this post for later and comment in a couple hours? Or do you want to struggle with writing something on the inadequate keyboard?
We might also see growth in devices that divorce writing from reading… A computer is designed to do both things at once so you no longer even think of reading while writing as multitasking. Often times the experience of writing an email is consuming and processing at once: as the message you are writing and the message you are responding to are in the same frame. I’m not old enough to remember the conventions of handwritten letters, but I doubt my grandmother sat at her desk composing a letter to her friend with her friend’s prior letter folded above it, going line by line, making sure she’s responded to every question in sequence.
The keyboard is closer to you than the screen. Many of us scroll the screen with the same keys we compose letters. It’s wonderful in that it has made us a more literary culture, but it also means a lot of great stuff gets lost in the abundance of online text.
If Kindle becomes more popular, and more laptops start including tablets, I think users will grow accustomed to reading without having to add their .02 once they get to the end. Which means those who do, might have something really interesting to say.
I actually prefer my iPhones inability to multitask. It’s putting a constraint on me… and my worst multi-tabbing, unfocused habits. If I can’t so easily navigate to another app or another page, I won’t.
The iPad is effectively dividing two experiences: reading and writing. This means actively listening to another person’s words, and having the time to think of what to say before typing. This is better communication. This is the future.
Previously:
You really should be reading Matthew Battle’s blog. Here’s a post on the WikiReader. Check out the comments. I’ve held off on the Kindle and will hold off on the Nook, because if I buy it now, I’ll want to upgrade by next at least by the end of the year. Compare this to the iPhone, which was set to go right out the gates. I got the iPhone in autumn 2007 and only upgraded a few months ago due to water damage. That’s almost two years with the original device. But the primary e-reader, Kindle or whatever it may be, will look and feel very, very different in two years. It had a bumpy start with too many problems and frustrated users. Right now, I’d almost much prefer something like the WikiReader, since it won’t be antiquated by 2011. Meanwhile, here is Tim Carmody on the possibility of a dedicated blog reader. I have a french press, a moka pot, and a drip coffee maker and I use all three of them regularly. I hope in the future there are affordable e-readers I can use depending on the reading and reading experience I’m looking for. Previously: Reading Only Devices: Why iPhone, Kindle, and Tablet PCs Might Mean Smarter Blog Comments
20 of the top 50 Kindle downloads are free books.
“And just as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention? Why wouldn’t you collect dozens, or hundreds, into a personal anthology, a playlist of humor, pathos, mystery and surprise?” – A. O. Scott
I’d like to read Iain Sinclair’s new book, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire. (Review.) But, without a US publisher, most copies for sale are face value plus another $15 to ship. I’ve run into similar situations in the past, hunting down JG Ballard books. I can’t imagine how much hairpulling I’d encounter trying to purchase books published in Cambodia or Zaire. For now, the Kindle still isn’t available outside the US, but it could mean a major barrier broken — provided Amazon is smart enough to allow us to browse outside our home country. It means the possibility to vote with our feet, bookwise.
“hello, my name is Ben. I’m a 29-year-old quadriplegic … Without the use of my fingers you can imagine how difficult reading books could be, but I loved reading and I found ways. I had a surgery about two years ago on my midsection which made it impossible to tolerate the weight of heavy books, and without the use of my fingers paperbacks were not an option (they would simply fall off the book holder when I tried to turn a page.) Into my life comes the Kindle… I literally shed tears as I realized Amazon had given me back the passion that had been stripped away from me after my surgery just as my mobility had been taken away 14 years earlier.” – from an Amazon review.
Some discussion on how the Kindle might change reading habits here. I wrote earlier why I think the Kindle might revive hypertext novels and maybe take the best of CD-ROM innovation to another level. Anyway, the new version still isn’t worth it to me yet (unless the Amazon executives I know read my Kindle-tagged posts want to send me one to test out. email: joanne.mcneilAtgmail)
The other day, Sarah Weinman (reader of 462 books in 2008,) wondered why luxury houses aren’t designing Kindle covers. The new austerity strikes again? Or is it they were too busy market-testing pseudo-graffiti skateboards like this Stephen Sprouse/Louis Vuitton collaboration. If only we had 2006’s economic outlook today, then we’d all have LV graffiti print cases to cover our Kindles. Sighhhh….
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