Based upon previous blogs you could be excused for thinking that I am something of a Luddite, railing against the march of technology. Which could not be further from the truth. I confess I have an ambivalent relationship with mobile (aka cell) phones and have always remained at least two generations behind everyone else with regards to the models and the different capabilities. But I am endlessly intrigued by the possibilities of the iphone and all of the wonderful “apps”. By all accounts you can write an app and if it is successful it can make you very, very rich. Given that my level of computer literacy has never really progressed beyond the equivalent of the John and Betty reader that is clearly not an avenue that will ever be remotely relevant to me. But I am drawn to a phone that can seem to do so much! I am not sure if the capabilities are as comprehensive in Oz, but here in the US I love the ads. I watch the Iphone ad that tells me that if I want to make sure that wall-shelving is straight…there’s an app for that, want to split the check five ways (including the tip), there’s an app for that and my favourite; you want to find a place to eat so you shake the iphone and it brings up some choices in your neighbourhood. There is a seemingly endless array of apps that are just so intriguing and sort of relevant; want to buy a textbook, there is an app that searches for prices, when you need to find an apartment there is an app for that. Most, if not all, of the apps are obviously designed for someone far more computer savvy than me, and there is any number of lists (back to the lists) of the coolest apps.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/appleent/article.php/3733626
In reality I suppose it is little more than the shift of all of your computer’s functions across to a phone. It does leave me feeling that I want those apps so badly…irrespective of the fact that they are not really anything that I truly need. I can recall the same sort of pining when I used to read American comics and they had all manner of wonderful items for sale – which of course were unavailable in Australia. So the x-ray specs, or the sea-monkeys and even your own little Polaris submarine were projected as phantasmic objects of desire. I am glad that I never sought to send away for any of the items – in later years I could cope with the fact that sea monkeys were just brine shrimps that bore no resemblance to the beaming anthromorphic beings in the ads but it would have been crushing for a nine-year old.
So, I suspect, it is with the Iphones and the apps that by and large (if you go to the website) are personal finance management tools, news feeds or games that were previously to be found on playstation or your computer. Granted that the new iphone apps probably do deliver on the promise of the technology in a way that would have been impossible for the polaris nuclear sub (at a time before I even comprehended what a nuclear sub was and was content to dream how cool it would be to take it out to Lake Benanee and explore its murky depths).
While I feel drawn to the endless possibilities of useless iphone apps that have no relevance to my life (I remain convinced, for example, that I could find some use for the card counting app that is banned in Las Vegas) there is another new technology that leaves me totally cold. I am referring to the recently released models of electronic books – the Kindle from Amazon and the Sony version, its Reader. As with the iphone the allure of the technology is strong – the prospect of being able to download books via wireless, without even needing a computer. An average book can take about 60 seconds to download and the capacity of these e-readers is being improved so that they can also download newspapers. They don’t come cheap (around $350US) but the attraction for someone who is constantly shipping books from one place to another, or having to pay excess baggage for books I carry (and inevitably only use a few times). A kindle can hold up to 1500 books and there are reportedly over a quarter of a million books in the appropriate format for downloading. The Kindle and Sony Reader also have a “text to speech” capacity, which allows the gadget to read the text aloud. The technology is not without its glitches, however, with it being noted that the Kindle currently has a problem in the text recognition of two words – that inconveniently comprise the first and surname of the current US President. An item at blippitt.com noted:
The Kindle is a marvel of modern technology but apparently “voice” of the Amazon Kindle mispronounces two key words that appear frequently in the pages of many newspapers - “Barack” (the Amazon Kindle rhymes it with “black”) and “Obama” (the pronunciation sounds like “Alabama”).
In response to this revelation the wags at Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me noted that the Kindle gives you the option of entering an appropriate sounding of a word that it does not have programmed correctly. This led them to reflect that the Republicans could program their Kindles for reading of newspapers to speak “He Who Must Not be Named” whenever the Obama appeared in the text, while the Democrats could program it to simply have a chorus of angels singing.
The reality of e-books is such that there is already debate and dispute between readers and publishing houses as to the appropriate pricing for the downloadable version of “books”. The market seems to be settling at a price of around $9.95 US – which is not all that much cheaper than the conventional paperback version. There is already an animated cyber-space discussion on different blogs (surprise, surprise!) as to the appropriate pricing of ebooks
For example there is this one:
http://futureperfectpublishing.com/2008/08/26/does-anyone-know-how-to-price-an-e-book/
Such a debate clearly accepts as given the fact that ebooks are here to stay and that they will gradually displace the traditional form of books as the normal mode of publishing. It is in this presumption that I feel my hackles rise. To make books available as electronic files – no matter how true the screen display might be to the original printed format – is an abomination, pure and simple. There is so much more to buying and owning a book than just the computer download. An old book is a thing of beauty – its smell, the feeling of its dustjacket, even the lurid covers of the old paperbacks. How much of the joy of buying books is that browsing (particularly in second hand book stores) amongst the strangely musty smelling stacks for the old, out of print editions of obscure titles? Books open up conversations, tell you about the people who are reading them. They can be, admittedly, props or affectations. So you have the young student poring over a well-thumbed copy of Kerouac or Sartre or Camus and it sends out the clear message – I am young, rebellious and serious. Similarly the Kindle will make it harder to “read” people because their books will no longer be on display in bookshelves. Leaving aside the books that are best-sellers and that no-one ever reads (think A Brief History of Time) it is always an instinctive move when you go to someone’s house to check out what they are reading (or maybe it is just me). Leaving aside these flip observations, however, I think it an irrefutable truth that we will (as individuals and a society) be the poorer for the move towards the sterile, digitized versions of books.
If I can lend an even more sinister note to the move to move the written word to the electronic format there is also the news that Google is planning to digitize every book in the world. It has started with the so-called “orphan” books that are out of print and over which copyright no longer applies. On the one hand it would appear a praiseworthy venture. Rescuing books from obscurity and making all the books of the world available – the latter day Library of Alexandria if you like. There is also the economic reality that the cost of books and journals now means that they can only be made accessible to the general population if a more economic mode of distribution can be found. But there are grounds to be concerned. The plan to ultimately digitize all books troubles me not only for the inexorable shift towards digital format for books – but also for the prospect of Google one day owning the rights for all the books of the world. It seems far-fetched, but in its most dastardly form it conjures up the scenario of an Orwellian dystopia - where access to all information is controlled. Not for any ideological purpose I hasten to add, but access would be based around the monopoly enjoyed by Google. Books would then cease to be indispensable elements of culture and become, instead, the property of one global corporation. It leaves me wondering if this is a more insidious and devious way of implementing the society that Ray Bradbury warned against in Fahrenheit 451? A conspiracy theory of sorts…but then living in California does makes one more disposed to such flights of alternative reality.
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