3 comments

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  Jarred

  1 year ago

  Funny, this guy writes about the Kindle as if it came out today and not many weeks ago. But still, a relevant read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/27di....
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  Rachel

  1 year ago

  Cool post, Joel.
  
  ...the current state of technology and our use of it does not provide for the sort of focused, un-distracted mental space that we traditionally associate with reading.
  
  I think this is exciting. Think about the differences between the way you read and the way you think. Reading has always been a linear process--something that Modernists and Post-Modernists and Feminists and any number of other -ists have been railing against since the 19th Century. Thinking is anything but a linear process, to the point where a single thread of thought can take you not only through webs of tangents, but also fluidly through past, present, and future?
  
  What if this popularization and availability of what you called "distracted mental space" merely signals a movement toward a more accurate reflection of the way the brain works? Already we see how comprehensive digital communication can be--after all, while drafting this post, you thought to include those hyperlinks and they're an essential part to what you're communicating here.
  
  While I don't think I'll say Kindle = printing press necessarily, I do suspect that this device, at the very least, suggests a more organic movement in the way reading happens.
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  Austin

  1 year ago

  Whoo, this is fun. There are all kinds of points that we can get into here, but I'll keep it down to two or three.
  
  1) Rachel, while thinking is anything but linear, most oral storytelling is amazingly linear. In my limited recollection, oral traditions are limited in what story branches can be pursued. Written text, however, can tell concurrent stories, aided by the reader's ability to flip back a few pages and review what's happening somewhere else. And if you want to look at nonlinear print storytelling, look on your bookshelf for some sweet manga.
  
  Joel, you get two points:
  2) the Kindle uses an e-ink display. This is significantly different technology from your computer screen. It's not backlit, it has much higher resolution than most computers, and those factors make it much easier on your eyes while you're reading it. From what I've seen, it may be equivalent to a single print page. Incidentally, reading white text on a black computer screen is less stressful, and you lucky Macintosh users can get this effect instantly by pressing Ctrl-Opt-Apple-8 (all four keys at the same time) which will invert your monitor's display. It's fun to play with at least. Use the same key command to reverse it.
  
  3) This is one enormous problem with the Kindle. You may be able to almost instantly define words you don't recognize (thank you Susan Sontag for making me feel illiterate), but you can't feel your progress through a book. That may not be that big of a deal when you're reading an inherently skinny work such as Harper's or the Economist, but reading a piece like War and Peace without the shape of the book changing is rather disorienting.
  
  I'd expect for the Kindle to sell rather well for purveyors of the New York Times' Bestseller list. I'd also expect for subscribers to print magazines (i.e. Harper's) and newspapers (NYTimes) would enjoy tidy access to their literary smack. My literary tastes are a bit more eclectic, though, and I know that I'd miss the pedantry promulgated by wielding an unwieldy or esoteric tome in public.
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