Amazon's Kindle: Great, but Does Anyone Still Read Books?

(((Amazon; Kindle; The new NEA study on reading; If it reads like a book and I can write in it like it's a book, it's a book; People are reading less and less, and that's probably a problem)))

So, the word seems to be that the new Kindle is the best digital book hardware ever—readable, reasonably fast, etc.

Okay. That's great. But I really want to be able to write in my books. Give me a stylus and an input touch screen and then we'll be getting somewhere. Also, since the thing has limited size, I sure do need to be able to sync with an external storage device that will also be able to interact with the file in a meaningful way, i.e., let me make more annotations, and move it back to the Kindle if I want to. Alas, the product description plays the lack of sync functionality as a feature, not a bug.

All that said, the free chapter previews and the $10 book prices are great, but I don't know who's going to plop down $400 for a hi-tech book that doesn't even include any books.

Worse, will anyone plop down any cash for a fake book in a culture where we don't even read any more? My friends know I'm not alarmist about stuff like this, but I've been seeing precisely the consequences of the following in my teaching:

Particularly striking, Gioia and Iyengar both said, are the declines that occur between age 9 and age 17 in reading proficiency scores and time spent reading. The percentage of 9-year-olds who say they "read almost every day for fun," the NEA report notes, rose slightly, from 53 percent to 54 percent, between 1984 and 2004. During roughly the same time period, average reading scores for 9-year-olds rose sharply. But the percentage of 17-year-olds reading almost every day for fun dropped from 31 percent in 1984 to 22 percent in 2004, with average reading scores showing steady declines.

Does this matter? Well, yes, it does. I agree that there are lots of other ways to think and to be creative, and that linear thinking is not the be-all end-all. But it is an important skill. And I am worrying that we have younger generations that simply cannot hold a thread, and who cannot read fiction or poetry in a way that suggests they really understand what is being said by the speaker or writer, or (and this is a critical aspect of understanding what is being said) how it is being said by the speaker or writer.

One really bad part of this is that now second- and third-rate colleges are having to try to pick up the slack and teach students skills they should already know. And so college is becoming "High School: The Sequel." But that's probably for another post.

tags technorati : Kindle Amazon Reading Books Technology NEA

The Ministry of Truthiness

Wikipedia, that is. And who is the Minister of Truthiness? Why, you are.

It is a sort of dictum of the postmodern left that power is everywhere and everywhere contested. It is tempting at times to emphasize the latter and play down the former. But the recent news about—or, more importantly, from—WikiScanner reminds us that when everyone is anonymous, so are corporate and government agents. At its best (which is to say, when contributors edit entries both honestly and knowledgeably), Wikipedia is an interesting and even important experiment in open source content.

Unfortunately, the reality is much more problematic, in two ways. First, there is the opportunity for governments and corporations (and, frankly, any other organization with a vested interest in an entry, including non-profits organizations and institutions, other political entities, etc. etc.) to manipulate ostensibly "grassroots" information source in a very astroturf-y kind of way.

So, that's the Orwellian part.

But then there's the Tocquevillian part, the part where the truth is what most people believe the truth is. Stephen Colbert, whom we know and love, hits both of these elements in a recent segment: video, transcript.

I don't contribute code to, say, the Linux or BSD codebases. Better programmers than I do that, and I let them do it. Because it makes better code.

*Hint*

tags technorati : wikipedia wikiscanner truthiness politics

CoffeeT00lz.com

I can't possibly be the only person who's had it with the "Coffee Exposed" sponsored Google link that keeps showing up in my Gmail "Web Clips" box. A snap to illustrate, or to jog your memory, depending:



Apparently, there's some "shocking secret" coffee companies don't want me to know, but is it SFW?

There's a not-so-secret I want the makers of coffeefool.com to know: you don't entice me to read your exposé by forcing me to acknowledge in the very link I click that I am a "coffee fool" who's been conned by coffee companies. Thanks for trying to remove the scales from my eyes, but might I suggest a less condescending approach? You sound like all those self-appointed enlighteners of the masses who are more worried about what's allegedly wrong with Kansas than what's wrong with their own message or organizing.

And we all know that allegedly "shocking" secrets almost never deliver, anyway, so I'm doubly put off. And then there's the fact that I've ignored it a million times already, and resent having to ignore it again. But since, like good capitalists, you've purchased a sponsored link, you've taken that choice away from me.

Go the fuck away, already.

tags technorati : coffee, coffeefool.com

Enter the License Plate

Some kind of strange plan in Hong Kong that I don't entirely understand has resulted in one "Mr. Wong" dropping about US$5,000 on a license plate reading "BRUCELEE." Now, I love Bruce Lee, but I really don't understand what's going on, here. It seems to be a government fundraiser using vanity tags.

The mysterious Mr. Wong sez he will consult with Linda before deciding what to actually do with the plate. Most outlets quote the following from tv footage:

"When I studied in England, foreigners would only know two Chinese people. One is Bruce Lee. The other is Chairman Mao (Zedong). You can imagine how great Bruce Lee is, how big of an impact he had on the Chinese, even until today," the buyer, identified only by his surname, Wong, said in footage aired on Hong Kong's Cable TV." He is irreplaceable," Wong said.

The International Herald Tribune (from the AP wire) notes in conclusion, "The action star was known for films in which he portrayed characters that defended the Chinese and the working class from oppressors." In this regard, see especially "Fist of Fury" and "Return of the Dragon."

tags technorati : Bruce Lee, Hong Kong