Franzen on PC v. Mac, utility v. design, and the what the Bezosification of the world is doing to humanity ...

Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world:

The techno-boosters, of course, see nothing wrong here. They point out that human beings have always outsourced memory – to poets, historians, spouses, books. But I'm enough of a child of the 60s to see a difference between letting your spouse remember your nieces' birthdays and handing over basic memory function to a global corporate system of control.

Mixed feelings about the overall theme. Seems spot-on in places, veers towards (and then away from) conservative bleating about progress destroying humanity. Suspect we'll all agree it's a well-written piece. If nothing else it makes me want to read Karl Kraus.

A welcome sight in my kindle this morning ...

And, I trust, when the UPS guy comes later today ...

Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock

Amazon Kindle: Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock

Also, I've got a mini-review up on librarything, check it out if you're interested. TL;DR version of the review is: "Read the book, Yo La Tengo fan. Give some thought to reading the book if you're not a fan, but are interested in indie music in general."

Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books? : NPR

Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books? : NPR: 

Whenever serious readers die, their heirs face the task of dispersing their books. But few of us like to think about what will happen to our own libraries. Will our children value our books (and will they have shelf space for them)? Will they be bought by a serious research library, or draw bids at Christie's? Not unless we are famous, or they are first editions. Perhaps they will re-enter circulation at a used bookstore, sold for pennies and resold for a few dollars: it's pleasant to imagine them released back into the sea of books, to be caught afresh by a new reader.

Kindles help boys appreciate reading

Kindles help boys appreciate reading more say Southern Methodist University researchers | Mail Online: 

Kindles via Amazon.com

Boys like using Kindles but girls prefer real books, a study suggests. 

Research found that using the Kindle e-reader gave boys a greater appreciation of reading - but with girls they have the opposite effect.

There's still time to get some entries in my kindle giveaway, but you need to act fast!

ᔥ The Political Carnvial

Reading is fundamental. For real.

Bringing Up a Young Reader on E-Books - NYTimes.com: 

E-readin' tykes image ᔥ NYT

Julianna’s teacher, Kourtney Denning, sees e-books as essential. “Old books don’t really cut it anymore,” she said. “We have to transform our learning as we know it.”

Look, I love my kindle. I make no bones about it. Heck, I like it so much I am trying to give one away and am, frankly, surprised it's turning out to be so hard to do so.  But, self-promoting giveaways aside, no. No, no, no, e-books are not "essential" and "old books" do, in fact, "cut it," still. (And I'm already including the kindle -- not the Fire, the plain old, good for nothing much more than reading kindle -- in the "old books" category, without giving them preference over ink on paper books.)

Dammit, kids don't need music and blinking lights with every stupid thing in order for it to hold their attention. Or, more accurately I suspect, destroy their ability to fix their attention on something. We know that the mental discipline to delay gratification is key to growing into a properly functioning adult. We also know, or strongly suspect, reading is a powerful tool for empowering the mind.

Let them wait and get their music and blinking lights from TV and video games in their proper dose. Reading is its own reward. Let it be enough. Show them that it is enough. It is both sufficient and necessary to developing a keen mind.  Says the old-timer who grew up on paper books, audio cassettes, and the Atari 2600.

We can handle the truth(s).

Pluralist Theories of Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):

Veritas. (via)

The plausibility of theories of truth has often been observed to vary, sometimes extensively, across different domains or regions of discourse. Because of this variance, the problems internal to each such theory become salient as they overgeneralize. A natural suggestion is therefore that not all (declarative) sentences in all domains are true in exactly the same way. Sentences in mathematics, morals, comedy, chemistry, politics, and gastronomy may be true in different ways, if and when they are ever true. ‘Pluralism about truth’ names the thesis that there is more than one way of being true.

Why it's better to be a reader now than it was when I was a kid: as new entries are written for something as exciting and important as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, they show up in my preferred news aggregator; when they are longer reads than I want to sit at my computer for, I can simply click a button to have them sent immediately and without cost to my preferred e-reader. No waiting for a book to publish, or a magazine to print, and then to lay hands on a physical copy from the library or a bookstore. Bing, bang, boom, there it is. This current generation of students, unless they are the laziest sacks of shit to ever troll the earth, will be the best and brightest ... until the next.

#BelievesInHumanProgress

Random House Triples Prices Of Library E-Books

Necessary Evil? Random House Triples Prices Of Library E-Books | TechCrunch:

As Kathy Petlewski, a librarian in Plymouth, puts it: “The first thing that popped into my mind was that Random House must really hate libraries.”

But the dismay at the major increase in prices is tempered by a sort of desperate gratefulness that the publisher is willing to play ball with libraries at all. The other big publishers have been less than generous: HarperCollins’ e-books “expire” after 26 uses, Hachette and Macmillan only make part of their list available, and others like Penguin and Simon&Schuster don’t allow library lending at all.

I've done nothing but rave about how much I love using my kindle to check books out of my local library, so this is distressing to read, yet I can't think of a solution that satisfies the publishers and the readers. Libraries are an invaluable resource, but publishers are capitalist enterprises who've got make money. Limiting the number of times an e-book can be lent is a poor solution, so I'm leaning towards finding the appropriate throttling of lending. The more a library pays for an e-book, it seems to me, the more copies of it they should be able to lend simultaneously. Shorter lending terms when the book is new also make sense. I'm sure publishers could sell more e-books if they gave the reader the option to buy a copy of the library e-book they borrowed at the end of the lending period. For bestsellers, a seven day loan period would probably result in a predictable number of borrowers who don't finish the book, but would be willing to buy it instead of having to wait for it to become available again for another loan period.

If I get quiet in the next few days ...

... it's because I needed to carve out some more reading time:

Library + kindle = Good times

" ... [T]he movement of the mind through a sequence of words ..."

E-books Can’t Burn by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

Literature is made up of words. They can be spoken or written. If spoken, volume and speed and accent can vary. If written, the words can appear in this or that type-face on any material, with any impagination. Joyce is as much Joyce in Baskerville as in Times New Roman. And we can read these words at any speed, interrupt our reading as frequently as we choose. Somebody who reads Ulysses in two weeks hasn’t read it any more or less than someone who reads it in three months, or three years.

Only the sequence of the words must remain inviolate. We can change everything about a text but the words themselves and the order they appear in. The literary experience does not lie in any one moment of perception, or any physical contact with a material object (even less in the “possession” of handsome masterpieces lined up on our bookshelves), but in the movement of the mind through a sequence of words from beginning to end.

POEM FOR J FRANZ

Emperor of Ice-Cream Cakes: Poems Are Jokes: POEM FOR J FRANZ:

And they cried for it was called a Kindle,
and they cried for it came to burn books,
and burn all books like a first-growth
.........forest. Made by wizards! And full,
they claim, of magic e-ink, that assembles
itself in the dark like crowds ...

Libraries didn't make schools obsolete ...

The Kindle as classroom-killer?

Neither will kindles and iPads. However, they are powerful tools for kids whose public libraries are inaccessible or have been ravaged by budget cuts.

Leaving your kindle on will not take down the plane.

Tests Cast Doubt on F.A.A. Restrictions on Kindle and iPad - NYTimes.com:

The Federal Aviation Administration has its reasons for preventing passengers from reading from their Kindles and iPads during takeoff and landing. But they just don’t add up. 

My first library loan using the #kindle!

WakeGOV.com - Wake County Public Libraries

"Galileo's Dream" by Kim Stanley Robinson

Amazon’s kindle tablet described by TC's MG Siegler

Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It. | TechCrunch:

So why will people buy this device instead of a Nook Color? Well, beyond the deep Amazon services integration, there will be two other reasons, I believe. First, Amazon is going to promote the hell out of this thing on Amazon.com. Second, the plan right now is to give buyers a free subscription to Amazon Prime.

The service, which Amazon currently sells for $79 a year, gives users access things like free unlimited two-day shipping, and no minimum purchases for free shipping. More importantly for this product, Prime users get access to Amazon’s Instant Video service.

Kim Stanley Robinson focuses on science, the environment, and the future

Davis author Kim Stanley Robinson focuses on science, the environment, and the future | Davis Enterprise:

KSR via The Davis Enterprise

Robinson, 59, now finds himself squarely in the midst of a swiftly moving change-of-platform in the publishing industry, as e-books and flat screen readers like the Kindle and the Nook are gaining market share. As a longtime lover of bound volumes, Robinson will readily confess “I personally prefer to read physical books” — the old-fashioned, ink-on-paper kind. But as a futurist who has made a career out of anticipating where technological trends could take us, Robinson adds that he’s developed an appreciation for e-books as well. “Using a Kindle with a non-illumnated flat screen, you’re not looking into a flashlight. It’s another form of a book, and it’s almost like having people walking around with the Library of Congress in their pockets. It also solves the book industry’s problem in terms of internet piracy, figuring out a way that’s easy for people to pay a small amount (to read a book), at which point people are willing to pay.”

h/t kimon at kimstanleyrobinson.info 

Amazon announces Kindle Library Lending, Kindle owners will be able to borrow from their local library.

Amazon Media Room: News Release:

Amazon today announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps.

My fam at Holly Springs Library

I like this, but want to not my concern that if digital lending takes off, we might more arguments by the short-sighted for fewer brick-and-mortar libraries down the road, and that would be a bad, bad thing. We love our local libraries and use them frequently, not only to borrow but also for events and sometimes just to stop in and use a computer. Local libraries provide tremendous opportunities that will not be diminished by digital lending. They are an integral part of any community.

The Price is Wrong (or, is it right and you don't know what you think you know?)

Amazon, Love The Kindle Ads Idea — But The Right Price Is $99:

Image via RWW

Amazon will only being showing the ads on the Kindle home screen and on the screensavers, which is great. In exchange, people will be able to buy a Kindle for $25 cheaper — $114. An attractive price, no doubt. But it’s also ones that begs the question: why on Earth not go to the killer $99 price point?!

I actually agree with the author of the post on lower is better grounds; however, I think MG may not be taking into account recent research in his off-the-cuff CBA. 

26-Year-Old Amanda Hocking Making Millions Selling Her Books Cheap In The Kindle Store

This 26-Year-Old Is Making Millions Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle:

Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling 'indie' writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn't have a publishing deal, Novelr says.
And she shouldn't. She gets to keep 70% of her book sales -- and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it's usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.

Young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance aren't exactly up my alley, but I love this story.  

DIY Kindle covers

50 Kindle Covers You Can Make Yourself:

I'm rolling with the standard cover and it's just fine, but if anything happened to it, there are a couple of ideas here that might work.