E-readers... perspectives from a Kindle owner

I got a Kindle four months ago, and I LOVE it. I am reading more now, spending more now (even though the books are much cheaper! Amazon must love that), and I feel very happy with my Kindle. However, I'm reading a lot of material lately about how the Kindle will never replace the book with all its wonderfully nostalgic feel and blah blah blah. As far as I can tell, most of this criticism comes from people who have not spent significant time reading on the Kindle or another similar device (and by significant, I mean probably at least two full-length novels). Many people are very nice if still slightly skeptical, though others are downright dismissive (she'll go nameless, but her initials are GC ;-)

Some people even go so far as to say that "the traditional printed book will be the best home for works that need to be lingered over, meditated, considered with care," referring to literary fiction. I don't mean to sound snarky, but the author's reason - that e-readers promote linearity of attention, which is best suited for narrative-dominated books - does not seem particularly sound to me. I was going to comment on his blog but as my comment got longer I thought I would turn it into my own post.

As a Kindle owner and one who enjoys literary fiction (I just finished Solzhenitsyn's "The Cancer Ward" on my Kindle and am getting ready to start "The Brothers Karamazov" - I think those probably qualify), I'd like to argue against the idea that the Kindle will not / cannot be more than an ancillary device for enjoying these types of work.

My argument breaks the reading experience down into three factors:

1. Content - are all the words, pictures and other literary and visual elements there? do they look like they are intended to look on the printed page and are they experienced visually, conceptually, and cognitively as they are intended to be?
2. Interface - when reading, how does the reader navigate the information and interact with the material? how does the reader turn pages, save his place in the book, look at a footnote or cross-reference, quickly go back to an earlier section of the book, make notes, etc (side note: these are all things that I think could be improve on future versions of the Kindle)
   
3. Form factor - what is the physical object that the reader holds actually like, and what physical sensations are experienced during reading, opening, closing, carrying the reader, etc?
   

If all of these things on an e-reader were identical to the experience of reading a traditional book, then it would be silly to say that one cannot experience any work of literature in as full or contemplative a way as when reading a traditional book. My thesis is that e-readers can be as good or better in both content and interface, and that the form factor differences are not central to the contemplative experience if the other two hurdles are overcome.

Although I think the current generation of e-readers actually gets a pretty low grade on both content and interface, these are both solvable issues that will improve with technology. This will happen quickly and before long the e-reading experience will be as good as or better than the traditional reading experience on both these fronts.

Form factor is another issue (which is potentially solvable, though much more difficult), which I will cover later.

On the content and interface fronts, I agree that today's e-readers and their capabilities do not match those of a printed book. The Kindle doesn't do so well with illustrations or with non-standard textual layouts. When reading works which use lots of illustration or rely on unusual fonts / typographical settings / etc to convey meaning, readers will by definition miss something, because the content is actually different. But, to the degree that e-readers can faithfully represent the content of a work, at least some readers can and will experience the work and its meaning fully, in all its contemplative glory. Future versions of the Kindle and other e-readers will almost certainly get to this level of faithfully representing content, it's just a matter of time and technology development. It's simply a matter of better "e-ink" or similar technologies, and more computing power packed into the device to power the visuals.

Furthermore, I think interface or "reading experience" features will quickly improve. I can imagine an iPhone-like interface where a user swipes a finger across the screen to turn the page, and where an animation shows the text bending and moving so that it looks as if the page itself is being "flipped." The form of the reader will be the same but I think the experience may continue to evolve towards being "book-like." Again, this is a technology issue and will be solved, not a fundamental form issue. The fact that all of these features are already basically in use on computers already is itself proof that we'll get there if we want to, and there is probably a host of even better ideas waiting to be thought up by someone more creative than me. Many of them are not possible with traditional books, so the interface will eventually be even better (for example, how about a voice-activated search function that allows one to quickly find an earlier narrative section... maybe you prefer flipping through pages for five minutes mumbling "now where was that..." and maybe that's part of the contemplation, but you could still do it that way manually if you wanted to...)

And, I can even imagine an e-reader where notes can be written in the margins, pages marked up in my own handwriting, etc. Again, a technology issue, solvable.

Finally, there is the form factor or "look and feel" issue. I am holding in my hands a plastic box, whose weight doesn't shift in my hands as I make progress to give me clues about how much is left to read. There is no slightly gritty feel on the pages when I rub with my finger, there's no resistance from the binding when the book is new, etc. I think that even both of those could potentially be solved, although it's a more challenging problem than content or interface (too much writing already, I won't go into the ideas... I'll just file a patent... ;-)

I know that for many folks, they love the look and feel of a book, but I do think that if you still have the armchair, the coffee, the lighting, and whatever else suits your fancy, the right content and interface can allow you to fully experience the meaning of the work. You may not ever confuse the experience for that of reading a traditional book, but I don't think you have to do that to have a great reading experience. I think fixing the first two issues is enough, and that will happen sooner than we think.

[hastily added: I just realized that the experience of swapping and lending books among friends is not at all addressed here. I'll just say that there's no reason why that can't also be replicated in e-readers, except the fact that publishers are going to try to strictly enforce DRM. Of course, just like in music and in movies, somebody will find a way to crack it, and we'll all be fine if we want to share our books. =)]

Deviant Globalization

Forwarded from Randall – “an address on "the Global Illicit Economy" by Nils Gilman to the European Futurists Conference last month. In it he sketches the outlines of what he calls "deviant globalization:"” Well worth watching here.

Nils scopes out an overview of deviant globalization (the “global illicit economy”) with examples from human organ harvesting to narcotics to software and shipping. From those examples he builds a few principles of how this global economy works.

Nils seems to have two main points. First, crackdowns and uneven global regulation serve to create opportunities, drive innovation and professionalize deviant industries. He uses malicious software development in Brazil and anti-drug policing in the US as examples, among others.

Second, Nils postulates that professionalized deviant economies create powerful non-state actors (e.g., “big men”, “tribal leaders”, “business networks” etc.) that take over sovereign state activities such as providing security, black market health care services etc. Tribal leaders in Nigeria are an excellent example of this. Ultimately, Nils believes these deviant non-state actors present a real threat to legitimate sovereign states. So much so, that in the future the delivery of traditional state goods and services (again, security, education, social welfare etc.) in developed nations might end up resembling today's so-called “failed states” and not the other way around.

There’s a lot there to react to. The first overarching point makes a lot of intuitive sense, but begs the question what to do about it. Specifically:

• While there might be subsets of the deviant economy it makes sense to decriminalize (many would say narcotics), are there effective vs. ineffective ways to do so?
  
• Are the pragmatic difficulties in regulation and policing an adequate argument that all of these activities should be decriminalized? Of course not. One could use Nils' same logic to argue that outlawing homicide professionalizes the “hit man” economy, with all of the same unforeseen negative externalities of other deviant economies. Even if that were so, it is not an adequate argument to decriminalize. Other examples that anyone with a grounding in Judeo-Christian ethics and liberal democracy would surely include are: selling organs, human trafficking, malicious software development etc.
  
• Given that, are there examples of regulatory and policing actions that do work? Examples of cross-border state cooperation that are effectively retarding the development of deviant economic flows? Are there ways to use the same principles of globalization to effectively align incentives against these deviant economies?

The second argument – that deviant economies create “tribal leaders” or "business groups" which threaten to supersede the functional role of sovereign states – also has much to react to:

• Nils' implicit assumptions about the role of sovereign states seems pretty expansive in the first place. I’m not sure I have a problem with non-state actors (e.g., churches are a specific example Nils mentions) providing social welfare and education. With the proper checks and balances, a lot of security and infrastructure development could be effectively subcontracted out to corporations as well. The point here is that Nils has created a bit of a straw man for the de facto functional role of sovereign states that “giving up” might not be a bad thing.
• Second, before deviant actors and tribal leaders take on too powerful a role in global life, I presume an equally strong reaction to strengthen governments (even at the expense of individual liberties) would take place. This is analogous to the world Hobbes was living in when he wrote the Leviathan (warring, tribal factions, little security, continual threat of upheaval etc.). While we might drift back towards a nastier, shorter, more brutish existence, the Leviathan (e.g., strong government) would presumably push back. Again, we see this today when we look at the response of the Bush administration to global terror – increased wire tapping, less civil liberties etc.

GM needs a bailout...

I just noticed a posting on one of the China blogs I read infrequently, linking to an article about how GM is opening a new plant in Shanghai in a joint venture with SAIC (whose building I see frequently when cabbing around the city). I'm sure this has really nothing to do with the financial fortunes of the US-based version of GM, but I sure was interested to read about it.

Irony of ironies: GM opening new plants to make cars in China while American GM tries to get taxpayers (I'm still one of said taxpayers, even living in China) to fund continued job benefits for all those under-employed auto workers in the US. Then again, I don't feel too sorry for them, considering the fact that it seemed to me like they could've had some help last week from the Senate, except the UAW scuttled the negotiations, holding out for a sweeter deal from the White House!

Let the car companies go into bankruptcy, I say! They (and America) will be better off for it, MUCH better off than if we subsidize a dying industry (and make it worse by trying to force them to make green cars that the market may not be willing to pay for right now). And, I'm not the only one who thinks so!

Dead Aid: Destroying the Biggest Global Myth of Our Time

Via Africa Unchained, notice of an upcoming book by Dambisa Moyo:

"Dead Aid analyses the history of economic development over the last fifty years and shows how Aid crowds out financial and social capital and directly causes corruption; the countries that have caught up did so despite rather than because of Aid. There is, however, an alternative. Extreme poverty is not inevitable. Dambisa Moyo also shows how, with improved access to capital and markets and with the right policies, even the poorest nations could be allowed to prosper...[continue reading]-Global Investor Bookshop"

While I'll wait for the book's evidence to agree or disagree on the failure of Aid, Moyo's push for access to capital and markets as the best sustainable solution to poverty lines up directly with personal observations from a brief stint in the Aid industry and research since.

Coach K - business school case study

Coach K really does serve as a walking case study on organization and human performance best practices. I say this, drawing on a few classes now in management and organizations. Today's example can be found here -

Coach K could easily rest on his laurels as one of the most successful coaches in college history. Instead, he used his three years of coaching the Olympic team to gain exposure to a diverse set of coaches on his staff, but more so, exposure to thousands of hours of international competition and what does and does not work around the world. He then brought that back to Duke to change the way he coaches. A lesser coach would simply plod away with what has worked so well in the past, fill his Olympic coaching staff with yes-men who come from the same school of coaching philosophy, or go to international competition more concerned with proving the value of his methods vs. learning from the example of other teams.

Not Coach K. I'd wager (though I'm hardly the first) that his willingness to continually learn and adapt is what has allowed Coach K to sustain Duke's basketball success for so long.

(story found via Duke Basketball Report).

Making overt what other politicians make covert

Jack Shafer at Slate puts it well:

"If Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is immediately guilty of anything, it's of making overt what other politicians make covert, and doing so while the wiretaps roll." Read the rest here.

Is Blagojevich inept at playing the game? It seems so. Is he corrupt and rightfully destined to join his Illinois gubernatorial predecessors in prison? It seems so. Does anyone believe Blagojevich is unique in conflating his personal interests with his elected duty?

Today's exhibit A: Senate Democrats had enough Republican votes to pass the auto bailout but not enough to provide political cover, so no go. Read the rest at the Weekly Standard (via Instapundit). Either the auto bailout was in the best interests of the US and their constituents or it wasn't. Not proceeding with a vote because there wasn't enough "cover" seems to be the same game, albeit in a legal and socially acceptable form.

Path Dependencies at Work

Here's an amazing mash-up of two maps. The conclusion is intuitive, but startling in its' seeming precision. A beautiful example of the power of images to convey complex concepts.

"This is the south’s 2008 presidential vote (in red and blue) overlaid by an 1860 map of cotton production (dots)."

From Strange Maps (via Chris Blattman's Blog, via Creative Class, via Durham's Bull)

Governor Blagojevich: He's Just Like Us!

Everyone knows by now about Governor Blagojevich's adventures in Chicago-style politics. It's laughable. Like dumb and dumber try to play the graft game. Self-delusion to the extreme. It's got me thinking though of what separates someone like Governor Blagojevich from:

• Typical back-scratching politics (e.g. Murtha)?
• less subtle "networking" where people do favors and advance friends on the belief that they're collecting a war chest of "chips" they can cash in later?
• A CEO empire building by pushing M&A deals he/she knows are not in the best interest of their company?
  
• Any typical business school student?

All seem ruled by self-serving expediency where ends justify means. The difference is probably two fold:

• Blagojevich's willingness to grossly cross the line of what is actually illegal (as opposed to questionably moral)
• Blagojevich's ineptness
  

I suspect there will be many who fundamentally don't understand why what Blagojevich did was a big deal (illegal, sure, but probably not that bad!).

the Jindal bandwagon continue

Looks like the buzz is continuing to build. It will be interesting to see if Jindal is half as effective as Obama in leveraging momentum a full four years out?

Refreshing break from situational ethics

Being at business school, it's nice to get a dispatch from a place where situational ethics is not the standard - professional golf. Last week, golfer J.P. Hayes, playing for a spot on the 2009 PGA tour, realized after a round that he had inadvertently hit two shots with the a non-tour-approved ball.

"Hayes had a choice: He could have said nothing and kept playing, with no one aware of his mistake. Or he could turn himself in and let his mistake cost him a 2009 PGA Tour card. He chose the latter. "

Hurray for taking the tough choice, even when the error was inadvertent and arguably did not impact the results. Not wanting to let moral certitude interlope too long in today's world, 50.2% of of 55,000 polled readers state they would not have done the same thing. More here.

Music Industry Thriving

From The Big Picture:

Turns out it's only the record companies that are tanking - artists and consumers are doing fairly well thank you. This lines up with personal experience. I've bought more music, not less, since the dawn of digital media. Services like Rhapsody, Pandora and iTunes have exposed me to a myriad of artists I never would have discovered previously.

US Publishers - About To Fall off a Cliff

It's not often you get to announce to an entire industry that it is about to collapse. That's what my Managing Turnarounds professor, James Shein got to do last week at an American Press International's summit. In a room full of the who's who in the US Newspaper Industry, Shein provided the execs a nine hour overview of the class I'm currently in, with the conclusion: you are all about to fall off a cliff.

Shein related a few excerpts to our class this week. A few shocking statistics included: of the publicly traded newspapers and publishers in the room:

• All but one had a return on assets below their cost of capital (e.g., they generate negative returns to investors on a risk adjusted basis)
• All but one had an Altman Z-Score below 1.8. The Altman Z-Score is a metric that takes a few financial return indicators and predicts the likelihood that a company is in risk of declaring bankruptcy. Over two decades, it has proven to have a high level of efficacy. Score above 3 are good, scores between 1.8 and 3 are "troubled" and scores below 1.8 indicates significant distress (e.g., this is when creditors begin tightening their terms).
  

Again, this included participants from the New York Times, Washington Times, Hearst Newspapers, E.W.Scripps and Gannett. Rest of the story here.

The trade-offs of tenure in public education

The NY Times offers a compelling profile on Michelle Rhee's efforts to transform the DC school system. She's now offering dramatic pay increases to teachers willing to forgo tenure - and being fought every step of the way by the United Federation of Teachers.

The rationale for tenure in public education does make sense, as articulated by Dr. Jeffrey Mirel from the University of Michigan:

“And the historical rationale remains good,” Dr. Mirel said, pointing to the case of a renowned high school biology teacher in Kansas who was forced to retire nine years ago because he refused to teach creationism.

“Without tenure,” Dr. Mirel said, “teachers can still face arbitrary firing because of religious views, or simply because of the highly politicized nature of American society.”

There clearly is a public value to having tenure. But what Dr. Mirel fails to do is to balance that against the potential costs of tenure on the quality of public education. Ms. Rhee would argue (and I'll readily agree) that the benefits of tenure are far outweighed by the costs.

Jindal 2012

I know I'm not the first to suggest it, but how about Bobby Jindal for the Republican nomination in 2012? I can imagine him not wanting to run if Obama has a good first term so as to keep his options open for a go at it later, but who knows. He's smart, was previously mentioned by numerous people as a potential VP pick (which he wisely avoided), and could be in the early stages of building a name for himself as an innovator willing to take on tough problems, as it appears he is trying to do in his home state of Louisiana with health care. And, I might add, he's a fellow McKinsey alumnus. =)

Jindal 2012? Jindal 2012!

This explains a lot

From bastion of conservatism, Prof. Jeffrey Heart: "As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection--here, greed, short views and the resulting barbarism." More here.

The dreams of a "Public Servant"?

It's sad that most of the truly capable people I know would never pursue public service - at least in elected form. The requirements to get elected are simply demeaning (e.g., campaigning in 5 second sound bites) and the "rewards" many in politics seem to covet, and are willing to fight tooth and nail for, are meaningless. Here's Mark Foley on the rewards of public service, from his first post-scandal interview:

"In public life, you dream of the day they'll name a hospital after you, or a bridge or a post office"

Really?!? That's the lifelong dream of a public servant?

Palin as the future of feminism?

Camile Paglia remains a fierce advocate for Palin. A contrarian opinion that gave me pause as a someone who would like nothing more than for Palin to fade into the background. Here's the thought-provoking piece:

"I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World."

Must see theater

This looks like a must see for anyone in NYC - a new staging of "A Man for All Seasons" with Frank Langella in the Sir Thomas More role. We're thinking of spending a few days in the city prior to Christmas. If so, I'll be in the market for tickets. The fact that First Things's review was more inspiring than anything else I've read recently is a great sign:

But More does neither. He begins with the stride of a statesman and ends with the shuffle of a prisoner, yet throughout he is a bulwark against concession and shallow appeasement. Frank Langella’s hefty frame and rich baritone realize More’s character in a physical way: Almost always the largest man on stage, Langella draws to himself all the energy in the house. He towers over his fellow actors, visually depicting the might of integrity in the face of moral compromise.


Thank you Roundabout Theatre.

Axis of Evil Revisited

I saw this piece on "The Secret History of Kim Jong Il" in Foreign Policy recently and shuddered. A illuminating account from one of Mr. Kim's former teachers. It's easy to find Kim Jong Il bemusing. The claims that he shoots at least three or four hole-in-ones on each round of golf for instance. Stories like that are legion. But then we get glimpses of the utter, unabashed depravity of his regime. Like this from the aforementioned story:

My friend, a well-connected physician at the time, told me that he had been ordered by the Communist Party to pick out the shortest residents of Pyongyang and South Pyongan province. Against his conscience, he went out to those areas and had local party representatives distribute propaganda pamphlets. They claimed that the state had developed a drug that could raise a person’s height and was recruiting people to receive the new treatment. In just two days, thousands gathered to take the new drug.

My friend explained how he picked out the shortest among the large group. He told the crowd that the drug would best take effect when consumed regularly in an environment with clean air. The people willingly, and without the slightest suspicion, hopped aboard two ships – women in one, men in the other. Separately, they were sent away to different uninhabited islands in an attempt to end their “substandard” genes from repeating in a new generation. Left for dead, none of the people made it back home. They were forced to spend the rest of their lives separated from their families and far from civilization.

What level of systematic repression convinces the masses to allow tyrants like Mr. Kim to remain in control for decades?

is it simply Fannie and Freddie's fault?

As satisfying as it would be to simply blame Fannie, Freddie, Barney Frank and his congressional cohort for the housing crisis cum global economic collapse, it's pieces like this at The Big Picture that remind me that crappy decision making by hordes of people and institutions in the private sector is the real culprit:

• More than 84% of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
• Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the CRA;
• Only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.
• Mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.

Blinded by greed anyone?