Kindle DX Announced

Amazon has just announced yet another new Kindle device, now available for pre-order. The Kindle DX is meant to make PDF documents, textbooks, reference books, and other graphic-intense materials easier to read. The Kindle DX has a screen two and a half times the size of the regular Kindle. Not only is the screen bigger, it has a wide screen mode, which allows you to tip the device 90 degrees to produce a larger, landscape view (like the iPhone). There is also a 5-way controller on the device which, so it seemed in the promotional video, should make it fast and easy to increase and decrease text size as needed when reading a cookbook, textbook, or professional document. Amother big advantage of the Kindle DX over the Kindle 2 is that the DX can natively download PDF files, no computer conversion needed.

I actually found out about the Kindle DX when I logged onto Amazon to buy a paper book. The book was a home reference, filled with pictures, diagrams, and useful sidebars. It wasn't available in Kindle format- but I avoid buying diagram-heavy reference books in Kindle even when they are available. The Kindle DX, with its large screen, sharp graphics, and ability to zoom in and out of diagrams and sidebars, should make books that include more than just straight narrative text feasible and useful in Kindle format. But my home reference still has one advantage over its future Kindle DX version: the hard copy has color (the Kindle DX graphics are sharp, but still grey scale).

There is little doubt, based on the promotional video presentation, that Amazon hopes to win a share of the college textbook market for the Kindle through the DX model. The promo also heavily targeted professionals.

The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell

Several nights ago I had a nightmare. I was moving, but could only carry an armful of possessions if I meant to make it out of the apartment alive- because the apartment kept morphing as did the house in the House of Leaves. The part of the nightmare I found most interesting was that, on several occasions, my husband tried to telephone me. As I attempted to slide the bar on my iPhone to answer his call, the slider began to swirl and wriggle around on the screen. No matter how my finger chased it, the sliding bar kept eluding me, and I could not make contact with him.

If he were still alive, I think Joseph Campbell would have gotten a kick out of the way my subconscious brought together my modern, daily experience and mythic archetype.

The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell is a collection of interviews conducted toward the end of Campbell's life by Michael Toms. As Campbell, himself, points out, Toms does an excellent job of asking questions, of providing a springboard from which Campbell can really get to the essence of what he'd learned during a lifetime of studying mythology.

During the interviews Campbell explains why humans need mythology- that is, to provide a way to connect to the spiritual, to bring the spiritual in accord with nature, to bring the spiritual in accord with society, and to guide the individual through the stages of his life.

Campbell posits that the mythic link between the spiritual and society has been broken. Myths were once culture-specific, geographic-specific stories that defined an in-group and the way the individual related to his in-group. In our modern world in which the in-group is becoming the entire world, there is no universal mythology which binds all of humanity together- at least, not yet.

So the individual is left with two problems. First, he has to find some way to relate to his in-group. This identification can be accomplished by the old-fashioned method of defining an "us" and a "them," or it can be accomplished by a realization of spiritual unity, the idea that all of humanity is in the same boat. Campbell obviously believes that the latter method is the healthier, more indicative of maturity in human evolution. Even if the individual manages to identify with the vast and overwhelming everything and everyone, he is still left with the problem of finding a mythology- a symbolic link to the spiritual- that has meaning to him, personally, and can help guide him through the stages of his own life.

Much of Campbell's life work consisted of comparing and contrasting the different forms which different cultures assign to the same myths. During one interview, he discussed a Buddhist myth in which the future Buddha has an encounter with a monster called "Sticky Hair." As Campbell proceeds to tell the tale, it becomes clear that this ancient, oriental story is quite similar to Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Through study we can learn that the myths of many cultures tell one story, that they address the spiritual needs we all share. But if the individual is no longer tied to the stories of his tribe, his country, or his local religion, where will he find the symbols and stories that link him to the spiritual?

Campbell notes that occasionally an artist, such as Picasso, James Joyce, or T.S. Eliot can help the individual begin to forge those connections. Yet Campbell insists that the ultimate solution to finding a symbolic system of links to the spiritual, is for each individual to create a personal mythology, appropriate to himself, alone.

I find the juxtaposition of these seemingly disparate ideas- the need to identify with humanity as one community, one spirit- and at the same time, for each individual to create his own, unique mythology- a problem as sticky as the Tar Baby.

Campbell also mentions that, when established mythic symbols fail to define a connection to spirituality for the individual, and that individual has not yet built a link of his own, the result is frequently nightmares. In dream the subconscious tries to construct a mythology of its own.

This insight brought me back to my dream involving the slider bar on the iPhone. In the nightmare my subconscious started with mythic symbols established in the book House of Leaves (morphing architecture), then went on to feverishly invent its own version of a chasing myth using the iPhone.

There are lots of chasing myths involving lovers, in which a man smitten by love begins a fruitless chase for a woman. The most obvious example is Daphne's flight from Apollo. Countless other cultures have personified astronomical bodies, so that man chases woman, wronged, eternally across the sky. Even the story of Pecos Bill and Slue-foot Sue addresses this idea of one lover chasing the other (hopelessly) when Slue-foot Sue bounces endlessly from the earth to the moon, and back again. The fact that my subconscious recreated this myth, referencing iPhone touch screen technology instead of the natural world, indicates one way in which I might attempt to build my own, personal link to the spiritual.

Just as Michael Toms knew exactly what questions to ask Joseph Campbell during the interviews, Joseph Campbell knows just the questions to bring up in his listener's mind. Do you belong to a group? Who are they- what defines them? Do you have some way to connect to something greater than yourself? How do you forge that connection? What has influenced your symbolic links to the spiritual, and what can you do to make those symbolic links really mean something to you?

If any of these questions interest you, I highly recommend listening to "The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell."

Kindle and iPhone make friends

Amazon has announced a free iPhone (or iPod Touch) application that allows the iPhone to read Kindle eBooks.

Wow.

This means iPhone and iPod Touch owners don't have to shell out the money for an expensive Kindle device in order to purchase and read Kindle books. No doubt Amazon hopes this will create a huge increase in the market for Kindle books. I certainly hope this development will lead to an increase in the already impressive number of titles available in Kindle format.

For those who do own Kindles, the new iPhone software can synchronize your place between the Kindle and the iPhone. So if you read a few chapters on your iPhone while on the train, you can pick up your Kindle when you get home and not have to waste a moment searching for where you left off in your reading. As a Kindle owner whose device is strictly used at home, this opens up exciting new possibilities for never being without my book!

Kindle 2

Amazon has announced that there are now over 230,000 titles available for the Kindle. My count today yielded 31 newspapers, 22 magazines, and 237,694 books. In books, Meyer's Twilight series still holds the top three bestseller slots, followed by Young's religious fiction, The Shack, in slots four and five.

The announcement was coupled with the news that the second generation Kindle is available for preorder on Amazon.com.

The form factor of the Kindle 2 has grown slimmer and lighter than its predecessor. Battery life is 25% longer (I do occasionally run out of juice while reading), page turns are 20% faster (although I'm totally used to the Kindle's current page turn speed), and of course it has more memory and can hold more titles. The most significant new features, in my opinion, are the 16 shade gray scale and the text-to-speech capability.

As I noted in my review of The Graveyard Book, art display quality- even on gray scale sketches- wasn't quite up to snuff on the Kindle 1. I'd be interested to see what a gray scale graphic novel looked like on the Kindle 2. Several years ago I had my hands on a Sony eBook reader at a Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan- and was shocked by how beautifully it displayed the art.

Now to discuss the text-to-speech feature. Text-to-speech takes the printed word and reads it aloud as audio. Readers can choose between male or female narrators, and can dial up and down how fast the narrator reads. The brief text-to-speech sample on Amazon's video demo reminded me of Hal from 2001- although, to be fair, the voice was a little less fluid than Hal, and a little less creepy. I'd be curious to hear how well the computerized narrator pronounces proper nouns and foreign words.

Beyond the quality of the narrator, I was wondering who, under the age of five, would want their print book read out loud to them? Then I realized text-to-speech is probably fantastic for commuters. If you're reading on the train, then want to continue your story driving from the park and ride back home- you can do so with no interruption of continuity, no searching for your place- and no second book to buy in audio format. All my life I've had the avid reader's nightmare illness- extreme car sickness whenever I attempt to read in motion. So I can definitely see the value of text-to-speech. On the other hand, I never buy an audio book without first listening to a sample of the narrator. The narrator can make or break the reading experience. So I'll be interested to see whether or not Kindle 2 readers actually use the text-to-speech feature.

Social networks and charity

Flipping through the pages of a local history book, I noticed that American communities in the early twentieth century relied heavily on service clubs (such as the Lyons Club, Rotary International, and the Shriners), to accomplish charitable works and large-scale community projects. When I was growing up, these kinds of clubs barely caught my notice. I remember parades where funny guys in fez hats rode around on little cars (Shriners), I was vaguely aware that Rotary funded exchange students, and I knew of a few lady's clubs that gave out scholarships. This is in no way to diminish the great work these clubs have accomplished, but simply to note that their membership and prominence in the community has definitely declined since the second half of the twentieth century.

As I was chewing on all this information, I was struck by an idea. Service clubs are about two things: service to the community, and social gathering. People enjoyed hanging out together, and they used their friendly, social time to plan and act for the greater good of the community. Given the symbiosis of social gathering and charity that founded these service clubs, why don't service clubs today use the online social network model to keep their clubs alive and well?

No sooner had I formed this thought, then I began noticing social networks geared toward charitable causes. Change.org is a prime example of charity and social networks interacting- as members can join, affiliate with causes and specific non-profits, or simply read or talk about the causes that interest them. I am certainly not the first person to notice that online social networks and charity have an affinity similar to peanut butter and jelly.

Still, when I visited the home pages for the Shriners, the Lyons Club, and Rotary International, I didn't see any evidence that they were using online social networking. Their pages were oriented toward accepting donations, making their good work known to the public, and helping potential members find local chapters.

I don't think it's such a big leap from walking downtown to the lodge, to logging into a social networking site, where members from all over the world can meet for fun and to make the world a better place. I predict that the service clubs who are willing to incorporate social networking technology into their club culture will still be making the history books, and maybe still be making a difference, many generations from now. I fear those clubs who insist on local, exclusively face-to-face member interaction may be lost to dust and yellowed pages.

The RepRap Project

Science fiction is quickly becoming fact thanks to the desktop manufacturing RepRap project. For some time authors such as Cory Doctorow have been spinning tales about technology that allows individuals to cheaply manufacture items they design (or whose design they download for free, purchase, or steal). Doctorow's short stories "Printcrime" and "After the Siege" (see my discussion of the stories) go into great detail about the trouble we could get into when such technology becomes commonplace. For now, let's just bask in the shiny, new hope for a better tomorrow and the really cool technology.

How does the RepRap work? Using the desktop printer as a model, the RepRap "prints" layered pieces of plastic that can be assembled into a finished product. The use of metal and other materials are also under development so that more complex parts, such as circuits, can be manufactured.

One of the neat things about the RepRap project, is that their current milestone goal is to ensure that the RepRap can manufacture itself. Users who can ante the 400 Euros for raw material costs will be able to use the RepRap to build a copy of itself. The project intends to give the design for self-replication away for free using an open source model.