Dawn did a better job in her blog this week of weighing up the pros and cons.  For her, it all boils down to a matter of choice – both/and thinking, not either/or.  Although from the enthusiastic feel to her blog title – The Kindle is Reborn! – I think we can sense her positive vibes towards it.

All I want to do is quote a few relevant sentences from my main man Neil Postman.  Yes, I know I’ve waxed lyrical about his stuff before.  But, well, its my blog, frankly.  Plus a want to give another perspective from the usual technophile one that dominates the internet.

“New technologies compete with old ones — for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view. This competition is implicit once we acknowledge that the medium contains an ideological bias. And it is a fierce competition, as only ideological competitions can be. It is not merely a matter of tool against tool — the alphabet attacking ideographic writing, the printing press attacking the illuminated manuscript, the photograph attacking the art of painting, television attacking the printed word. When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision…

“In the United States, we can see such collisions everywhere — in politics, in religion, in commerce — but we see them most clearly in the schools, where two great technologies confront each other in uncompromising aspect for the control of students’ minds. On the one hand, there is the world of the printed word with its emphasis on logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, and discipline. On the other there is the world of television with its emphasis on imagery, narrative, presentness, simultaneity, intimacy, immediate gratification, and quick emotional response. Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many casualties — children who can’t learn to read or won’t, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side — at least for the moment.”

Think about it.

In those days, Cambridge University owned 122 books, each of which were valued at the price of a farm or vineyard.

However, demand was growing for an increased availability to books to the increasingly literate middle classes.  No longer did clergy monopolise the magic ability.  Scientists were able to record and disseminate their discoveries.  Adult literacy increased dramatically.  Copyright laws were passed to protect the authors of these newly available works.  The early 1800s saw the introdution of faster printing output and printing on two sides (Koenig and Bauer).  And, the rest you know.

What would Johannes thought of if he’d heard of a new development where people would be able to read without paper, ink and metal type pieces?  And, in fact, people would be able to access ‘books’ from a gadget no bigger than a regular-sized school textbook.  I think he may have descended into a dark mood…

The Kindle DX appears to be marketed toward readers of newspapers and magazines, in terms of its sheer size (9.7 inches, two and a half times its predecessor).

Unlike online versions of magazines and papers, the Kindle allows reading in the same format as a paper version of the same thing.  And, descpite the marketing efforst being directed toward such readers, paper subscriptions are falling as a result, as the Kindle supplies access to these free.  Double-edged sword?  Especially considering Amazon’s much-vaunted close partnerings with papers and mags.

Students are also among those who may benefit most.

Amazon has partnered with the three largest producers of American college textbooks, in order to kick-start the sales, by offering Kindles to students.  I trust this will be for free, bearing in mind the hefty $489 price tag.    Its appeal to students, above the obvious tecchie drool, is the potential benefits in cost in comparison to the cost of buying paper books over a 3-4 year period.  This, added to the lightweight construction, make it an obvious choice.

Features

• PDF Reader
• Storage: 3500 books, compared to 1500 in the previous model, Kindle 2
• Price: $489, compared to $359 for the Kindle 2
• Accelerometer (changes from portrait to landscape, when turned on side)
• Free wireless technology
• Grayscale: saves battery use and avoids glare

Amazon has revealed that where there is an option to purchase a digital edition, this represents 35% of sales.  Not bad.

So, is the Kindle going to replace the paper book?

Did DVDs replace going to the theatre?  Did reading silently replace reading aloud?  Did mobile phones replace going for a coffee?  Did online banking replace high-street banking (not yet, I fear!).  Did bookmarks replace folding down the corners?  Sometimes advancing techniques and technology are here to mercifully change our lives forever (consider the kindness and precision of modern, keyhole surgery compared to the butchery of the past); sometimes it is here only as an alternative way of doing things (think laptops and other mobile devices).

It’s dolly mixture time.  Alternatives, choice, individuality.  This is where the Kindle falls in our modern world.  It’s another way to read books, keep up with the news and do a little surfing.  I prefer to read news online via Twitter during the week (it suits to grab snippets of news during a busy day), but also love to be surrounded with the lazy spread of weekend papers with a big mug of Earl Grey.

Fear not, book lovers.  Your Sherlock Holmes on recycled, flickable, rough-touch, serif-ridden, rustling paper is here to stay.

I’ve been re-reading another one of Postman’s book recently,  the lesser known Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.  His thesis is that the US is the first modern culture to have shifted from a  technology-using worldview to a technology-dominated one.  This is one ‘culture war‘ that is not usually included in debate but that is far more deep-seated in the American psyche.

This isn’t a book review, so I’ll spare you the summary.  Postman considers the question of when America changed into a Technopoly, a state in which culture “seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.  To answer this question, Postman turns not to scientists or industrialists or politicians, but to a now almost forgotten management consultant.

Fredrick W Taylor published a book in 1911 called The Principles of Scientific Management.  Now just pause and ponder that title for a second.  Management is about managing people.  Taylor claims this can be achieved scientifically, that is, objectively, impersonally, mathematically.  People are reduced to bits of technology that require engineering.  Postman claims that this book…

…contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly.  These include the beliefs that the primary, if not only, goal of human labour and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagues by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best controlled by experts.

Postman also has brilliant things to say about language and statistics as examples of ‘invisible technologies’.  But for now, I have a few questions.  How far has this technological mind-set, this treating people as bits of technology, infected our thinking on such topics as time management, psychometric testing, and the other tools of modern HR?  And when were human beings demoted to a ‘resource’ anyway?

Let me know if you can think of any more examples of Technopoly in the workplace.

Not only are we incessantly hip (hence the blog post title), we are always on the look-out for new products to increase the quality of the technical writing side of our service to customers.

Last weekend, I discovered Jing.  It is a new tool for capturing screenshots (so I captured a shot of the current desktop on my laptop) and video.  I have used Techsmith’s older tool SnagIT for a while (it just keeps getting better without increasing significantly in price), Lotus ScreenCam (now replaced by SmartSuite) for a long ago university project and of course Corel’s Paint Shop Pro.

This is different.  Not least the new cool interface (for non-tecchies, that’s the look and feel).

Take a look at the Jing Blog for hints and tips and don’t miss this excellent introductory podcast on I’d Rather Be Writing.