Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos showed up at Jon Stewart's pad the other day to discuss the
Kindle 2, and Jon seemed fairly unimpressed. They were just finally getting into a groove when Bezos dropped the price bomb, and then their fleeting segment was over. It's embedded after the break. Amazon VP Ian Freed has also been chatting up the device, but in a more technical nature. On designing the Kindle he reiterates the "invisibility" design ethic surrounding the device, about making it "disappear" for the user. They also improved the cellular modem for improved reception, and also fended off features like a color screen that would shorten battery life, up the price and cause the device to generate more heat and make its presence known. As far as text to speech goes, he thinks it's good for short stretches of reading, and notes that it covers the vast majority of titles that aren't available in an audio format, but didn't speak specifically to the
possible infringement of author rights.
Read - Jeff Bezos on
The Daily ShowRead - Designing the Kindle 2
posted February 25th 2009 9:21AM
I'll have to say, this seems pretty cool and all, but I'm still a big supporter of physical books. There's just something about a physical book, the feel of the binding and the pages, being able to set your bookmark and visually see how much of a chunk of the pages you've gone through... I don't think anything will ever really be able to replace real books.
And on another note, these types of technologies could actually pose some big problems for ourselves and future generations. We, like every other generation, want to be remembered and have future generations hundreds of years from now be able to look back and know as much as possible about our society, right? Well things like the Kindle are going to make that near to impossible to do. In fact, our modern society may very well be one of the least known and least understood periods in history. The reason for this is that all our documents, diaries, journals, etc. have gone off the physical page and onto the internet. Archaeologists and Anthropologists are desperately trying to teach their students and society as a whole to stop keeping blogs and livejournals, and to start writing down their thoughts and feelings in actual physical diaries. The only reason we know anything about all past societies from Mesopotamians to the Civil War Era, is because people wrote down and saved their legal documents, holy books, and personal diaries. Either etched in stone or written on paper. We know so much about what the Founding Father's wanted for the country and how they went about creating it mainly due to the fact that we have the letters they wrote to each other and to their wives, they have been saved, can be stored in a vault and looked at by future generations for centuries to come. The only reason we were able to decypher the Egyptian language in the first place was because someone way back when had the right mind to write the same text in 3 different ancient languages and etch it into stone, lasting for thousands of years.
But the books on the kindle will not last, the blogs people post and livejournals people keep will be lost to the ages, and when our decendants look to our time and try to find out what the everyday person's life was like, what problems and issues people faced, what our political leaders thought... they won't be able to know because everything is in email, there's no letters anymore, nothing real and tangible and permanent that people in the year 3,000 will be able to pick up and read.
And if you're thinking that the internet will still be around in the year 3,000 or that all the books in the future which will solely be released in digital form will be saved for that long, you're fooling yourself. If this were the case, why don't we still write in hyroglyphs or latin or aramaic? Why don't we still use scrolls made of papyrus or leather hides to inscribe formal documents on? All things change, technologies change, even now.. there are films which came out on DVD that for one reason or another will never be transferred to bluray or what comes after bluray, and those films will be lose forever. And if we don't start at least printing physical copies of all our emails or writing both a livejournal and a real diary... then our whole civilization will be lost to the ages. And when people in 1,000 years look to try to find out more about the ancient civilization of the United States, they will have very little to work with, and most of our achievements and significant historic events will be lost forever.
There's my little diatribe for today. Think about it, go buy a diary, write in it ... your great great great great grandchildren will thank you for it.
tl;dr.
http://archive.org
You started talking about the year 3,000 and your whole argument went out the window. I can't even fathom what next week is going to be like, let alone the next 9,991 years.
er, 991 years.
Umm... the year 3000 is 991 years away, not 9,991.
"Archaeologists and Anthropologists are desperately trying to teach their students and society as a whole to stop keeping blogs and livejournals, and to start writing down their thoughts and feelings in actual physical diaries."
As a Future Anthropologist of America (not a real organization)...what the hell are you talking about? And written word is 'permanent'? So, what, once you write something on a piece of paper it's magically transformed out of the natural universe and is no longer subject to decay, negligence, or vandalization?
Now, the preservation of textual as well as digital works is an extremely important matter, as you so passionately underline. But I would argue against the assumption that physical media is somehow essentially more persistent. You mention hieroglyphs, but I'm not sure you realize just how painfully rare those sources are. Physical media is, in fact, dependent on the way in which it's housed: we have hieroglyphs because they were in tombs that were literally sealed away and not opened for the entire duration.
We have the words of our founding fathers, sure, but only because other people took explicit care to track them and preserve them. The decay rate of free-floating paper is something like 2-4 months.
I could go on and on. Really three things. First, preservation of text is not dependent on medium; rather, it's dependent on it being important (read: not boring/vacuous). Sure, we'll always get little snippets that are unimportant or unexpectedly important. There's no reason to assume this won't happen with digital transference. Second, digital preservation has a much higher rate of success if it's tended to. Most of the world's major libraries are currently undertaking some project devoted to the digitization of old and rotting (but important!) texts.
Third, anthropologists are "desperately" on board with your philosophy? That's somewhat insulting to both of us.
I want one.
I do too. Not at that price though.
Stop posting hulu movies. They are sorry in my country... :)
While Stewart is obviously not tech savvy, which he demonstrates often, I think he's got a point. I like having books. I love the idea of an ebook but its very expensive to get in the game. I might actually be open to it if I could buy the actual book and get the ebook along with it, sort of like the way a lot of artists are doing with cds. You buy the album and you get a link to download it for free or something. Cause I like that I can buy a book and read it then pass it around to my friends so they can read it too. Ebooks don't let you do that which quite sucks.
Jon Stewart is an a-hole commie.
Hulu Movies Suck!!!! They don't work in Canada or other countries. Also, Comedy Central Videos don't work in Canada either.
For those Canadians out there... here is the video for you: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/#clip142744
Not sure what your problem with this guy. I mean yeah, he laughed more than the average interviewee but he didn't laugh without reason and to be honest he was pretty much laughing at the same time as I was laughing so it didn't "interfere" with the interview as it were. Loved the "you can read with one hand" bit. :D
A Hulu link? Are you serious?
Way to go
i guess we now know america is the greatest country to live in
wow. very constructive.
How would you propose we save these DVDs? Print them out frame-by-frame and make flipbooks?
The fact of the matter is, we have way too much information now to every print it all out or have it all represented in completely tangible formats. But just like the founding fathers counted on the fact that people in the future would still be able to read what they wrote, I think we can be pretty sure that people in the future will still be able to read our digital data.
Gahh, that was supposed to be in reply to James Dusenberry.
If reading something about a tech item on a tech blog bugs you, maybe you're reading the wrong blog.
hey i like the hulu video link. it works at my workplace unlike youtube.
"Where is that ups guy?"
He's using it with one hand. ;)
bezos is a good sport. crazy laugh, but he didn't take it seriously and knew what he was getting into. mine should be arriving any minute...where is that ups guy?
http://xkcd.com/548/
Guess who I am!
HA HA HA HA HA *leanS forward* HA HA HA HA *leans back* HA!
Wow, Jon Stewart kept hitting the nail on its head. Like me, I see it as a pathetic substitution to experience of reading a book. Nothing like the smell of a new book, being able to throw it around, cram it in places, etc. Sorry, I'll pass!
I read quite a bit but I don't see what's so special about flipping pages. It's kind of a luddite argument. I've read a few books with FBReader and had no major complaints about the experience. There's a case to be made against the Kindle (mainly that it's way too expensive for what it does), but seriously, if it were more reasonably priced I'd trade my shelf full of books for an electronic library any day. I don't see the "book experience" as being any more sacred than the "CD experience", and I wouldn't mind getting rid of my massive CD collection now that I've ripped it all to FLAC as well, since all it does is sit in boxes and take up space in my apartment.
I agree, there's something psychological about physical books. Perhaps it's merely a question of what one has grown up with and is familiar with, but I don't put my parents and grandparents down for wanting to read a print newspaper instead of reading the news online. To each his own, and at $9.95 a pop (seriously? That's pricey), I think this is just another techie novelty that won't be catching on with the masses.
Wow, Amazon is paying a lot to advertise this thing, aren't they?
what did H. Jackman do with this voice that was so funny at the Oscars?
i didnt watch them, can someone post a link to what they are talking about?
Wow. HULU. Thanks Engadget. Way to think globally.
At their current stage of development, ebooks are a great value for people who both read a lot and travel a lot, and for whom the initial cash outlay for the device isn't a problem. Not everyone fits that description, but fortunately people who don't, or who prefer books printed on paper, are not required to buy one. It's hard for me to understand what's making some of them so angry.
Actually, there was an article in the BBC recently about preserving aging formats, and actual work is being done to create a universal viewer (for all formats) to preserve old documents. So, no, I don't think everything will just "vanish" when such valuable work is being done.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7886754.stm
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