mobility and portability
“Driven to Distraction:To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat. Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices.” NYT, 01.07.10
While Google moves toward computer mobility markets, Apple shifts to computer portability markets. Content and services merge across both precepts, but Google is focused on bodily location and relocation, wearable computing, while Apple relocates devices to sustain avatar computing. Apple projects the simulation of the world on the screen while Google projects continuing physicality of the world.
The cool thing is that print books mediate both domains and they especially dominate the synthesis or interdependence of on-body and away-from-body experience. And now the Kindle is disadvantaged for being simply book-like, a one-note text reader.
It’s amusing to consider the evolving criticism of the Kindle. First it was “It will never replace the physical book!” Now with Apple’s digital marvel on the way, the Kindle criticism has turned into “The Kindle is too much like a real book! All it does is display text!” Kindleville
the L word
The I-school at UT has shed the word library and can now discard the word preservation. This is apparent as the preservation training program is dissolved. Perhaps it is interesting to consider the other discards possible with a shift from librarianship to informationship.
Certainly collections, built and curated organizations of physical media, can be discarded. Also any physical, personal mediation of the collections. And physical space for such mediation can be eliminated. All that is needed is electricity and network connectivity and these are free, sustainable and pre-destined.
Meanwhile the Kilgarlin Center options are endless, every narrative with a different resolution. From an extension course at the University of Illinois, to the SLS death star, to the restaurant at the end of the Universe and now into a phantom. The only future is what it could have been or should have been. Stay tuned.
empires and books
There is an interesting thread of relation between computing empires and the print book. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are defined by print book retailing and their reading devices demonstrate this focus. Apple is defined by an escape from print and after using the cover of the power “book” it now projects screen based phones, tablets and slates. Apple is inventing screen reading without canonic precedent. Google acts as if it wants to be a library and its use of print books is another cover for mediation of all media including maps, images, video and news.
What does all this suggest about the future of the print book. It suggests a thread of relations between print and screen reading; an interdependence, that is self-organizing, elaborate and mutually exciting. Screen and print may be a single empire.