eBook Thoughts

Posted on by lhl

First, a bit of background: I read a lot on my screen every day, and I’m very much in the Cory Doctorow camp on Ebooks (as true now as it was 3 years ago IMO). I still read a lot of physical books. A lot more, actually, in the past year since I moved into SF proper and have had a lot more transit/commute time. These days I always try to carry a book around when I head out, especially if I’m catching the BART or MUNI – there’s a lot of “dead time” during the day. I don’t suspect that any of this is very unique, but rather that these attributes I’ve lined out are actually quite normal, and at most, differs from the norm only by degree, not quality.

That being said, there are a few areas where I fall outside that norm, but I think might give an interesting perspective, as they are “leading edge” issues. For example, I currently have 699 subscriptions in my Google Reader. (At Amazon Kindle’s current subscription pricing, that would mean a cost of $700 to $1400 per month. That’s ignoring the fact that I’m sure no reader (including Google Reader) works well for hundreds or thousands of feeds at the moment.) I’m also an early adopter and a bit of a gadget geek, having bought one of the very first e-ink devices, the iRex iLiad. It actually suffers from a variety of issues that has left it in the realm of tinker-toy instead of daily device, which very much informs my thinking.

All this is to give some context on my thoughts about the Amazon Kindle. There are a lot of things to like about it. It has many features like the Vizplex E-Ink screen, OTA content-loading, and very good power management that make it very appealing. The store integration and library management approach (centralized syncing) from what I’ve seen looks sensible and good.

Of course, I’m never going to buy one in its current state. Mark Pilgrim writes the best philosophical reasons against the Kindle, but many of my issues, while related, are less idealistic and more utilitarian – I’ve already mentioned how the Kindle is incompatible with my feed reading habits. The built-in search is nice, but unfortunately, ultimately useless, as the Kindle is unable to load (and therefore index) the majority of my technical/reference reading (in PDFs and HTML). I’m also unconvinced by the ability of the UI to handle a seriously large catalogue (the pictures show a linear list). And even though it may be built on Linux, I suspect it will be seriously unfriendly to tinkering to make it work better. Of course, the biggest issues do all revolve around the DRM and how your content is treated. These are the things that Mark points out, but it may be worth re-iterating.

I find it laughable that anyone would call the Kindle the iPod of reading. The success of the iPod was built on the transfer/ripping of people’s existing libraries and the file sharing of open digital media files (yes, Petunia, we’re talking about copyright infringement with EM-PEE-THREES). Now, on the first area, it turns out book scanners aren’t quite as common as CD drives, and on the second… can you imagine if the iPod were built in the way that Kindle is? Every single piece of media that you wish to load onto the Kindle must be sent via email to Amazon’s text processor, where it rips apart your content, and then tracks and does analysis on your documents.

Now, if you’re an Amazon.com customer already (I’m an Amazon Prime member myself and buy from Amazon regularly, bordering on religiously), you’re already comfortable (or at least resigned) to the amount of commercial/transactional information they’re collecting, however their Kindle TOS gives no additional provisions for privacy of the documents that pass through their conversion service, which means they are now potentially collecting the full contents of your personal documents, or anything you send through their conversion service for that matter — that’s a (nominal) step up from knowing what DVDs I bought.

All this wouldn’t be worth putting on the tin-foil hat if they weren’t motivated to pry through your documents, but… well, they are. The first general term is about “Illegal Use.” Text analysis is trivial and I don’t see why the RIAA’s wet dream would be any less so of the book publishers’ associations considering that they in conjunction w/ Amazon are already foisting the same consumer-antagonistic DRM that removes all traditional property rights from the media you “buy” on it. The Kindle is just like the iPod, if the every single track you put on your iPod went through a similar digital panopticon and if the iPod became a useless brick w/o said panopticon service.

Aside: I have a relatively modest library (according to Amazon, I’ve bought about 100 books from them since 1998 — their yourmedialibrary system is actually neat start for personal catalogue management). Based on quick look at my shelves I’ve probably bought another 100 or so volumes elsewhere). As a friend mentioned, books are one of the last types of media where I buy the majority of what I consume. I don’t have any philosophical grounds against it, and although I’d prefer it be convenient, I have occasionally gone out of my way to drive to a brick and mortar store (Scalzi’s Old Man’s War) or ordering from Amazon (Charlie Straus’ Halting State) after reading a piece of it online (or even the whole thing in some cases), and that’d be unlikely to change, especially because it appears to be more convenient to purchase, but having that at the cost of giving up all my existing rights/privileges (while paying up-front and on-goingly) to “lease” IP is a kick in the face.

In any case, I am really glad that the Kindle has been released and with such hype, as it really shines a bright light on digital reading, long the neglected step-child while music and video hogged all the digital attention. Kindle ups the stakes, and will encourage people to start thinking about what they really want out of ebooks, and hopefully it’ll spur other companies to respond to that demand.

As for myself, the reading device I am most excited about is the OLPC I just ordered. It’s not e-ink based (which is a shame, since they really are amazing), and it’s heavier and bulkier, but it is both higher resolution (1200×900 vs 800×600) and denser (200dpi vs 167dpi) than the Kindle, and as a transflective screen, will also work in sunlight and consume only 0.1W of power w/ the backlight off. It also has very good power management (read the travails), which allows fast suspend/resumes in the 100ms level. Lastly, it is a fully functional Linux system, with the GUI built on Python and built for openness . One thing that I learned from the iLiad is that if the system is nominally open/hackable, that unless there is a large enough community working on it, or active support from the developers, all your time will be spent fighting the device. Progress will be slow, marginal, and ultimately unfulfilling for everyone.

In short, wake me up when someone loads Android or Python on it, then I’ll be excited. Speaking of Android, eBook readers do have competition (besides pBooks that is) – the iPhone (and mobile phones) in general serve much of the purpose of being extremely portable and killing dead time without having to carry something extra around. Still, for those long trips, it would be nice to be able to read the latest news or gathered technical papers, or yes, some books on an e-ink screen.

Things to look forward to: