Topic: Posts

Every time--it seems--that someone suggests or comments on the future of the digital text (ebooks), someone always says one of the two following things:

1. People don’t like to read words off of screens, the quality/experience is bad and in truth people would prefer to read words off of paper.

2. The codex is--by design and use--an important carrier of information that can’t be replaced by digital technology.

Despite the apparent similarity, I think one of these things (and only one) is true: the second. Lets explore.

For starters, if you really think about it, we all read hundreds of thousands of words off of screens every year (and in some cases, every month or every week). We don’t mind reading off of screens, and particularly with anti-aliasing and flat screens, in many cases it’s easier to read off of screens because readers have more control over the display of text, and yet people don’t really read books off of screens.

The standing argument as to why monographs and novels have never found success, is that there are two many distracting things you can be doing on the computer. Why read a book when you can check your email for the 20th time this hour? This is, I think, why the codex is probably here to stay. And because giving books a physicality is commercially worthwhile, and because we respond to the form.

Having said that, I read a book off of my laptop screen this past weekend, and I have to say that I rather enjoyed the experience. So here are some thoughts on the experience:

The book came to me in PDF format, from a publisher. So the “pages” looked like conventional book pages. There were page numbers and so I was able to locate the text in space on a page, very much like I would a “regular book.” This spatial experience is often forgotten in digital texts, and I think that layer of information helps our minds make sense of longer texts. Also, because I knew the page numbers of the individual pages, and the total number of pages in the document, I was able to calculate my progress, again, helpful in assimilating the data in the text file.

I could read the words comfortably on the screen while viewing the entire page on the screen. Being able to see a snapshot of a page helps me in locating the text in space, which makes reading easier. More importantly, it allowed me to only scroll when I needed to change the page. This is really important to a successful reading experience, in my view.

The final piece of the puzzle is probably approaching an ebook like you would any other text on a computer screen, rather than approaching an ebook like you would a pbook. I read paper books, for the most part, in bed at night. I read things on the computer sitting at my desk. I read the ebook, mostly sitting at my desk. I also tend to read pbooks in longer stretches, reading several thousand words at a time, where as I probably never read more than 1,000 words at a time on a screen without taking a break. You might have a very different method for reading, and that’s fine, but by cycling a novel in with my regular livejournal-blog-email-twitter reading cycle I was able to read a novel in a weekend; whereas it almost always takes me several weeks (if I’m lucky) to finish a novel.

The end result? I’ve started reading another ebook, because it seems worthwhile.

It’s considered poor taste to talk about your numbers if you’re a blogger or pod-caster, so while I’m thinking about mine, I’m going to offer some rough data points and talk about other people’s numbers.

A high quality, and reasonably high circulation, but pretty average science fiction magazine has an audience of about 10,000 per issue.

I think the top end of academic literary magazines have audiences of about 5,000 with most of them closer to 1k or 2k.

The minimum bar joining the federated media ad network is (or was) 250,000 page views a month. Figure that 250k page views, works out to an audience of at least 100k but probably less than 200, depending on a lot of factors.

The average, but established, mid-list podcast gets about 4k subscribers.

I think TWiT podcasts (mostly weekly) get several hundred thousand subscribers/downloads, but not more than say, half a million.

I heard a while back that boing boing got 3 million visits a month. Its probably more now.

The New York Times has a daily circulation of 1 million, while the chicago tribune has a daily circulation of a bit more than half a million. The Wisconsin State Journal (the Madison, WI paper), has a daily circulation of just under a hundred thousand.

I’ve heard Cory Doctorow and PNH say that the break even point for a book from Tor is 4,000 hardcovers.

I’ve also heard it said that about 1% of podcast/blog readers can be expected to buy stuff/donate/give feedback. In my experience this is probably true. I think, it doesn’t scale well for more popular blogs, so that more than 1% of Stephanie’s readers comment and buy her books and donate to knitter’s without borders. But it’s still probably not more than 10%.

I’m not sure what any of this means, and clearly four thousand people buying a hardcover book is different than buying a daily newspaper, or subscribing to a monthly journal, or just subscribing to a free podcast or visiting a website. But having some kind of concrete set of numbers is helpful and reassuring when I’m thinking “is it worth while.”

There are technologies that seem to evoke “the future,” that when we see them, we think “wow that has the future written all over it.” The flying car is like that. VR computer interfaces are like that. And because they represent the future SF writers--like myself--use these tropes to tell our readers “hey look, this is the future.” And I think as a result, we sort of think that these kinds of technologies are familiar and within within reach and/or seem like something something that would productively enhance our lives.

But a flying car? More complex, more energy, more dangerous (if you think there are a lot of bad drivers with one axis of control, imagine what adding another would do) and it probably wouldn’t be appreciably faster for most tasks. They’re cool, but as a technology, it doesn’t solve an extant problem in our world.

Same with virtual reality systems. It would require lots of energy (both in terms of CPU cycles, but more importantly in terms of programer and sysop time,) and while it might present some interesting entertainment/social/data visualization opportunities it represents a rather ineffective way to interact with a computer. The enduring (and growing) success of unix-stlye operating systems (which use simple text, and frequently a command line) to communicate with the user is testament to this fact. Until you can figure out a way to get data into someone’s head faster then reading, or out of someone’s head than typing, any sort of virtual reality system is basically useless.

In a similar sort of vein, contemporary technology users, myself among them, look eagerly at tablet-style devices as heralding the next wave of computing: much like avid futurists might look toward flying cars or virtual reality. They’re portable, they’re powerful, they’re pretty, and ultimately, they’re ineffective for general use, because in the end, while tablet computers are great for absorbing data quickly, they are much less effective when you need to get more data into them. So we’ll have tablet computers of some kind, in the next few years--basically we already do, but it’s not the next big thing in computing, that’s for sure, and yet, I think we latch onto things like tablets because it seems like the next place for technological development. But it isn’t really.

Later today, Steve Jobs is giving some sort of key note at Apple’s developer convention.

Just in time I say. There’s a long story here.

About a week ago (you haven’t heard this, because I’ve been very nose to the grindstone all week), a number of keys started coming off the keyboard. I deployed my usual “swap high traffic keys for low traffic keys” routine, but then the tab key went on the fritz, and a day later several keys (f, r, g, 4) gave up the ghost entirely.

External keyboards work, but I tend to be pretty mobile, and it turns out that I really do take my computer with me just about everywhere. So this keyboard problem was a bigger issue than it might seem.

If you’ve been reading tychoish for more than a few weeks, you’ve probably realized that I’m pretty close to getting a new computer. The old one is 3 years old, and I find myself butting up against its limitations more than I’d really care to. So I think at this point it’s just a matter of time before I do the upgrade. I’m half waiting to see if Apple puts out a new machine at WWDC, but I kind of doubt that they will.

There’s just not a lot of room for change in the laptops. I think there’ll be something exciting: it’s been a while since Apple’s done something unexpected which is atypical, but I suspect it won’t be with the laptops. There are other reasons why I think the laptops will stay as they are: the summer student promotion (which I’m so taking advantage of) and the fact that it’s been 3 month since the last rev, and they typically rev every 6 months, and the fact that there aren’t any new technologies that make any amount of marketing sense to include at this point. But that’s not the point of unexpected, I guess.

In the mean time, I’m back to using a computer that was the computer I took with me to college that my mother has been using for the past couple of years. We finally upgraded it to Tiger and the funny thing is that it’s running great. A bit slower than I’m used to, (I think, however, that’s mostly ram) and it’s not completely comfortable yet, but it’s ok. After a week of fighting with a sick computer it’s nice to have something that works.

And I’ve made another realization. This computer, is one of the 12 inch ibooks. It’s tiny, and probably about as powerful as computers like the Asus EEE PC. And it has about 4 hours of battery life, which is kind of amazing. Seriously, Apple could start selling these exact machines today, and I doubt they could keep them in stock.

Anyway, I should be able to keep a pretty regular posting schedule up but if if I miss, lets blame it on the technology, shall we?

Onward and Upward!

I interrupt your regularly scheduled programing for a couple of announcements. First off, I bought a computer this evening. This is a Good Thing, and I’m going to be getting settled in. There will still be morning blog posts. Don’t fear. Secondly I have a cute/interesting story about science fiction writing.

So I wrote this short story last week that I’m putting the finishing touches on.

It’s cool to work on a fiction piece and then see the end or the possible end in sight, rather than the work of enduring faith that novel or even novella writing takes.

First a bit about the story: it’s rather straightforward. Some characters experience something and are changed by it. It’s futuristic, but the differences are mostly geographical and social (which is really more of my speed.)

The first reviewers response: “I liked how the characters merged into one entity and then split apart, I thought you slipped into first person for a second, but then I realized it was intentional, good going.”

Nope. I really did just slip into first person. The story started out as a first person story, and then I realized that given the character’s state of mind throughout the story, it was absurd to have the character narrate the story in past tense. And present tense is annoying.

And because I’m the writer and I can do these things, I changed it, save the middle of one well placed paragraph. And only in science fiction would that be seen as a literary device. Fear not, I’ve corrected the mistake, and who knows, probably squashed any chance this story had at being worthwhile.

Anyway, I have file transfers to attend to. Be well friends.

A year ago, I read a book on the history of academic women’s studies called: “When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women’s Studies in America,” by Marilyn J. Boxer. While I’m sure some of my classmates would describe the book as staid and boring, I thought it was bearable at the least. I’m sure they’ll all comment if I miss the mark on this one, but I thought that it was pretty complete and accurate.

I got the feeling that despite the fact that history is largely an interpretive endeavor and therefore not apt for judgement of “true” and “false,” but I remember from this book getting the sense that she reported a series of events that, in fact, really did happen, pretty much the way she said it.

Now, to be fair, maybe the reason I felt this way is that she was telling a narrative that I was familiar with, and could then--and particularly now--supplement as needed. But I think there might be something more.

Boxer (and there are other historians who do this; we’ll get there in a second) accomplishes this because, rather than angst and attempt to eliminate her bias’ it’s just out there. These histories are effective because the writer is very through and on top of that reader always knows where the author stands. At the same time

I was talking with my parents about this, and they immediately citied Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution as a similar sort of thing, which--though I am much less familar--I think is a much less insular example of this same kind of sub-genere.

I think it’s a cool kind of writing/book, and I tend to think of my historian characters as fitting into this model (this is how this connects up with the previous post), but I’m interested in hearing what the rest of you with an interest or expertise in history have to say about this.

I opened a popular and literary work that’d I’d call science fiction but critics would call “magical realism,” and before I got done with the prologue, all I could see was the work of an overly earnest writer that was trying very hard to not be seen as too trophy, writing a book that stared herself as the main character and an elusive non-traditional boyfriend.

Yawn.

Now I’ll probably give the book a second chance but it provoked some thought about my own writing, and story telling styles and habits.

First of all, I don’t really put myself into my stories in specific ways. I don’t have legions of characters that are intense, but quirky, young writer/student types: nothing that you could look at and say, “ah, that one’s clearly tycho.” At the same time, there’s a little bit of me in all the character’s I write, but that seems utterly natural.

This culminated in a series of thoughts about the differences between “professional/academic creative writers” and whatever it is that I do. As I think about “what comes next in my life,” and I try to sort out the role that fiction writing plays in that life, I’ve thought about the differences between these two pursuits, and goals. I’m not even sure that I’m coherent about this enough to explain all of the contrasting points in my mind right now, let alone come to some satisfying conclusion.

In a lot of ways, I sort of see my fiction writing as being very similar to my essay writing, except I’m writing a essays on places and times that don’t and can’t exist. Maybe this isn’t a genre thing, though, I don’t know.

I think I’m a bit more keen on this though, I often approach my work/ideas as a historian, and I’ve joked that if there’s one field that I’m really “SFing up,” it’s history and historiography not physics and cosmology.

One of the things that I enjoy reading so much on other people’s blogs are the hilarious (and weird) stories people have about their jobs. Sam Starbuck is particularly good at this. On the other hand, I don’t tend to contribute to this body of literature. So here’s some commentary on the genre

Work is fascinating, and something that we aren’t prone to talk very much about it. In part because it is work, and work, is by definition a drag. In most cases we don’t work because we enjoy it, we work because we have to. Even if our careers are something that is important to our sense of who we are, even if our jobs are fundamentally something that we enjoy, work is alienating, and a drag.

To be fair, a lot of jobs don’t begin as alienating enterprises, but I think in time they become that, becuase there is a fundamental conflict of interest between the worker and the institutions (however small) that employ them. Employers demand/need individuals to contribute intellectual/bodily efforts, and while money helps the compensation, the economic conversion between labor and money is psychically difficult, particularly in light of it’s variability. Ok, enough theory.

And yet, we spend the majority of our lives at work, working. This creates something of a paradoxical situation, but thankfully (in addition being able to eat as a result of work) some people are able to write pretty interesting stories. And their are entire genres of blogs (academic blogs, doctor/nurse blogs, etc) that are dedicated to people’s work lives. Good stuff.

So my work. I’ve mentioned that I’m basically working a 9-5 gig at least through the end of the summer, and I’m looking for something more long term. I have a job interview next week (wish me luck,) for something that would be really great. I don’t want to jinx anything, so I’ll say more when I know it.

As for the mean time, there aren’t a lot of great stories. Most of the really funny things in my day have to do with transcriptions errors from olds transcripts of 20 year old interviews. The number of ways people misheard and miswrote “Kwame Nkrumah” is really amazing. But it doesn’t make for good story telling.

I finished, at last, The Left Hand of Darkness, the canonical novel by Urusla K. LeGuin.

Even though I’m not in school any more and thus don’t have that as an excuse, I’m still a tragically slow reader, this is one thing among many which I hope to get much better at.

Anyway, the book. I loved it. Both because the story was good, and because the gender thing was clever and neat (at least for 300 pages), and probably most importantly because it is such a clever example of ethnography. I like the way that it is able to evoke that genre and style so effectively.

So what’s next on the reading list?

Melissa Scott’s The Jazz.

I’ve often thought about (sometimes even here on tychoish) about cyberpunk, and sort of the next thing in this “intellectual tradition,” and I think about people like Cory Doctorow, or what William Gibson has done in the last ten years, and I’m underwhelmed. The wonder, the adventure (which is often exchanged for ’thril[ler]’), and the way that the genre initially dealt with class are all gone.

And then I read the first 25 pages of The Jazz, and I realized that cyberpunk is in fact, not dead. Not impossible in the post 2001 world.

And I am happy.

So I have a confession to make.

I haven’t really been knitting very much.

The writing, the work, and the weekend of morris dancing has left me with not a lot of time for knitting.

Also, after a very cool spring, summer has invaded my world with a vengeance.

These are all excuses I know.

But you have to admit that it is a lot to cope with in a week.

I’m going to charge the batteries and take some pictures of the Latvian dreaming sweater, and hopefully get back into it. I know I’ve made promises about not knitting more than one project at the same time (particularly to avoid sleeves), but I’ve started to get pretty annoyed at the yarn, and you know how the knitting malaise goes. And it might be nice to knit something plain. How wierd does this sound.

At the same time, writing (not even posting it yet!) has caused me enough guilt to get my knitting out again. So that’s good. I’ll keep you posted.