New news: Some thoughts on Amazon Kindle DX and the death of print publishing

Camerado, this is no book,

Who touches this, touches a man,

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

First MediaShift tells us print is not dead, and a few days later Audioholics tells us it is (or dying pretty rapidly, at least).  Confused? Sceptical? Yeah, me too.

Having been in the publishing industry for a while now, I’d like to chip in my two cents; not as a veteran of the industry, nor as an evangelist of the “print is dead” school (since I’m not certain I quality for either role), but simply as the everyman reader.

What makes this even more interesting is that even as I write, Amazon is currently hosting an event at Pace University in New York City, where it is heavily rumored that they will unveil the Kindle DX, a bigger version of the current Kindle 2 that will deliver newspaper content and textbooks as well. Of course, the Kindle 2 can already handle newspaper content, but the purported 9.7-inch screen of the new Kindle means the device is not designed to be ultra-portable (certainly not when compared to the Kindle 2 and other e-book readers) but more as a replacement for your physical newspaper or textbook.

I’m not trying to sit on the fence when I say I understand where people are coming from when they say things like “Print will never die” or “E-books are the future”; honest, I do, I understand and I agree with both parties to a certain extent. But so far, what we’re seeing on both sides of the fence are people playing the numbers game, pulling up the latest statistics to prove their point (while other equally statistically adept people debunk their point; consider me statistically challenged) or making general statements about how print/digital media is more amenable to the nature of reading and interactivity, whereas most of us would agree that humans have shown that reading and interaction are subject to various individual styles.

Also, I find that the types of content were not considered. Personally, I would like to see newspapers, textbooks, and books containing little or no illustrative material go fully digital. I own a lot of books, and I would certainly love to be able to store and manage them digitally. On the other hand, I don’t see myself considering illustrated content (comics, magazines and books on the visual arts) in the digital medium, at least not with the current technology. So yes, with the current available display and content delivery technology, I would like to go selectively digital, so to speak.

It’s all too easy to get all sentimental about the print media when you consider ideas like those from Whitman at the start of this post. But whether in digital or in print, whenever we read Leaves of Grass, we touch the man.

Image taken from here

Work, life, and All-Star Superman

Just came across this post on Sri’s (my wife) blog; seven days late, shame on me). Lately our conversation topics have centered more and more on work, mainly because work is what’s keeping her in Hong Kong right now in an apartment that’s only slightly bigger than the bathroom in our house, and work is what I’ve been thinking of quitting for the past several months. Don’t get me wrong; I know work sucks for a lot of people; it’s just that recently it sucks just a little bit more than usual for me and Sri. And being apart for close to six months doesn’t help.

 

Let me  jump track to All-Star Superman, which I recently finished reading. Honestly I never got why the series was so acclaimed … until I started on the second-half. Superman dying is not a new idea; the masterstroke here, though, is that the Man of Steel doesn’t go out in a glorified to-the-death battle with Doomsday; he dies gradually, his powers fade, his body quite literally disintegrates. The end of his life now in sight, what does someone like Superman do? The answer is that he does what he must, and what he can, with the time that he has left.

Now I see why so many critics and those who work in the comics industry consider All-Star Superman possibly the best Superman comic. Ever. I don’t know if it’s just a premature wave of mid-life crisis hitting me but lately I’ve feeling like a boxer down on the mat, and I can hear the ref counting; the feeling intensifies at work. So you can bet All-Star Superman struck a major chord in me. When you’ve lost sight of why you do what you do, an utterance like “The measure of man man lies not in what he says but what he does” takes on a whole new meaning; when Superman writes his own obituary even as he struggles to do all that he must before he is gone forever, all the while believing and proving that “There’s always a way …,” I cannot help but be deeply affected. What am I doing with the time that’s given to me in this life? What am I doing with what’s left of it?

By “what we do” I mean the choices that we make, both the mundane and the momentous. Should I exercise today? Should I watch that movie? Should I spend an hour listening to music, or should I play with my two-year-old daughter? Should I accompany my mother to the clinic or attend a crucial meeting at work? Should I eat a hamburger or just have a salad? Should I quit my job? Myriad questions bombard us every day, demanding decisions. And there are no right or wrong answers, only consequences.

Yep, sounds like the “What does it all mean?” stage of life is upon me, and it must seem foolish to think the answer (or at least part of it) lies in a comic book, and a superhero comic at that. With the current economic climate and an apartment on the way (we”ll probably move in next year or so), leaving my job is more critical than usual. But since I’ve already given my superiors a heads-up (I told them two, maybe three months), I guess I’ve already decided. Consequences? We shall see. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on this blog.