So, what does that tell us about Hamlet? To paraphrase the Mad Hatter, how is a migraine like a melancholy prince of Denmark? As already stated, there is that foreboding sense of having been cast into an unjust universe. You mourn alone in gasping sorrow as life continues on apace in what seems a pageant of now-insipid frippery. The face is drawn pale, temples throb with dark passion, and one may even wail and gnash and cry out at the cruel wind and stars. To all outward observers, you have grown withdrawn, sullen, and aggrieved by the slightest provocation. Will no one shutter the lamps of the world, muffle the trumpets and percussion of man and nature, and lead us to a cool dark place where we may plot revenge on the Fates that have betrayed us?

In retrospective sympathy, I recall B saying how he had overcome his own migraine before the show began, the floating lights slowly vanishing. I found it curious how he had the classic symptom of aura, or halo, which I have never encountered. And indeed, how evocative those terms themselves are. Halos are of course associated with angelic embodiment, or general holiness, often taking on a diffused glow as aureola in religious pictography. Aura have been most recently adopted by late 19th century mystic practices such as Theosophy, which associated particular colors with emotional state, but also with paranormal manifestation which are sometimes nothing more than ‘floating lights.’ Curious, then, that all of the characters that actually observe the Old Hamlet on the battlements are established as anxious and troubled in some fashion – the guards Marcellus and Bernardo at the play’s opening, who are jumpy and quick to challenge strangers, as did the exiting Francisco who is “sick at heart.” And Hamlet’s schoolmate Horatio, who has come for reasons never made clear – those he states later don’t make sense given the timeframe – but who seems compelled out of concern with Hamlet’s state as his closest confidante. And Hamlet himself, who in the deepest state of disquiet can not only view but interact fully with the ghost of his late father.

His father speaks of entrapment between Purgatory and Hell, for he roams at night but burns by day to purge away his sins. But he cannot expressly speak of “the secrets of my prison-house” which cannot be communicated to anyone not already suffering alike. This type of solitary prison is likewise inhabited by Hamlet, who later describes all of Denmark and indeed the world as being such – “A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.” Clearly he is the only one present who believes it thus, and says as much – “thinking makes it so/To me it is a prison.” It is a prison of the mind, in which the suffering occurs only in the head of the afflicted. And so confined, Hamlet both announces intent to take on the appearance of madness – “put an antic disposition on” – in pursuit of revenge on his father’s killer, and acts so contrary to the courtly norm elsewise that even when he is speaking truly, he is taken as mad.

This duality of personality, and the underlying question of its ground – namely, is Hamlet truly ‘mad’ or merely acting the part – runs throughout the analytic literature and has filled many a student essay. For my purpose, I am mainly intrigued by the incongruence of Hamlet’s sincere speech with its interpretation by others. The notion of insanity simply being out of step with the dominant social paradigm has come across in myriad sources of late. For example, this is a lament made by another self-identified victim of the system of professional psychiatry, Robert Pirsig’s narrator Phaedrus in both Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its sequel Lila. In response to his theories, the response is progressively hostile – “they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane.” This equating truthtelling with insanity is rife in sympathetic treatments of other countercultural theorists, from Nikola Tesla to Wilhelm Reich, Horton-Who-Heard-A-Who, perhaps even the anarchic McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Popular media has genius – practically the definition of the capacity to see more than others from the same information – overlapped heavily with madness, whether the coldly charismatic Hannibal Lecter, the true-life John Nash of A Beautiful Mind, or the Fringe mind of Walter Bishop. An episode of Numb3rs even comments on research suggesting that the same brain area indicated for exceptional mathematical ability is also correlated with schizophrenia. In The Protest Psychosis, Jonathan Metzl writes of the reclassification of schizophrenia in the psychiatric bible DSM to institutionalize being ‘angry and black’ in response to activism during the civil rights era.  And then there is “Poor Yorick” of Hamlet’s childhood, the court jester who – by tradition – is alone able to speak truth to the divine monarch without fear of retribution. Truth, hidden in the motley dress of calculated madness. (For extensive references to how Hamlet is treated as mad by others when he speaks frankly, see Ed Friedlander’s insightful “Enjoying Hamlet“).

And despite his playacting, Hamlet is truly suffering, and several times wishes that the option of suicide were not precluded by religious decree as a mortal sin. He has seen his father in literal torment after death, watches as Ophelia is buried with “maimed rites” as an assumed suicide (which Friedlander asserts is a misreading of events), and reflects on how even the release of death is not worth the risk of something worse to follow. Yet until he is finally able to act concretely on his plan of revenge, he is tantalized by the prospect of a way out. How many migraine sufferers have, in the grip of templed agony, not wished even idly for something similar? To escape the primacy of pain, I once endeavored to construct a proper orthodoxy of migraine severity so that I could grade each occurrence compared to past incidences. Taking the model of weather classification, particularly that of hurricanes and tornadoes, I came up with 5 tiers:

1. Pre-Migraine. The warning symptoms of tensing temple capillaries, and perhaps the beginnings of a slow throb. The only phase where intervention has been successful for me.
2. Stable Migraine. A low-grade version that has developed past M1, but is not progressing to higher stages. Highly irritating, but still possible to engage in some activities so long as they avoid further sense irritants. This is often the result of not intervening soon enough at M1, but soon enough to keep it from developing further.
3. Full Migraine. If the start conditions were more extreme (no meals instead of late meals, for example), then the more debilitating form develops. At this stage, the main aim is to crawl into a cool dark hole as soon as possible and simply hope that I can avoid it getting to stage 4.
4. Nausea Migraine. After a full migraine onset, not lying down soon enough can bring on nausea and dizziness, generally just compounding the “please let it end” awfulness of the experience. Sometimes the only recourse is to give into the nausea and hope that lets it subside back to stage 3. Or, worst case, it becomes a
5. Cyclic Nausea Migraine. The most destructive, dispiriting, life-negating form. Thus far I have only been inflicted with a class 5 twice, and those represent two of the worst days of my life, particularly as they were both compounded by severe exigent stress from external events.

Last night I would rate a 4.5, making it easily the third worst incident in my life. And yet, due to delayed onset, I still managed to enjoy the entirety of the show before almost immediately succumbing to that hazy removed state of walking dead, only able to count breaths while heading homewards towards the cave and the succor of oblivion.

The rest, one might say, was silence.

1. A new post is scanned, either via its feed or one of the aggregator services like Technorati, looking for certain keywords.
2. A corresponding post is created on the spamblog with a generic blurb like “[author] had an interesting post about [keyword]” and a short 1- or 2-line excerpt centering on the keyword match.
3. A comment is submitted to the originating blog, linking back to the spamblog.
4. The spamblog post is then able to attract traffic either through clickthroughs from the comments thread, or from increased PageRank from Google since their blog gradually increases its network of keyword-linked sites.

The ultimate purpose is still simply to gain visitors which in turn trigger ad revenue through a combination of Google text ads, banner ads, and other pay-to-host content. The spamblog itself is often a default template, e.g. the Kubrick WordPress theme, consisting only of these short linked posts. For blogs that either don’t moderate comments or who don’t scrutinize excerpting sites individually, growth is mostly automatic. The adaptation is that they propagate links without the prior telltale markers of comment spam like overt sales messages included in the actual comment text.

So far I’ve seen these keyword comments triggered by an unusual set of terms: ‘elevator operator,’ ‘turquoise jewelry,’ a ’sequel to 5 People You Meet in Heaven,’ ‘Apple,’ ‘zebrafish,’ and ‘plumbing license.’ As an exercise for the reader, I leave it to you to guess which original posts generated each of those matches (hint: keywords don’t have to be sequential). I’m also curious whether having listed those now all together, I will get a repeat entry of all prior spam comment attempts.

This brings to mind what I am sure has already been codified into the equivalent of Sturgeon’s Law, which would go something like: “Any sufficiently popular mainstream communications system will generate spam” or perhaps the more prescriptive, “A communication system can be considered mainstream once it attracts spam.” Spam is generally considered to have originated with electronic systems like e-mail and Usenet forums, but extending the definition backwards, one could potentially designate parallels like telemarketing and robocalls for telephones and junk mail for postal service as examples. Did telegraph operators ever suffer from unsolicited commercial Morse Code transmissions? Certainly spam has gained tremendous genetic diversity in jumping to every emerging communication form—chat spam (first IRC then IM), forum spam (first newsgroups then web), mobile phone spam via SMS, online games, search engines (aka spamdexing), blog spam, and even video-sharing sites like YouTube. Twitter? Check.

Part of the original blame can be placed on the idealism of academic groups like the IETF who established standards for communication protocols like SMTP and NNTP without incorporating more robust authentication and authorization to deter spoofing and other common tactics. Except, of course, that those standards were created long before the very notion of a commercial Internet had been considered, and the online community was small enough to police itself by etiquette alone. Certainly we could assert that newer protocols should learn the lessons of the past and instill greater protection against potential abuses, right? Except, instead, the rapid evolution of spam in response to antispam efforts has created ’superbugs’ and an extensive evolutionary toolbox of techniques that can thwart most any systemic precaution. Just like our immune system and pharmacology have developed to deal with ever more sophisticated organic threats, inspiring ever stronger virii and bacteria, so the race continues between platform developers and those who would distribute spam over them. It is effectively now almost impossible to create a communications system that is actually usable, capable of reaching mainstream acceptance, and totally immune to spam-like behavior. Instead, like the common cold, we now aim instead to reach a détente where we can take steps to prevent infection and minimize symptoms, but no longer envision a ‘cure for spam.’

His response is noteworthy for encapsulating many of the issues facing creators who wish (or face pressure) to distribute their works online, especially unfettered by Digital Rights Management (DRM) and preferably free. In the giveaway economy, as with the dotcom bubble before it, how exactly does that lead to sustainable income? Not all doom and gloom, Poole notes the promotional upsides in terms of wider distribution and thus ’seeding the market’ for possible hard-copy sales and future endeavors. However, the Paypal tip jar approach as attempted by many donation-supported software projects, Stephen King’s abortive The Plant, and Radiohead’s experiment with In Rainbows bears out the online form of tragedy of the commons where free access to a resource cannibalizes paid support for it. Without adequate volunteered funds as recompense, Poole summarizes the stark options remaining:

“If the breathless advocates of “the free distribution of ideas” are serious, they need either a) to come up with a realistic proposal as to how I am to keep feeding myself while giving the fruits of my labours away for free; or b) come out and say honestly that they don’t think any such thing as a “professional writer” ought to exist, and that I should just get a job like anyone else.”

He goes on to describe the common rejoinder (termed the “Slashdot argument”) that free content can be subsidized by correlative sales, like live shows, T-shirts, and service contracts. While his reaction to this position is somewhat kneejerk (essentially “you try working for free!”) it does underscore the difficult proposition facing anyone who sees the future purely as online free distribution: just how do you offset the production of an album, a book, a videogame if the audience demands that the primary work be free while you try to make up the difference in low attach-rate items like T-shirts and strategy guides? He also outlines the difficulty facing anyone trying to follow in the footsteps of the Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails offerings, namely that both earned their fanbase “through the nasty old music-industry business model” while the possibility of an unknown band reaping the same rewards still begs the question on opt-in payment. Plus, how many other bands will garner the same level of press coverage that in turn drives the traffic once the novelty wears off?

Fortunately for Poole, the book is not yet as mercurial as the album which has been transformed almost completely into pure digitality. Unlike the digital song, the digital book still trails its earthbound progenitor due to the benefits of a book’s physicality – here Poole echoes my own suspicions that the Kindle, despite its early sales, still has a ways to go to supplant the paper tome. The parallel in other fields include the music industry’s push towards DualDisc and CD/DVD sets, which marries a standard music disc with a weight of additional content such as videos, documentaries, and surround sound mixes which effectively slow their pirating due to sheer volume of data; and per Reason’s report on ‘pirate capitalism,’ the fashion industry’s innate “induced obsolescence” enabling it to stay ahead of style knockoffs (a logo can be trademarked, but design elements less so) simply by declaring that last season’s fashions are no longer fashionable.

The charge of planned obsolescence has long been leveled at manufacturers, but it probably plays a much greater role today where the rapid evolution of products like the PC and iPod condition us to view even expensive products as having a short lifecycle. Appliance repair has likewise become less common compared to outright replacement as product complexity has increased (compare with the travails of the independent mechanic dealing with cars tuned by custom microprocessors) and new features accumulate so that the cost/benefit considerations of fixing your old TV instead of picking up a new model sway you towards the latter. As lampooned in Palahniuk’s Fight Club (fittingly itself a rejection of commercial consumerism) where a product-recall specialist outlines the cynical process of assessing automobile defects, companies make calculations about how much durability to build into a product—raising its quality comes at the cost of potential repeat sales. Media obsolescence, meanwhile, appears in the form of format transitions – tape to CD, VHS to DVD, and most recently DVD to Blu-Ray (RIP, HD-DVD) – and more pernicious forms of DRM that lock content to specific devices (e.g. Kindle) and the lamentable return of disposable DVDs which one hopes goes the way of the original DIVX.

Still, the ebook eventually eclipsing physical books is not inconceivable, so Poole outlines a few possibilities of how writers will survive in the post-paper world – an iTunes Store for books, perhaps, or less favorably, a return to patronage. Although he takes a dim view of the latter, prescribed as a throwback to writing being subsidized only by the sufferance of a rich benefactor or as a sideline avocation, alternatives have already begun to appear in the more rapidly gestating post-label musical sphere with examples like CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stake Holders) which offers sponsorships for artists like Kristin Hersh, and fan-supported efforts like Subconscious Studios’ “From the Vault” series. This idea is also explored in Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” (with The Register offering counterpoint) and in an interview with Gin Blossoms’ Robin Wilson:

“The only places it seems anymore that you really need to sell CDs are: at your shows and through your website. In the past, it always took so much effort and [money] to get a band into record stores across the country. That was one of the main things you needed a record company for—so that you could be in every Tower Records. But, obviously, Tower Records is gone.”

Naturally the Gin Blossoms—like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and R.E.M.—benefitted from the label system in order to amass their 30,000 MySpace friends which gives them the potential for greater autonomy. But building a sustainable base directly as a band through online distribution is at least a possibility, whereas the path for writers is not yet clear—they lack similar marketplaces, and the ubiquity of free text on the web devalues the very notion of paying for prose.

(For more perspectives on the free future, see also WIRED’s cover story on “Why $0.00 is the Future of Business” which argues that the trend towards free has as much to do with falling costs of production as aforementioned examples of cross-subsidies and the longstanding tradition of the ‘loss leader.’)

Rowling is also quoted as saying that success by RDR in their position would create a chilling effect online, whereby “authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities.” This seems a bit of a stretch, since what remains essentially at issue is whether someone is able to profit from a concordance of a copyrighted fictional realm – whether that activity is itself a legitimate creative activity – and less whether, say, slash fan fiction should be driven underground (because it will never die!). Coverage at other sources like Ars Technica (whose article’s title – “Fairuse obliteratus” – pretty much sums up their position) have pointed out that equivalent works have been published about comparable realms like Middle Earth without comparable kerfuffle, so long as they are adequately identified as by a third-party (hence the common “Official”/”Unofficial” delineation in the guidebook aisle). The matter of law is still whether, under the four-fold test, the proposed HP Lexicon publication shows sufficient scholarly or transformative properties as to deserve protection from infringement.

The case also reminds us of the ongoing conflict over the purposes of copyright protection, and whether copyright owners – which are today often not the same as the creators – have nigh-unlimited reach and control over their works. With the public domain threshold effectively frozen at 1923 due to recurring term extensions such as the Sonny Bono Act, and ‘fair use’ provisions under constant attack by the efforts of the RIAA and related lobbying efforts to restrict all media access under narrower terms, our culture is being kept locked away in corporate vaults so that we are forced to rent access to it ad infinitum. Jack Valenti infamously remarked that if keeping copyright intact forever would violate the Constitution, we should consider “forever minus one day.” Whether even the current 70 years extension after the death of the artist truly serves the stated goal of promoting the Constitution’s stated intent to promote “progress of science and useful arts” is a question well worth examining in the public square.

Incidentally, it was reported that “Rowling’s lawyers did not want Vander Ark in the courtroom while Rowling testifies.” One wonders why she would feel this way, and quite honestly, what difference it makes whether the lawyers want that or not. Coverage of today’s appearance gives at least one hint – whereas before the suit (when the Lexicon only operated as a site) Rowling lauded Vander Ark’s efforts and reported using it as a reference site herself to check details, in testimony today she described the material as ’sloppy’ and ’shoddy’ and cited errors in translation and interpretation. She further described the toll the lawsuit had taken upon her creative endeavors, jeopardizing her interest in doing an official encyclopedic work with proceeds to go to charity. As to the meat of the matter, she argues that in contrast with other published works on the Potterverse, the Lexicon provides too little analysis and commentary and essentially only catalogues the names of people, places, spells and creatures (in essence, an encyclopedia). In a nice turn of phrase, she declares, “It takes far too much and it offers precious little in return.” And on that assessment the judge’s decision will hang.

Curiously, Harry Potter also makes an unusual appearance in an unrelated property rights case between Universal and a reseller of promotional recordings that tackles the doctrine of “first sale” vs licensed property – to wit, who owns the promotional discs. Harry’s discussion in Deathly Hallows with Bill Weasley about how goblins view rights of goblin-made objects leads off the EFF’s amicus brief. I wonder if Harry Potter quotations have already supplanted Alice in Wonderland for academic pop references? (Try finding a modern paper on philosophy of language without an Alice quotation.)

Next, while J.K. Rowling herself states “we all know I’ve made enough money,” it appears that the largesse is at least partially shared by Daniel Radcliffe, who is reported to have earned $26 million last year. The blurb mentions that he earned $16 million for Order of the Phoenix, but not whether that contributed to the year’s total. With Deathly Hallows now officially split into two films (oh why couldn’t they have saved Goblet of Fire?), he stands to earn quite a bit more by the time the series finishes up.

Finally, on a more rah-rah note, Amazon is holding a contest to let you spend a weekend with their copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard. The original tome was instrumental in Deathly Hallows, and as a charity bit, Rowling hand-wrote and illustrated 7 copies for auction. The contest winner takes a trip to London (the one in England is specified) where Amazon will let you, under guard, interact with the copy they won at auction. It is not clear whether gloves are provided, or whether the cost for same would be taken out of your expense allowance should you not bring a proper pair. The contest itself is 100 words or less on any of three topics:

1. What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
2. What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
3. What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

If this were a thriving community of avid readers, I might suggest something like “what other questions do you think they should ask?” Lacking that, I will point out that submissions are in two age groups (13-17, 18+), must be submitted by April 22nd, and after being whittled down by Amazon to 20 semi-finalists, two finalists and the ultimate winner will be selected by the public (so, just like American Idol, we can trust that the truly best will make it to the final round, where they will lose out to their lesser counterparts.) Reading the FAQ, it’s not made especially clear, but it does sound like only one grand prize is shared between both age categories. In another spot of confusion, a separate link is offered to “submit your own knock-knock joke, pun, tongue twister, haiku or other whimsical witticism based on Harry Potter or the Tales of Beedle the Bard” but you have to drill down into the product forum to join in. Be warned: low standards are advised.

• Swapping your stylesheet (past offender: Slashdot)
• “[Small company] got bought by [big company]!” (past offender: small companies)
• “We’re reversing our position on a major issue!” (past offender: any polemical software developer)
• “Exciting new product released!” and its common variant “Impossible new product released!” (past offender: too many to list)

Lukewarm examples have populated the Mac news microverse for perhaps a decade, and have long since worn out their tenuous grip on amusement – “Microsoft buys Apple!” “Apple releases the new iHovercar!” “Apple announces a mobile phone!”. Others have coined their own pejorative term for the hoaxing, including “Internet Jackass Day,” “Christmas for Idiots,” and “Tell an Unfunny Lie Day.”

The parallel in pre-Internet days is represented well in CNN’s atrocious list of Top 10 April Fools’ work pranks which range from cheap gag to outright mean-spirited harassment (advertising a co-worker’s home for sale?). The fake product release has become so widespread that it is now considered poor form to announce a real product on April 1st to avoid being mistaken for a hoax (e.g. Gmail, merger of Squaresoft and Enix).

The underwhelming repetition of these styled hoaxes is counterbalanced by some genuinely clever efforts, typically marked by the evident effort put into them. Blizzard, Google, HowStuffWorks and ThinkGeek are regular contributors with elaborate features that appeal to a geekier audience. In typical fashion, the Web also serves as an exhaustive reference both to itself, with numerous sites offering indexes of other sites participating in the practice, and the trend at play such as HowStuffWorks tracing the history of All Fools Day. You can also still visit some of the better web jokes from previous years, like Google’s PigeonRank, NanoColo (colocate your Linux server on an iPod Nano), and SQL on Rails.

Today’s Notable Efforts:

• Blizzard announces new Bard epic class – the interface should be familiar to Guitar Hero fan. My favorite of theirs today is actually The Molten Core console port, but it’s even more of an in-joke.
• Gmail’s Custom Time lets you send critical messages back in time. Note both their workaround for the Grandfather Paradox and the testimonial by a professor of epistemology.
• Google’s Project Virgle (in concert with Virgin Galactic) takes aim at terraforming Mars. While tongue-in-cheek, the plan is surprisingly well-developed.
• Propellerheads announces Reason Accordions. I want more accordion techno and accordiotronica!
• Tidbits reveals New Title Suggestions for Take Control series. While some are a mite pedestrian, I liked the Taking Control/Letting Go combo, Ordering a Drink at Starbucks®, and Take Control of Chaos:
  

  Learn to catch butterflies in Asia before they become tornados in the Americas. Build your own tipping points with simple tools and household materials. If you and your initial conditions have ever been codependent, if you have ever fallen under the spell of a strange attractor, or if you have ever wanted to learn how to bake fractal mandelbrot (excellent with coffee!), this non-linear dynamic book will shift your paradigms and renormalize your life.

• Tidbits covers the Federal court ruling on ‘email bankruptcy’

Other References:

• Museum of Hoaxes Top 100 April Fools’ Day Hoaxes
• April Fools’ Day on the Web
• Wikipedia for April 1, 2008 (entries for most of the last decade also available)

My close friend Atuarre had to make an abrupt move from St. Louis across the country in order to care for his family in California. Flying in on Monday, he had to make all arrangements, pack, and leave by Thursday in order to make it back before the following Monday. I went along to help out and share the driving. Google Maps provided us with 3 routes, and we chose the most southerly, given that a massive ice storm had just blanketed Oklahoma and other parts of the Midwest. We also chose to avoid Las Vegas and the narrow mountain pass from Reno, given that we would be driving a truck pulling a car trailer. This route required over 2,000 miles of driving.

Rather than any kind of travelogue, which would be largely hampered by the conditions in which we drove (dark, fog, sleep deprivation) and the time pressure, I thought I would instead compile a few things we learned along the way.

Vital Stats

Total Mileage: 2,172
Tanks of Gas: maybe 7 or 8, over 11 gas stops, including top-offs at the beginning and end of the trip. We generally filled up at 1/4 tank.
Gallons of Gas: 175-200, depending on hazy recollection of average cost/gallon

Total Time: 57 hours
Driving Time: 44 hours
- Driving Time, by shift: 20/9/6/8/1 hours
- Driving Time, by person: 27/17 hours
- Driving Time, through ice fog with visibility under 100 meters: 6 hours
Average Speed: 49mph

Overnight Stays: 1 (although technically more like an ‘overlight’ stay, since it was just past dawn when we checked in and getting dark when we checked out)
Sit-down Meals: 4 (2 lunch, 1 dinner, 1 breakfast)

Number of States on Route: 6
Date of Road Atlas Used: 1995
Number of Roads That Didn’t Exist Back in 1995: 1 (a toll road extension that Google had us use)
Number of Towns in the Song “Route 66” Traversed: 8 (we turned off before San Bernadino and LA, and didn’t start from Chicago. No idea if Oklahoma City ‘looks oh so pretty’, as it was dark and covered with persistent ice fog.)
Coldest Stop: Flagstaff, Arizona

Number of Trucks Provided by U-Haul Before One Worked: 3
Number of Toll Route Stops: 4 (and they charge per axle, so the trailer cost double)
Number of Other Vehicles Passed: 2 or 3 (I had one, Atuarre may have managed 2)
Number of iPods Deployed: 3
Number of George Carlin Concerts Played: 12
Number of Fruit Confiscated: 7 (5 clementine oranges, 2 apples)

Lessons Learned

• For long driving sessions, comfort can be the enemy. A warm cab, soothing music, full stomach, and cruise control is a recipe for ending up in a ditch. Setting the thermostat slightly too low, playing Juno Reactor, and rationing the Pop Tarts helped keep the cocoon effect at bay. Fortunately, the truck came pre-equipped with a safety feature of No Cruise Control, which kept away that temptation.
• Driving a filled moving truck dragging a trailer with car requires almost constant correction. Every micro shift in steering wheel position would trigger a fishtail reaction from the trailer, requiring a further alteration. You keep both hands on the wheel, one mainly acting as a counterbalance to keep the other from making too large of a movement. With the trailer being almost as wide as the driving lane, you also had to keep checking its alignment to make sure it wasn’t drifting over either line. I managed by fixing a reference point on where the dashed line of the road came into the corner of the windshield (slightly below the bottom-right curvature in this case) when the trailer was in bounds, and correcting to that instead of constantly checking the mirrors. Checking the mirrors often allowed the truck to drift out of the lane as a result, in a sort of Heisenberg’s corollary. On top of that, the engine needed steady accelerator pressure to maintain a speed, and any incline required use of the overdrive just to keep from losing too much speed. However, you wanted to be cautious in engaging the overdrive in order to maintain some Downhill was naturally the reverse, with the added weight of the car trailer pushing the truck past its safe speed without judicious braking. Braking was roughly akin to what you practice in Gran Turismo – short, strong pulses on straightaways to avoid overheating and keeping the control surfaces free for turning. One consolation of all this is that because the minigame of keeping the truck moving in a line at a constant speed took so much attention, the sheer focus of will helped stave off highway hypnosis.

• No matter where you put your arm/leg/foot/hand, it will go numb or hurt eventually. I used my knit hat as a cushion on the inside door handle for my elbow. As may be common lore among the pre-Cruise Control set, at some point you simply lose all feeling in your right foot and will try driving with your left crossed over for awhile.

• Find anything to help pass the time. Activities that mark time can make it pass demonstrably slower, which is one downside of music: at 3 to 5 minutes per average song, it takes 15 songs to make it through a single hour. A last-minute inspiration had me filling one iPod with audiobooks, comedy routines, spoken word podcasts and lectures to fill in when regular shuffle play grew tiresome. In fact, we credit George Carlin’s early 70s standup with getting us through the veil of Oklahoma’s freezing night to stay ahead of the looming winter storm system, with additional kudos to Eddie Izzard, Jon Stewart, and Kevin Smith. Listening to speech and reacting (laughter, annoyance, interest) involves the brain more than music typically does, which can fall to the background. One risky remedy I employed to keep music viable was to guess at the identify of each track, then ruminate on its origin/influence, etc. – your travel partner needs to have an open mind to not throttle you for doing this, particularly when operating on little rest.

• Per above, a travel partner is a wise investment. Having someone else act as navigator, find something in the cab in the dark, manage the iPods, check GPS, watch for signs, dole out food/drinks, make conversation, and generally remind you that you’re not doing this alone while you focus on driving are all great assets. The first 20 hours of this trip seemed shorter than the 10 hours I’ve driven alone.

• Nutrition is important. Quick energy fixes like sugar come with the cost of a crash, and won’t sustain for very long. Fruits, granola bars, Gatorade, and Pop Tarts helped span the long stretches between meals without triggering a high/crash or instilling a food coma. When you stop to eat, your meal selection can be graded by its energy content over taste preference, although fortunately we were going to sleep anyway after those massive French toast. Incidentally, the touted “5 Hour Energy” drinks do work, to an extent. Essentially a massive infusion of B-complex vitamins (something like 2000+% RDA amounts) and amino acids, they do have an effect in a few minutes and provide a longer period of effective energy than sugar without the accompanying crash. However, the boost still wears off relatively soon (5 hours may be under optimal conditions), and may be better suited for beginning a day than trying to extend a long, tiring one. Also, they taste terrible (per Atuarre), so be sure you have a flavored chaser.

• Never drive through a desert, particularly in a truck during the day. The Mojave for example is a long series of slow climbs and slopes that strain the engine, and the background of unceasing nothingness burning with sunlight is a trial even on a mind not already burdened by marathon driving.

• Keeping track of time zones as you travel can be tricky. The truck clock was set to Eastern time, we left from Central, we stayed in Mountain, and arrived in Pacific. I kept track of elapsed/pending travel time based on the truck clock, but used my home time as canonical “San Dimas” time. This was most confusing when planning to stop somewhere in Pacific based on what the truck said was morning but was locally pre-dawn.

• Motel towns seem to have a distinct pecking order, ranging from right off the highway (budget chains like Motel 6), then slightly upmarket (Best Western). Often after a gap of empty land you reach a second tier of non-chain motels, usually a cluster of a Budget-or-similar-descriptor Inn, a (insert name of whistlestop town) Inn, and a theme inn with a non-sequitur and gaudy neon sign (e.g. in the middle of the desert you may find a Mermaid Inn). These can slightly creep you out if you reach them very early in the morning when no one is around, thanks David Fincher/David Lynch/Coen Brothers!

• Motels operate on an overnight schedule, and many have no night clerk in the late night/early morning to rent rooms. If you do find someone, particularly a night-shift wage slave at a discount chain, you will still not be able to get a room from morning to afternoon without being charged for two days because it crosses the noon checkout meridian. We found it beneficial to go up to the midmarket and find a manager behind the desk.

• California border patrol will take your fruit. They won’t warn you this is coming so you can finish your delectable clementines, nor will they care that hey, they’re California clementines, they came from here! As the little punched inspection notice tells you, agriculture is their #1 export and they won’t risk a fruit fly infestation just so you can keep 2 apples to stave off scurvy for the rest of your trip. Nor do they provide you any compensation, say vouchers for replacement fruit from a licensed California fruit stand. You give them your fruit if you want to continue. They have guns.

• Once you’ve reached the destination after a mind-numbing excursion, perhaps just the thing you need is some fresh air and exercise: say, by unloading the truck. After all, once the adrenaline finally wears off, the last thing you will want to do is drag your sore muscles out the next morning and face another Task. If you do it right away, it’s still part of the First Task and sometimes that seems easier to get out of the way.

• Gas stations are a fascinating microcosm of entrepreneurship and cost efficiency. Our U-Haul drop-off site was an unlabeled parking lot next to a gas station, identified by U-Haul by its legal name even though it carried only the sign for its franchise. Apart from the side business as truck return depot and their mainline in fuel distribution, the station also provided financial services via both an ATM, a wire transfer by phone for international transactions, and lottery tickets for those bad at probability. They sold hot food via mini-hot dog roller grills and a microwave, hot and cold drinks, and a variety of discount wines. They carried a subset of both grocery store and convenience store items – staples like milk, cereal, Windex and pornography – plus oddities like plastic-wrapped firewood, a full rack of bedroom slippers, and a counter display of lighters shaped like miniature revolvers. I imagine that the foot-by-foot determination of what products were sold and how they were arranged is the result of massive amounts of statistical data and trial studies over endless evolutionary cycles. And so at some point, optimizing algorithms suggested the sale of unlikely-aphrodisiac packets named Horny Goat Weed be sold next to powered flyswatters and vaguely-sexy air fresheners to the side of the fuzzy bedroom slippers, but behind the candy packed inside a battery-powered spinning kaleidoscope.

• Aforementioned gas stations are also, under analysis, marginally-advantageous strongholds in the event of zombie attack. They have a variety of food and general supplies, a ready selection of Molotov cocktails complete with revolver-lighter ignition, potable water and sanitation facilities, and maps to plan your next sortie. The large selection of random stuff plus flammable fuel supplies also provides for a MacGyver-esque self-destruct mechanism (cheap Hannah Montana alarm clock + talking flyswatter + spring from Harley Davidson sunvisor extender = ?) as you head out for one of the mainstays like a shopping mall or gun store, c. Dawn of the Dead.

• Don’t do this again.

(Curiously, the attribution of that quotation is in dispute, with Franklin possibly only involved in publishing the book that bore it. Another diplomat named Richard Jackson is now the presumptive author. However, Franklin’s 1738 Poor Richard’s Almanack has another maxim with similarly sage advice – “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.”)

Progressively, as Wallace continues in more detail, the suggestion becomes less of a Swiftian Modest Proposal and something more ominous than a partisan snipe. While the proposed trade may be in itself monstrous to consider, the current conflict being so far removed from our borders makes it difficult to even consider what level of sacrifice is acceptable to maintain our full identity as a nation. Without a draft to more equally distribute the communities affected by active military service, or tax hikes or war bonds to spread the cost (not to mention the seeming paradox of maintaining a tax cut while continually asking for emergency war deficit spending), the American public is able to contribute in large part only by passively asserting we ’support our troops’ and gradually ceding our civil liberties and governmental checks and balances. The collective steps that Wallace mentions plus others, taken together, raise frightening prospects:

• “Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib” – apart from their probable propaganda effect among terrorist factions, both have demonstrably undermined the US commitment to the Geneva Conventions, and presented the US as a supporter of torture.
• Military Commissions Act – actively suspends some of the Geneva Conventions and the basic legal principle of habeas corpus for detainees, and creates the quasi-legal status of “unlawful enemy combatant”
• “Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance” – whereas detentions, extraordinary rendition, etc. have largely affected non-US citizens, the expanded police powers under the Patriot Act(s) and the implementation of widespread electronic surveillance on US soil without Congressional or Judicial oversight all speak to an unchecked Executive enforcement arm.
• Executive Order 13233 – restricts access to past Presidential records. Along with the explosion of document classification under the current administration, repeated imposition of executive privilege, resistance to Freedom of Information Act requests, shifting of White House email to GOP servers to avoid retention rules, and even the latest tale of Karl Rove’s investigator having drives ‘disinfected’ of malware by 7-pass wipes all serve to restrict oversight of Executive functions even by historians.
• NSPD 51, or “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive” – specifies how in an emergency situation, the President will take precedence over the other branches in an ‘Enduring Constitutional Government’; this however puts it in conflict with the National Emergencies Act, a law which preserves Congressional oversight of the President during an emergency. The directive also designates several classified “Continuity Annexes” which have yet to been made accessible to members of the Homeland Security Committee.
• Posse Comitatus Act – Originally set limits on the use of US military forces in the role of a domestic police force. Was granted an exception when directed by the President or act of Congress under the Insurrection Act, has now been further suspended by the John Warner Defense Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 2007 which allows the military to enforce order in any emergency declared by the President. An eerily prescient fictionalization of this was 1998’s The Siege, where “the secret US abduction of a suspected terrorist leads to a wave of terrorist attacks in New York that lead to the declaration of martial law.” Rendition, sanctioned torture, intervention in Iraq politics, suicide bombings by Islamic extremists, and the revocation of Posse Comitatus by the President are all depicted in New York at a time when the worst domestic terrorist incident was the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
• Office of Legal Counsel – the legal office within the Department of Justice which provides guidance on what the President can do. The current administration has used the Office to push through a number of the justifications for Executive expansion, including the memos authorizing torture, detention, and surveillance. A former head of the agency, Jack Goldsmith, resigned and has written a book (The Terror Presidency) and given a Fresh Air interview about the experience. A similar interview was with reporter Charlie Savage whose book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy covers the frequent use of ’signing statements’ to allow the President to bypass limitations of signed laws.

While individually these can be attributed to committed attempts to combat the unconventional, ‘asymmetric’ threat of terrorism – or in the case of NSPD51, simple emergency preparedness – the aggregate effect (read: system impact) is a vastly empowered Executive branch with at least some legal cover to seize governmental control in the event of a widely-worded emergency. Those conspiracy-minded of the Left would be quick to make those associations, of course, but a surprising warning comes from former Assistant Treasury Secretary (aka “Father of Reaganomics”) under Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, who has baldly called for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney or else “a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.” Taken in concert with President Bush’s latest stay-on-message reaction to the recent intelligence report on Iran’s absent nuclear program (and leaving aside perhaps Roberts’ assertion that any movement on Iran is ultimately about securing Palestine for Israel), where he responded with trademark rhetoric by repeated use of the words ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ in reference to Iran gaining nuclear weapons even given the officially-less-likely scenario presented by US intelligence, the message remains solely that we must treat Iran as an enemy, no matter the evidence for or against their being a valid threat.

While Roberts’ scenario of Tom Clancy-esque ‘false flag‘ attacks deserves the same skepticism as similar claims surrounding 9/11, it need not even require an actual attack to set the stage for a coup d’etat as recently demonstrated in Pakistan. Anyone who has watched the events unfold in that country – a President at risk of losing office uses his role as Commander-in-Chief to declare a general emergency and uses sweeping police powers to imprison or muzzle political rivals and restrict the media, all while speaking of unsubstantiated ‘extremist’ threats – may wonder whether that was something that could only happen abroad, or was it just a dry run for next year? At the risk of evoking Von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods breathless gullibility, are there still concerted efforts to effect a “Pax Americana” according to the Project for the New American Century? To echo the adage that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” it bears noting that “just because it sounds like a conspiracy doesn’t mean it can’t actually happen.”

Elsewhere in his post, Rands also mentions the role of the High in motivating cyclical behavior, where problem-solving or task completion creates a positive feedback loop. In one sense this is just Skinnerism redux, since carrot/stick reinforcement goes back well past Pavlov. When enmeshed in the larger context of environments like ‘video game’ or ‘programming project,’ it becomes an example of a teleological mechanism with corrective feedback, more commonly known as cybernetics. ‘Teleological’ because the activity has purposeful, goal-seeking behaviors, with ‘corrective feedback’ provided via the High of problems solved set against the frustration of the unsolved. The particulars of the ur-Nerd that Rands describes also create a susceptibility to systemic risk-avoidance behaviors, where the difficulty in identifying or achieving the High acting as a deterrent to taking on certain new ventures – this can be seen early on in some gifted children who quickly become frustrated if they cannot easily master a new activity, self-limiting to their natural aptitude.

Elements of system study have appeared in multiple disciplines over the last century, particularly with the development of electronics and then computing as ways to create autonomous models. From circuit theory to control systems in engineering, to symbolic logic and chaos theory in mathematics, game theory in economics, multiple aspects of psychology like cognitive science, neuropsychology, and their aggregate in sociology, the pattern has recurred when efforts were made to model certain behaviors and the underlying principles were codified into systems. Collectively, the common ground is known as systems theory and its application as systems science, although in many cases any research is tied back to parent disciplines such as political science, neuroscience, and economics. However, the rise of interdisciplinary study as a reaction to overspecialization (itself another system in motion) has raised the profile of systems theory, particularly that of complex systems as studied at places like the Santa Fe Institute.

Now I realize while I may find the theory of systems itself fascinating, the relevance of it for most anyone else is likely only in its application. Having done no formal study of systemics yet, my efforts may not hold up to academic scrutiny, but I think even a novice gloss can have some value. In upcoming posts, I plan to detail a few examples of both positive and negative system effects, where the outcome follows from implicit processes of involved – and sometimes competing – systems. In the negative cases, this is frequently despite the intentions or efforts of the people laboring within the framework, since they are defeated by the controls and bindings of the system. The ultimate goal is literally to see the forest for the trees, remaking self-defeating systems and leveraging the natural gains of feedback to create benevolent loops. From climate change to government, education to business, relationships to videogames, all can be better managed with a clearer understanding of the systems at work.

Pro:

- Andy Ihnatko lauds the Kindle in the Chicago Sun-Times for its role as a new information device, the always-connected browser of the world akin to a first-generation Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He does compare it unfavorably with reading text on the higher-resolution and backlit iPhone screen, and mentions the annoying flash between pages, but otherwise seems well-impressed.

- OnMoneyMaking put together a “10 Lessons in Innovation” feature rather than a straight review, although it mostly skews to the positive. (DaringFireball takes particular exception to #6, “You can be pretty later” and responds by quoting Steve Jobs:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

- Tim O’Reilly backs Steven Levy’s uptake from the previously mentioned Newsweek interview (which I saw decried in one instance as being ‘hagiographic‘), while noting that Amazon doesn’t need the Kindle to succeed on its own so long as it advances the industry in the e-book direction while keeping them as a primary gatekeeper – sort of the reverse of the relationship the iTunes Store has with Apple in extending the market for the iPod.

Con:

- DaringFireball questions the merit of buying its DRM content – “You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader — and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion.”

- The Register calls it a folly at first blush, and later examines the implications of Whispernet for delivery (revisions, collaboration, etc.) which are still raising the hackles of any established publisher (check out the prophetic quotation from Ben Bova).

- Thibault Sally (Thsy) takes on the device’s awkward ergonomics and questions its bookishness.

- Craig Hunter also remarks on the ergonomics, particularly the physical keyboard, and wonders why Amazon did not learn from the design lessons of the iPhone.

- Chip Kidd, rock star of book design, comments on the effect the Kindle will have on his trade. In short: “None.”

- Jon Stokes in Ars Technica on books versus documents, and how the ‘e-book’ is an awkward compromise, again trading on the design benefits of the book (facing pages, direct interaction) over a reader device.

The larger question that will have to be answered in time is clearly not whether the Kindle and its equivalent will replace the book, any more than with past media generations (e.g. television did not eliminate radio). Rather, will it develop enough of a niche of its own to sustain itself, accomplishing tasks that the book cannot (self-updating periodicals, interactive crosswords, cross-referencing journals) and maybe supplant some of the role the book currently plays.

First, a brief overview. The Kindle is an electronic book (e-book) reader just announced by Amazon. It uses the same E-Ink® technology as in the iRex iLiad and Sony Reader, which allows for very high contrast, low glare, low power display of text and greyscale illustrations. The screen is formed from magnetically charged ‘pixel’ balls that can be flipped between black and white when a page is displayed, at which point no further charge is needed to maintain the image – which means that power is needed only to change a page, while the proportionately dominant time spent actually reading takes none. The high contrast and high resolution image produced closely mimics the output of ink printing typeset on paper. No backlight is necessary to view the image as compared to a computer screen, which reduces eyestrain and makes the page visible in bright sunlight. Pages are turned via side-mounted buttons, plus the Kindle includes a full (slightly split) QWERTY keyboard for typing in annotations, search terms, etc.

The Kindle differs from previous e-book readers such as the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook, iRex iLiad, and Sony Reader notably in its advantageous position with the content ecosystem. The Rocket, one of the earliest attempts at a reader, began with its own proprietary document format sold through exclusive partners; both the reader and RocketEdition format have since been discontinued. Sony began with the same approach, with its own brand of DRM via files in BBeB format and sold through a dedicated Sony Connect online store, but has since opened up the device to also read PDFs and other unprotected formats. The iLiad has been open from the start, supporting “anything you can print from your PC,” and like the Kindle also includes a wireless link (albeit Wi-Fi) to access new material. The Kindle is more closed, in that it primarily draws from content sold through the companion Kindle Store run by Amazon, but with the obvious advantage over a startup like Nuvomedia or a tech-first company like Sony that Amazon already has the publishing relationships to back up its launch. Just as Apple’s iTunes Store has helped make the iPod a dominant round-trip destination for new music, podcasts, videos, etc., Amazon is pushing the back-end depth of its device. Wireless access is through free-with-purchase 3G (cellular) instead of Wi-Fi, providing more ubiquitous coverage. Access to the Kindle Store is built into the device, akin to the recent joint effort between Apple and Starbucks, so you can purchase new books or subscriptions without syncing through a computer. To keep the Kindle autonomous, all of your purchased content is mirrored at Amazon in case you lose or need to replace your device.

Specifically considering the device itself, a few limitations are worth noting. Two current negatives of the E-Ink technology are that, first, it can only produce greyscale images, not color since that requires combining varying shades of primaries (the Red/Green/Blue of TV and monitors) which is not yet possible with the two-polarity black/white charged dots. Second, changing pages requires a ‘reset’ of all dots back to black before the next page is rendered, which appears as a ‘black flash’ before each page turn; you can see this in the demo videos on Amazon’s site. As for content, pricing is somewhat discounted with new releases costing $9.99 and classics at $1.99. That may sound attractive at first, but it falls prey to the same offsets as other digital purchases. As noted in the Newsweek review, due to the DRM protections you lose the ability to lend out, give away, or resell any titles – or in fact to view them anywhere except on your registered Kindle. You lose any color content (cover art, illustrations). And you lose the literally-hardcopy backup, relying on Amazon to keep that title ‘on the shelf’ forever. As for the low cost classic pricing, the title quoted in the article (Dickens’ Bleak House) is in the public domain and available in numerous free electronic formats. On top of these restrictions, the publisher is saved the costs of materials, printing, binding, shipping, and remaindering but currently resists the idea that any of those savings should be factored into the cost of a limited e-book edition (Amazon is evidently subsidizing some bestsellers to act as loss leaders). Ultimately you are paying for the convenience of access and formatting for a specific device.

Clearly these will not appeal to the book-lover, the collector, or the thrify shopper who trawls used bookstores for baskets of cheap paperback mysteries. Who are the likely target audiences, then? First, the availability of subscriptions to top-line newspapers and select for-pay blogs with automatic updates make this attractive to the periodical reader on the go. The emphasis on discounted bestsellers and the initial gee-whiz factor may draw in the trendy reader, who buys strictly off the NYTimes Books list and reads things exactly once. As supported titles expand beyond new releases and bestsellers to current textbooks and reference works – added to the existing integration of Wikipedia, annotations and dictionary lookups – the student and researcher may find this a convenient alternative to bulging backpacks and satchels. With some expanded support for technical manuals and ruggedizing, it could find purchase in manual-heavy verticals like maintenance and engineering. And the always-online (within 3G territories) access to new titles makes it a possible replacement for the airport bookstore for the regular traveler (a scenario enthusiastically described by Neil Gaiman in Amazon’s “Reactions From Bestselling Authors” section).

Whether this presages the ‘end of the book’ is likely premature, although calling the device ‘Kindle’ is somewhat provocative to anyone sensitive to Fahrenheit 451 parallels. The Newsweek article does go into some speculation on the possible changes the wide adoption of this kind of delivery model could bring to book publishing, mirroring those already underway in other media further along the digital conversion curve. The more positive aspects are already seen with the advent of Amazon in its current form – the “Long Tail” of sales afforded by providing a deep catalog plus on-demand printing to maintain books effectively in print indefinitely. As a purely online storefront with no physical goods becomes more accepted, the barriers to entry for authors drop, since all you really need is a manuscript and a seller plus whatever online promotion you pursue, such as on some literary equivalent to Facebook yet to come. The environmental benefits of not creating paper books without a guaranteed owner are straightforward. And just as the per-track pricing model at the iTunes Store started to break songs free of the album sales model, undermining the pressure to create ‘filler’ tracks just to pad out a standard album length, so online publishing could revitalize other approaches to writing in less than novel form like the essay or serialized novel. Experimental forms such as the hypertext narrative could return, previously hamstrung by the impossibility of instantiation in a physical form. The digital book with an always-on wireless connection also provides for more of a community to develop around a title, building on what Amazon comments and IMDB forums already provide.

The potential downsides of these developments also get an airing in Newsweek. Although the author presents both advertising-supported books and updated editions as advantages, the prospect of getting interrupted by an advertisement between chapters of a novel is hardly attractive. Likewise, the flipside of allowing authors to update their books after publication – which ceases to have the finality it once had – opens up the potential for devaluing proofreading and editing, and creating the sort of ‘permanent beta’ endemic in projects like online games and Google applications. The lack of a true finish line has a psychological toll on the author, who no longer commits to completing a work but only to ‘getting something out there’ – and if most authors are anything like me, that will diminish the final product by reducing the stakes of perfecting it. It also opens up the idea of post-release censorship, creative backpedaling (cf. George Lucas), or even content hacking that has previously been restricted to blog comments and Wikipedia articles. While there is certainly room for experimentation and innovation around the act of writing much as music and art have been expanded by the collaboration enabled by online communities, the product of a single intelligence generated by individual contemplation should not be discarded in the process. The hyperlinking process could aid the Joyce scholar trying to untangle the many extratextual references, but “getting rid of the idea that a book is a [closed] container” as a goal has its own costs.

As for myself, I have followed the development of E-Ink and electronic books in general with great interest but have yet to feel the compulsion to buy into any of the closed environments they predominantly represent. The iLiad, with its open structure and tablet screen, has the least restrictions, but at the greatest upfront cost. The Kindle is a first-generation product with no recurring charge for wireless usage, so it will take time for it to create a market base and begin to earn back its keep via the margins on captive content sold through the associated store. We can expect that, like Microsoft with its Xbox and Zune initiatives, Amazon is around for the long-haul, and is willing to take a loss on the first generation if it means building the momentum and working knowledge to improve for the second. Indeed, Microsoft has shown tremendous gains between generations of both of its hardware ventures, so perhaps once we see the Kindle 2, it will have sloughed off some of its only-a-librarian-could-love case design and balanced its feature set in a way that is more affordable, compelling, and expandable to use with content from other sources.* Or we can wait and see what Apple can produce to compete, should the market prove worth entering – perhaps the rumors of a flash-based tablet have some credence after all.

* The product details that you can add Word and image files to your Kindle via email for $0.10 per file, but it is unclear whether you can use the USB and SD card support to load your own documents, e.g. PDFs.