But under the face-melting surface, World Tour’s greater influence may ultimately be in the steady march towards unifying simulation (pretend you’re a rock star!) and emulation (make actual music!). In the past we’ve come to this junction from the other direction, using game platforms as engines for music production: MTV Music Generator series on the Playstation 2 (used by artists like Boomkat to sketch out songs), Nanaloop on the Game Boy (part of the 8-bit music movement), and upcoming touch-studio offerings for the iPhone like MooCowMusic’s Band and Intua’s BeatMaker. Meanwhile, rhythm games by the likes of Harmonix (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero) and Konami’s Bemani division (Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, GuitarFreaks) have gradually introduced ever more elaborate interactions between players and underlying musical performances. In FreQuency, for example, a secondary mode allowed players to ‘remix’ songs in freeform fashion after unlocking them through normal play.

Based on this early preview, World Tour is even more ambitious with its Music Creator mode. While normal gameplay will center around the established note-matching mechanism for various instruments, the proposed editor supports multi-track note creation for each of the supported instruments (minus vocals, evidently for legal reasons—cross apply the perversities that abound in most online smack talk and this makes regrettable sense). Premade loops, tempo control, and beat quantizing are provided within a wizard interface to simplify the learning curve. For laying down tracks, the guitar controller provides extensive options: you can program drum machines through the new touch-sensitive fret strip on the guitar controller, trigger samples by fret buttons, change pitch with the strum bar and sample speed through the Star Power tilt control. Need more crunch? Licensed Pod modeling technology from Line 6 lets you can choose your amplifier. Want to generate notes algorithmically? Use the built-in arpeggiator. Once you’ve finished laying down tracks, a separate mix mode is available for looping and editing. Finally, you publish your creation (complete with custom cover art) to an online community store where others can download and play it within the game. User ratings will drive online charts. Voilá, you’re a published musician.

One of the most common comment-thread trolls since the release of Guitar Hero has been purist backlash: "why not play a real guitar?" Up to now, the typical answer is along the lines of, "because this [playing a simplified game]  is more fun than learning the real thing." And certainly, to remain successful, World Tour will need to retain that sense of rock star power at mere mortal effort levels. But the potential for the Creator mode, and whatever follows it, to create a new level of musical expression suggests an exciting future of entertainment all its own.

Polaroid PoGo

The PoGo – short for "Polaroid On the Go," a seemingly unnecessary repetition of the cultural meaning of "Polaroid" – is about the size of a compact digital camera and can accept digital prints from camera phones via BlueTooth or from PictBridge-capable cameras by cable. Rather than normal dye- or ink-based photo printers that rely on quickly-exhausted cartridges, the Zink process embeds all of the color technology within the special photo paper itself. Embedded dye crystals are manufactured molecules that generate the necessary additive hues to create color prints under heat. The paper currently produces "2×3 in. borderless sticky-back prints" in about a minute.

Despite the claim of "fade-resistant, long-lasting images," it will be worth testing just how long these instant photos hold up, like their spiritual predecessors and other home printers. The entire class of photos that have been produced by digital cameras and never committed to professional printing raise rather wide-ranging questions about future provenance. What will we hand down to our grandchildren in place of unfinished photo albums and shoeboxes of snapshots? Will we still be able to read even now-ubiquitous formats like JPEG and the various RAW flavors in 50 or 100 years, like we can with earlier generations of photography going back to examples like daguerrotypes? As with the physical book, the printed photograph requires no special reader, no software, no compatibility matrix. Until flexible, non-volatile media like E-Ink or Zink develop equivalent endurance, we risk losing entire generations of family history to the junkbin of obsolete media.

Ars Book Review: “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky

The review is followed by an interview with Shirky, including more on the concept of the ‘Coasean floor’ and its intersection with ‘the Long Tail.’ I’m also heartened by the recognition of interdisciplinary study as a catalyst for creativity.

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.