I am running late. The traffic on Rhode Island Avenue is appalling, as usual. I am currently idling in a queue to enter Logan Circle that runs about a quarter mile (bumper-to-bumper) to my girlfriend’s car on Florida Avenue. This will take the better part of 20 minutes until I can get through the circle only to wait in line for Thomas Circle. I become nostalgic for the days of being stuck on the I-5 crawling into the city. At least I had a mountain to look at.

By the time I arrive, Steve Inskeep has gone through today’s top headlines twice on Morning Edition and I have become filled with the desire to just sit in a quiet place and play a meditative game of Tetris. Nothing solves my problems quite like placing misshapen blocks falling from the sky.

I pull up to the curb and get out of the car, dodging cars to cross the street. I go through the revolving doors and hustle through the lobby of the postmodern nightmare that is a corporate office complex. I call the elevator and when it comes I command it to do solitary task and elevate me to my floor. Before the doors close two strangers board the elevator. We all make eye contact, each of us sharing an awkward smile. The doors close; we are all now trapped in this box until it reaches my floor (the 11^th and penultimate one).

Instead of a few awkward, disquieting moments in the elevator, all six of our eyes become transfixed on the little TV screens in the elevator. The aptly called Captivate Network was actually created to sell adspace while it displayed news, weather, and traffic in elevators to alleviate a few awkward moments.

The day wears on. I spend most of it telling my girlfriend that I love her over google chat while I work on tweaking our network and answering phones. I managed to sneak in a game of Tetris, too. By the time the clock reaches 5:30, I turn the lights off and head back down to the streets of the District. I am going to take the metro home, so I walk the 2 blocks and take the escalator into the seedy underbelly of the city.

The train comes almost immediately and I board, riding the two stops to my yellow line transfer at China Town. A few more minutes pass until I can board the train that will take me home. I take my seat and look around at my fellow passengers. Everyone seems to have some sort of device they are plugged into. The kid next to me has awful techno at full blast on his iSomething. The woman in front of me is speed-reading her Kindle. I spend a few minutes trying to see if I can read the page before she can… I fail every time. A couple a few rows up are sharing ear buds and cuddling. I get to my stop, go home, drink a beer, and drift into a world of talking heads and top models.

Now, I told you a rather typical, if not roundabout story, of my day for a reason. We have surrounded ourselves with technology and innovations for better and worse. They make our life easier, more efficient, and put make the entire world a fingertip away. Conversely, our devices also balkanize us and make the moments we share more superficial. We have a world of relationships and experience waiting out there if we only said hello instead of putting the earphones in and blasting the techno.

Take, for instance, the rise of online dating. What was once viewed as sort of social pariah is now commonplace. I do not have real objections to people who do the online dating thing, but I do think that it falls into this trend of marginalizing human awkwardness and, ultimately, fundamental human connections.

It is the same with facebook, too. I am perfectly guilty of writing on a friend’s wall to skip a phone-call or e-mail in favor of quick superficiality. In the ‘iLife’ world, human connections become quantized by counts of friends, being tagged in pictures, and liking status updates.

I am also just as guilty for succumbing to the luxuries of modern technology and I am by no means campaigning for us to throw away our devices. Technology gives me the news in multiple mediums. I have the ability to tell my girlfriend I love her in the middle of the day, I can be transported quickly throughout the city and the nation. It even tells me how bad the traffic is going to be while I am riding in an elevator. Oh, and it gives me Tetris.

Technology makes our lives easier, but it also creates a few paradoxes. While our devices save us time and energy, we end up spending more of our time plugged into them. While we explore a whole world of global connectivity at our fingertips, we spend more of our time staring into our screens isolated from each other. We add friends on Facebook, but spend less time with our friends in real life.

However, I am not advocating that we “throw away the television”. I actually hate people who don’t have a T.V. I couldn’t imagine a day in my life without being plugged in to the world. As much as I hate to admit it, I wrote the first draft for this very article on my iPhone.

What I am advocating is that we take the time to appreciate an actual human moment. Sit next to a stranger and say hello. People have stories that can’t fit in 144 characters. It might be awkward, yes, but in the process maybe you get a new Facebook friend.

Siri has a sense of humor. See all pictures at the bottom.

The iPhone 4S had record setting pre-orders, but you could still find it around town the Saturday after its release date (especially if you were looking for a Verizon phone. My need for AT&T slowed down the pace). People appear to be forgiving Apple for not giving us the iPhone 5 we craved. I think it’s more likely that over the last 18 months with no new phone, people’s iPhone 3Gs were on their last set of legs, and we really would have bought anything that Apple threw at us.

Don’t get me wrong, Apple threw in some cool features to make you interested in this device, and prove that it’s better than the ho-hum iPhone 4. It has a better camera, faster internet and processing speeds, some other things, but we all know the biggest buzz was around the iPhone 4S’s Siri feature – its personal assistant that you can talk to and that will listen as accurately and attentively as any ESL student. Huzzah, Apple says, you can just tell your phone to schedule you a meeting and it will do it!

I can say with 98% sincerity that I don’t give a hoot about Siri. I paid the extra money to switch to the iPhone 4S (rather than the iPhone 4′s $99 version) because I wanted a better camera. And while I sifted through the problems that make up my cellular life for three and a half failed hours Friday night, and then another two hours Saturday morning (different stores, different reasons. It’s a very long, complicated story that was eventually solved with AT&T agreeing to waive some charges and take $89.99 off my first phone bill). But despite all that, I knew it was worth it! I would have my iPhone 4S opening weekend, and then be able to write a blog post on the hilarity that most be able to be drawn from the Siri feature!

So, after successfully transferring 62 contacts and 758 pictures from my iPhone 3Gs to my iPhone 4S (and trading in the former for $115 off the latter – Go RadioShack!) I trotted off with new-phone glee. It was shiny, and it wasn’t futzing out like my two-and-a-half-year-old sold-back POS. Life was good. I called up my boyfriend and was like “Let’s get lunch.”

At lunch I pulled out the instructions (because how to use the Siri feature isn’t actually intuitive) and followed the directions to hold down the home button (the only button) and waited until the Siri screen popped up.

I won’t lie. I started with a boring question.

“Schedule a lunch meeting tomorrow at noon with Josh.”

It replied (in the voice of the iPhone cat): “Which Josh?” and listed out the Josh’s in my contact list. I choose appropriately, and it provided the appropriate calendar entry. “Okay, I set up your meeting for tomorrow. Are you ready for me to schedule it?”

I canceled and tried something else. “Find me an Italian restaurant in Tacoma.”

“I found 22 Italian restaurants; tap the one you want to call.” It showed a comprehensive list of restaurants nearby, how far they are away from me, and their rating (out of 5 stars).

Indeed, it was good at everything the Apple guys did up on screen during the demo.

I canceled and tried something else “Which vet can I get to to declaw my cat” (I don’t want to declaw my cat, I wanted to see if it could differentiate between vets).

Response: I don’t see ‘Cat’ in your address book. Should I look for businesses by that name?”

I tried again, it said the same thing, so I tried a different question: “Find a vet I can go to to declaw my cat.”

Response: “Sorry, I can’t check your call history.”

Well, I suppose it’s good to know Siri can’t check my call history. Moving on.

“Where can I buy a dinosaur?”

Response: “Searching the web for ‘Where can I buy a dinosaur.’” Sure enough, a Google search popped up. According to Google, you can buy a dinosaur on Amazon.

Question: “How do I stop the bleeding?”

It saw this question coming

Response: “I found six hospitals fairly close to you.” Siri also provided a list of the hospitals, their rating, and how far they are from me. One is only .2 miles!

Question: “Where is the nearest magic store?”

Response: “I found two magicians that live a ways from you.” They live 22 and 25 miles away, to be precise.

Question: “What’s the meaning of life?” (I took a screen shot of the other question to share with you).

Response: “I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object.”

And since we were driving down the freeway while I was doing this, and right as I was starting to talk to Siri a small car cut across a wide barrier to cut us off… my angry boyfriend said “@#$)@#%*@$$@, thanks Buddy!”

Siri said “I live to serve.”

Other potential responses for “Thanks Buddy,” you wonder?

“I aim to please.”

“My pleasure, as always.”

“Just doing my job.”

To Siri: “Are you capable of sarcasm?”

Response: “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”

Anywho, my point didn’t really need to be said. Apple made the best voice recognition system (it kicks ass at understanding the words “Italian Restaurants”), and after about an hour of fooling around with it I’m pretty convinced it doesn’t suck. But, as many internet memes will show you, unless you’re limiting your interacting with Siri to setting up pasta dinners and using simple sentence constructions, it’s not really practical for the average person. Sure, the various tests we did of its system (Find the nearest Pokémon Gym) were not designed for it to succeed (there are six gyms nearby you), but rather to prove the point that it did not distinguish what the word “Pokémon” meant, or the fact that we were mocking it.

Also, it takes like three seconds for me to go in and schedule my own damn appointment at noon, without fear of error in voice recognition software (I spoke in a text message to my boyfriend that went “I heart you!” but what was sent was “I hurt you!”). As I said to every AT&T person who asked, no I don’t really care about this system. It does not appear to be life changing. It doesn’t even appear like it will moderately impact my life.

However, it did provide me an afternoon of fun. Here is what Siri and I had to discuss:

So, the Wal-mart story lost a bit of steam on Twitter as Tacoma politicos switched over to the potential teacher’s strike (I suggest Tacomamama’s twitter feed if you would like to relieve every detail surrounding that potential disaster), but that doesn’t mean nothing came of it. I had demanded better tweets, and I believe we received them.

We have two Tacoma-pians that are willing to represent the true spirit of Twitter while informing you of the devastating impact of the Wal-Mart invasion, in the 10 tweets I have dubbed “Best.”


Compliments of RR_Anderson:

RR_Anderson RR Anderson
@NekoCase WALMART IS COMING TO THE CITY OF DESTINY! SEND HELP!


RR_Anderson RR Anderson
THE HOOF-PRINTS OF SATAN (walmart) PRANCE AT THE GATES OF DESTINY i.feedtacoma.com/Nick/is-walmar… #Tacoma


RR_Anderson RR Anderson
ENLIST TODAY IN THE WAR AGAINST WALMART!facebook.com/groups/1436741… #Tacomalmart


And the one I posted originally:


RR_Anderson RR Anderson
WE HAVE CONFIRMATION OF WAL*MART INVASION!!! blog.thenewstribune.com/business/2011/…DEFCON-4 ULTRA-RED ALERT HYPER-TEAM GO!


But the real winner of the day comes from an unknown twitter genius, who in response to my demands (you can’t prove it wasn’t me) posted seven tweets that are sure to put you in the Wal-Martmood. Sadly, the hash tag #protacomawalmart has been picked up by no one. (Warning, some of these [just one] may be offensive. Feel free to post mean rants in the comments section. I like comments).


chaosjoule
Hey guys…teens got loiter somewhere. #protacomawalmart


chaosjoule
I’ve heard that wal-mart will continue the elk sacrifices.#protacomawalmart #nbd


chaosjoule
When wal-mart comes, maybe they’ll hire the disembodied smiley face that follow me around.#protacomawalmart


chaosjoule
99 cent walkers. You will be able to build a mobile, shuffling palace for less than $10. #protacomawalmart


chaosjoule
Really looking forward to the cheap bundles of liberal bumperstickers I’ll be able to afford.#protacomawalmart


chaosjoule
They just filed intent papers. It doesn’t mean anything, just like a pregnancy.#protacomawalmart

For those few of you reading these articles that aren’t members of my immediate family, my Bastion review may have given you the impression that I was some kind of starry-eyed optimist about things. In fact, I’m more the typical nerd in that I hate pretty much everything. Bastion was one of those rare works whose craft can overcome my cynicism and surprise me for the better, but in general, I find most things I encounter to be poorly conceived and shoddily executed. On that note: From Dust!

From Dust is the brainchild of designer Eric Chahi (famous for his 1991 release Another World/Out of This World in North America), a spiritual sequel to the original “god game” Populous. You control the mysterious force known as “the Breath”, scooping up water, earth, and lava to build bridges and remove obstacles so groups of villagers can move around various islands. Why you actually do this is anybody’s guess.

The plot is as ephemeral as your avatar, each level opening with one or two sentences that vaguely justify the ensuing gameplay challenges. There’s a lot of catchphrases and symbolism that seems to hint at an overarching story that simply isn’t there. An in-game codex contains brief selections of backstory, but nothing that explains the story properly. Not that that would improve things, as a game’s story is not something that can be appreciated only outside of playing it.

When you actually get around to playing From Dust, there’s certainly enjoyment to be had. Manipulating the environment is deeply satisfying, especially when using some of the special powers villages grant you. For example, in certain cituations you can temporarily solidify water, allowing you to part seas and rivers and hope the villagers run through the path in time. You can also move around special plants that can burn, flood, or blow up the area around them, extremely useful in certain situations.

Unfortunately, the most basic obstacles can be compounded by the stupidity of the villagers. These are the kinds of beings that can drown in a few feet of water, or throw themselves into lava, or refuse to move over what seems like easily passable terrain. Add to this the fact that you have only the most rudimentary control over them, and more often than not failing in the game seems like it’s less your fault than the game’s.

Where From Dust shines is in its presentation. Its graphics are beautiful, creating sweeping vistas of rippling water and flowing lava. And although there’s no real soundtrack, the subtle sounds of the sea and gurgling lava provide a nice accompaniment.

Watching a gigantic tsunami sweep towards a village as you hurriedly pour lava into a protective wall, you can forgive most of the game’s faults if you approach it in the right state of mind. From Dust is nothing spectacular, and probably won’t be remembered long past its release, but it’s certainly an interesting experience. Definitely download the demo first, but do give it a try.

3 / 5 Melons

Note: At the time of this writing, there is a storm of controversy surrounding the PC version of From Dust, particularly its online-dependent DRM and port quality, or lack thereof. Potential customers are advised to further research the situation before purchasing.

Only 24 years old, Ben Kaufman has already patented quite a few of his own inventions. In a recent interview with Entrepreneur magazine, Jennifer Wang disclosed how Quirky operates. Seeking to streamline and help others put their ideas into product, Kaufman started Quirky, an online consumer products company where the products are created and designed by the people and he not only funds the product but to get engineers and designers to research, render and prototype the product and then, if enough units are pre-sold, Quirky manufactures it and gives a percentage back to the inventor. Manufactured inventions include “Fender”, an iPad 2 Bumper, or “Plug Hub” which keeps computer and power cords from getting tangled behind a desk, or “Pivot Power” that is a flexible power strip so you can adjust it to any angle. In our 21st century, we truly do have it all.

Last weekend Chris and I did two things: 1) participated in the paintball wars in Graham and 2) Visited the Brigade Encampment at Point Defiance Park’s Fort Nisqually in Tacoma. The Brigade Encampment was a re-enactment of the year 1855 at Fort Nisqually and brought the Washington Territory back to life. We arrived just in time for the fur trappers’ races and laughed as the second contestant tried to scramble under a church bench instead of over it and then had his gun misfire at the end.

I was struck by both the primitive nature of their lives and the creative ingenuity that kept them advancing their way of life in a new world. One man was hacking at a log, and when I questioned him he explained how he turns a log into a square post by hacking notches into the log, then inbetween those notches, chopping off the outside and thus creating a flat side. He said one would do well to churn out four square posts per day. After walking around the Fort and looking at all the hand-made square posts, I was awed by the dedication and time it took to keep whacking at one damn log. I can barely stay focused to make it through certain lectures and trainings, let alone churning out four square posts per day when it would take hundreds just to build a decent-sized house. I could order a sustainable, contemporary prefab home design from Stillwater Dwellings that are incredibly artistic and hip and have it all done in less than two months.

The Brigade Encampment hosted people serious about showing the way life really was back in 1855. Several women were spinning sheep wool using an ingenious spinning wheel with a foot treadle and then knitting it into caps, capes, and coverlets. As I eye-balled this wheel I couldn’t help but be impressed by this spinning wheel that took the work out of making yarn. One just rocked a foot back and forth on the treadle and slowly fed the right amount of wool into the machine, and voila, out came perfectly usable yarn.

I look around my house and see my machine-manufactured couch, TV, printer, table, lamps and I see leisurely ease. I try to imagine what I could do if I had nothing and needed to make my own clothes, build my own furniture, make my own pens, make my own gun and bullets, and I ask, “how did they do it all?” Community? Organization? Long winter nights pondering how to streamline the process and make it easier to get a tedious task done? Repetitive whacking at a round log and thinking, “if I got some of that new rubber-stuff and got a metal saw, perhaps I could build a water-powered sawmill and push a button to make 1,000 times the amount of square logs?”

I’ve been looking around me this past week thinking of the ingenuity that got us to where we are today – to Ben Kaufman’s “Quirky” business to Stillwater’s prefabricated homes, to me never questioning how my printer got to me that both prints, faxes, emails, and scans anything I want besides paying $79 at Costco. I’m not sure I’m lucky or just spoiled, and I say that despite living on a very limited income in a tiny house in a down economy where my husband and I just lost a lot of money in the stock markets the past two weeks. A part of me wishes we had to fight harder for self-reliant independence, and the other part remembers how tough it is for all of us right now, and the final part of me is impressed by our ancestor’s ingenuity for not just survival, but increasing their comforts and the progression of their civilization.

“Proper story’s supposed to start at the beginning.  Ain’t so simple with this one…” -Narrator

The kid never stops.  Not before the Calamity, when fate seems determined to make his life as rough as it can get.  Not after the Calamity, when what little life remains comes after him like they don’t have long to settle their grudges.  Certainly not up on Prosper Bluff, with the song dancing in the air around him, pulling him forward through what, with every passing second, feels more and more like a dream.

But when he reaches the singer, he sees her standing there, sadness and grief ringing off her every word.  And he stops.  He sits down, and waits for her to finish.

It’s a beautiful moment that will probably forever rank amongst my favorite in gaming, and it’s made all the more powerful by the fact that it didn’t have to happen.  I easily could’ve ran up to the girl immediately, pressing X to move the game along, and most people probably did.  But even though it’s a simple downloadable game, Bastion managed to draw me into its setting and characters more deeply than most big-name, blockbuster titles.

At first, one could be forgiven in thinking Bastion hardly has a story at all.  The only explicit information source is a dusty-voiced narrator, who follows the player-controlled kid as he attempts to repair the eponymous Bastion.  It houses the few remnants of Caledonian civilization following a Calamity so thorough it stripped away the ground itself, leaving the player to maneuver perilous paths that re-form themselves (and occasionally collapse) beneath his feet.  The setting is similarly revealed to you gradually, with the Narrator’s anecdotes, quips, and ramblings being so much more intriguing than the giant walls of text offered as backstory in more verbose titles like Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

Even though this is Supergiant Games’ first release, the team behind Bastion are industry veterans, and it shows in the gameplay.  The action is quick and responsive, each of the dozen or so weapons feeling very different and being upgradeable in different ways.  On the defense, you can dodge away from, around, or into enemies, or block almost all attacks, with proper timing resulting in a counter, damaging the enemy in return.  With these elements in play, you end up always moving, active in offense or defense, and never feeling like you don’t have the tools to overcome your obstacles.

The RPG elements work admirably as well, at their simplest supplying currency in the form of shards you can use to buy weapon upgrades, memorabilia you failed to find in levels, secret moves, or tonics.  Tonics provide passive bonuses, with more slots opening up every level, and their effects vary widely.  Some provide simple increases to max health or damage, while others prevent death from some blows, and one even encourages the player to fall off the world in order to damage enemies.

With all these tools at your disposal, the game can become less than challenging, which is where Bastion’s clever Totem system comes into play.  By calling upon an in-game pantheon of gods, you can increase difficulty in ten different ways, making enemies tougher, stronger, faster, occasionally turn invincible, drop bombs when they die… Previously feeble enemies quickly become terrifying swarms, and you soon find your comfort level of danger.  And the idols help in return for the hurt they do – each difficulty increase has an equal experience bonus.

Possibly the best feature of all this customization is that it is entirely impermanent.  You can swap out weapons, upgrades, tonics, and idols anytime you return to the Bastion.  With the dizzying array of possibilities, the game can keep fresh for much longer than one play-through. It’s just as well since they included a new game plus mode, carrying over your progress to re-play the game as many times as you wish.

Bastion’s presentation pulls everything together, hand-drawn art and backgrounds seamlessly interacting with 3D characters and monsters.  The sound design is distinctive, enemies and weapons easily distinguishable in the heat of battle and yet another way of keeping track of goings-on.  And the music is near-perfect, pulse-pounding battle tunes driving you on, with more atmospheric songs evening out the experience, with occasional pieces of haunting beauty.  When a fan campaign instantly forms demanding for your game’s soundtrack to be made available for sale, you know you’ve done something right.

In short, Bastion is wonderful.  Every aspect of its design and presentation are great on their own, and merge together to create a wonderful experience.  Available now on the 360 and soon on the PC, this is one game you should definitely give a try.

Last summer, I brought you the story of how the Domain Name System (DNS) was under threat and how many of the world’s top tech companies were working together to solve it. Unfortunately, not everyone has updated the software on their servers to fix this flaw. While it’s not as big of a threat as it was last summer, it still poses a danger to the web. Almost a year ago, I explained a flaw in the encryption system that you use to securely connect to online banking sites and to safely purchase goods from Amazon, eBay, and many others. Today there’s more news about ways for that encryption (https) can fail.

The new attack is what’s known as a “man in the middle” attack. What this means is that some evildoer, or someone who just wants your money, watches your network and waits for you to go to your bank’s website. When you do that, the evildoer inserts himself in the middle of the communication and can start adding to the information that’s going back and forth. This allows him to do all sorts of nasty stuff from stealing your online banking information to tricking your browser to download malicious software onto your computer. Ideally, this is one of the things that the encryption is supposed to prevent. If all the communication between you and the server is protected with encryption, no one can insert themselves into your conversation. However, there is a flaw in the design of the protocol which allows this to happen at a crucial moment.

The flaw was came to prominence a few weeks ago, but many researchers said that the flaw was so difficult to exploit that it wouldn’t be a serious security threat. Then, a few days ago, a Turkish student used the flaw to steal some user names and passwords for Twitter. Fear not, he was not being malicious, but simply proving to the security community that this is a serious flaw that needs to be taken seriously instead of simply being dismissed. Twitter has since made changes to prevent the same thing from happening again and industry groups have begun meetings to determine a more permanent fix for this problem. These meetings have been going on since September, but it’s unclear if a solution has been found yet. This, like the other security problems I’ve written about before, will be fixed soon, but it will take a long time for the fix to go into wide use. It’s also a reminder that even our best and brightest will make mistakes sometimes with wide ranging impacts on our economy and the way we communicate.

image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/23905174@N00/

Heck no it hasn’t. Imagine complete cities powered by urine. You charge your cell phone by peeing into it and shaking it up, you run your car by connecting a tube to your bladder and constantly downing coffee (caffeine makes you pee), there’s a urine fountain in the city park…okay, that’s a little far-fetched and not quite in the scope of Pee Power, but there’s something to it.

Ohio University scientists are developing technology that will allow you to run your car, home and cell phone on pee. The new technology utilizes the abundance of hydrogen in our urine (yes there’s hydrogen in our urine) by bonding it to another element like oxygen which allows it to be stored and released using less energy than conventional power sources. The technology is still 6 months away, and I don’t expect it to be embraced by the public very quickly, but if we’re finding out ways to reuse our waste more power to you.

Apparently, similar technology has been looked at before.

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/90417577@N00/

In the age of decontextualization, the growing masses of self-important messages have plagued the internet with gossip-like banality in ways no one could have foreseen.  While the off post may find its way to usefulness, the majority of tweets, status updates, and blahs drip with undeniable thoughtlessness. As caretakers of the thinking few, The Melon is pleased to offer this frequent commentary of the worse SIM of the day to awaken the inner scrutineer within us all.

And today’s winner is:

iamjacobblack

kim kardashian was on the teen choice awards…so watching them was not gay

Close second:

MattyTets

Gi Joe= great fucking movie

I encourage you to post your own in the comments as you find them.

Note: this may get us into trouble. We’ll see what happens if that happens.

Amazon and Sony are waging war. The nascent market for hand-held e-book readers is spurring these two to a knockdown fight for the first viable technological monopoly over digital books. E-books have been around for a while, but the release of Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader mark the first opportunity for consumers to actually have to make a choice between physical books and digital books. Previously digital books were limited on the supply side (primarily by such problems as the high costs of scanning or transcribing already published books and putting them on the Internet) and had low demand (because it sucks to read books on a computer screen at your desk).

Whenever I bring up the mere existence of e-book readers to fellow bibliophiles, I get an interesting response. “I’ve been reading about the Kindle,” I’ll say, and my friend will respond, “Yeah, but I like reading with real books too much. Kindle can’t replace that. There’s no way it can replace that!” And then I will listen to a long rant about the end of books as we know them. You’d think the new technology is committing genocide against the printed word. It is a bit like saying, “So did you hear about the new legal status of gay marriage in Iowa?” and hearing the reply, “Yeah, but I’m against raping animals, even in the bonds of marriage.”

I want to offer a few words of reassurance. First, who’s using e-book readers? Currently only tech nerds and people who read a lot anyway. Average folk are not choosing to shell out four hundred dollars – yet. Oh, as the price comes down it is certain that a chunk of the middle class will get one, but that’s not for a good ten years at least.

Second, why is everyone so convinced that e-book readers threaten the printed word as we know it? While the technological evolution is clearly ongoing, the direction of the readers is that of a general digital use device, with access to the Internet and in the end merely a strong emphasis on digital books. If anything Sony Reader and Kindle are the next big challenge to the iPhone and the Blackberry. Particularly the option to automatically receive newspapers and magazines makes me suspect that e-book readers will make businesspeople a key demographic.

If the opposition to e-book readers stems from a suspicion that they will cause the publishing industry to topple, the fear is unfounded. The newspaper industry has already harmed itself (almost?) beyond repair. The publishing industry should also take responsibility for its own troubles up to this point. Like giving Reagan credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, it hardly seems fair to blame new technology for what would have happened anyway. I believe that even if big publishers go out of business (and they have not yet – thanks, Stephenie Meyer!) that will signal merely a shift in direction for publishing. Small publishers previously specializing in Wicca and poetry will have the opportunity to make a profit at general books. That’s not a bad thing for consumers or the market, just current companies on the brink. (Whether or not it is good for authors depends on the specific problems of a new publishing game.) More concerning than whether publishers can tough it out is whether people read at all in the first place. Publishing companies are always on the verge of bankruptcy because the market is made up of a relatively small number of people who love to read and who buy a lot of books. Reading is not a national past time. But by making books cheaper (after the cost of the device) and access easier, maybe e-book readers will inspire people to read more.

The primary reason that people react so poorly to e-book readers, though, is the total experience of reading. The sensation of holding a book, smelling it, browsing a store or library, or striking up conversations with strangers about books are all aspects of reading that e-book readers cannot duplicate. And that is the crux of the matter: since they cannot duplicate the experience, e-book readers should therefore be no threat to real books. Consumers use them for different purposes. E-books will not pose a threat to the printed word, but merely nuance in consumption. Nor will they threaten libraries. Tacoma Public Library is one of many across the country to jump on the e-book train. Modern libraries are not just places to check out books or study. They are community resources, with classes, meeting rooms, cultural events, historical archives, DVDs and music, and much more. Libraries are more than capable of using technology to expand services.

Photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertogreco/