Ownership is access

 Some rights reserved by N.Calzas

Remember record collections? Shelves in your living room or bedroom filled with LPs or CDs that you would proudly show off to friends. A trophy cabinet revealing your music tastes. I've still got a pile of vinyl albums but they've been hidden away in a cupboard and although the stereo system with record deck is still there it's a long time since I used it. Music used to take up a lot of our living space and used up a lot of cash.

Today music has become invisible in our homes. Our entire music collection is on our mobiles or stored in the cloud and household stereo systems have shrunk to a couple of mini-speakers for an iPod. We don't even need to spend money on music any more since streaming services like Spotify and Pandora let us listen to almost anything on demand without having to own it.

This is the subject of an article on CNN, Young listeners opting to stream, not own music. Owning music is becoming irrelevant since it can all be accessed online. Instead of owning music we are willing to pay for access. File sharing also becomes irrelevant if everything is available on demand anyway. The music collection that was such a status symbol a mere 20 years ago has vanished, as have the record stores.

Technically this same development can happen any time in other areas. Streamed e-books for example are already being tried and I can see great potential here for books that you need for a short time but may not want to own such as school textbooks and popular fiction. Films could also go this way and the big question is how much we would be willing to pay for a Spotify-like service for films or books. You pay for access not content. It's all technically possible but especially in the case of the film industry there are some very sensitive toes that risk getting squashed and big earnings to be defended.

Me and my iPad

When do people use tablets/iPads and when do they use laptops? This is discussed in an article I've just read on Google called Consumers on tablet devices: having fun, shopping and engaging with ads. They've surveyed the habits of tablet users to see what they do with them and when. The result is that tablets are mostly used at home for entertainment, reading and social interaction whereas the laptop is generally for work. Tablets are often used whilst doing other things, like watching TV or eating breakfast and we like to carry them around the house. However whenever we walk out the front door it's the laptop we generally take with us. It seems the tablet is finding its niche and that it isn't replacing the laptop, simply complementing it.

  by  Steve Rhodes 

I've got the entire Apple family to help me through the day: iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook (honest, I'm not an Apple devotee, it just happened that way). All of them are at least a year old so I can't impress anyone anymore but it's interesting to reflect on how they are used. I too only use the iPad in the house, mostly for social media, especially flicking through news feeds and social networks via the excellent Flipboard. The laptop however is almost exclusively a work device but I take it almost everywhere since I try to be as paper-free as I can and I take most of my notes on the laptop.

If I try to rank my devices in hours of use the laptop is way out in front followed by the iPhone and then the pod and the pad bringing up the rear. They all get used but since I spend a lot of my life at work then the two most useful work devices get the most attention. The pad and the pod are almost exclusively for free time. I expected the iPad to replace the laptop and would still like that to happen but so far I haven't been able to fit it into my work routines other than for reading and browsing media. But now I realize I'm not alone in that respect. How about you?

Now you see it, now you don't

Visiting friends' homes in the past I used to enjoy seeing their record collections. Most people were only too pleased to show off their collection and my musical education was developed by thumbing through piles of records and asking to hear the ones that caught my attention. Seeing other people's extensive collections inspired my consumer instrincts and my own collection was inspired by several friends. Comparing musical taste was a great way of getting to know someone.

Today the music collection is invisible. No groaning shelves packed full of records, just files on an iPod or a playlist on Spotify. Today's music is totally portable, extremely convenient and completely unobtrusive. However it has lost its ceremonial value. It took an effort to take the record out of its sleeve, put it on the turntable and start the player. As a result you sat and listened to the record and did nothing else, often in company. We really listened. Today I listen to music every day but nearly always while doing something else.

  by  betsythedevine 

The same process is starting to happen with books. Soon our book collections will disappear online and our homes will not show evidence of our reading habits. Noone will see how much you read or what your interests are. Children growing up in homes with lots of books see that reading is important and will generally follow in their parents' footsteps. If they can't see evidence of their parents' reading will they be equally keen to read? A parent sitting with an iPad could be reading Yeats or playing Farmville; you can't tell from afar.

I love the digital revolution but can't help wondering where it is leading. We must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Bookends

I have collected an awful lot of things over the years. The house is full of books, magazines, records, videos, coins, stamps, ornaments, pictures and so on. It takes a lot of space and a great deal of it could be disposed of without making much of a difference to my life. I'm rather fond of these collections of course, in particular my books, but I wonder how much longer we will need to devote so much space to storing them.

  by  maxually 

Books are like trophies, showing my interests and tastes. I like to scan other people's bookcases to see what we have in common, as I used to do with record collections. But what happens when all of this is digital? If you can access the world's music or books on the net and download instantly for free of for a small fee what is the point of having a collection? E-book sales are growing sharply and already Amazon are selling more digital literature than hard copy.  My old record collection gathers dust in a cupboard today and I now have my entire music collection on an iPod. If all my books are stored on, say, an iPad in the future will this mean the end of the bookcase? Is IKEA's massively popular bookcase Billy heading for extinction?

I don't think the book will disappear any time soon but some types of book will. Paperback literature will probably be phased out first since we tend to buy them on the spur of the moment, read them and them never look at them again. Textbooks are another perfect category to go digital. We buy extremely expensive volumes as students that tend to be obsolete within a year. Textbook publishers love to revise these books annually to counter the second hand market between students. If they were digital you would always have access to the latest information instead of having bookshelves groaning under the weight of useful thousand page tomes such as Microsoft Windows 95 for Dummies. For some interesting discussion of online textbooks read a new article in Forbes, Why can't textbooks be free? (there's also a lengthy discussion under the article)

However there will be a place for quality books, richly illustrated and with an appealing layout, feel and design. I have many books (art, photography, nature etc) that would not transfer so well onto a laptop. A book can be a beautiful object in itself and is a permanent record to refer to. I have many books on subjects that I would probably never look up on the net. However since I have the physical books on my shelf they are reminders of past interests that may be rekindled in the future.

I can't imagine disposing of my book collection but I wonder if future generations will have the same feelings about print. Why should we own a book or piece of music at all? If it is always available on the net there is no reason to collect. The popular music service Spotify gives you access to unlimited music online for a small fee per month so when will we see a similar service for e-books? This is discussed in an article I read in the Norwegian paper Aftonposten last week (read article Leie, ikke eie e-bøker - Borrow, don't own e-books, use Google Toolbar to translate). Sooner or later someone will start such a service. You won't download the books, they will simply be available online. Once you've read it you move on and no more bookshelves to buy.

The soundtrack of our lives

  by  Beverly & Pack on Flickr

Music is everywhere today. We work, study, exercise, drive and read to a constant musical accompaniment. Indeed music has never been so important in our lives. At the same time it is seldom something we concentrate on. When was the last time you sat and really listened to a piece of music?

Back in the seventies the stereo system was a high status possession. Massive decks with amplifiers, tuners and turntable complete with extremely expensive speakers took pride of place in many living rooms and often there was one armchair which gave you the ultimate listening experience. You sat there and listened to your records with often stunning sound quality. I used to listen like that but very seldom do so today. I listen to more music than ever before but almost always while I'm doing something else.

The New York Times has a good article on just this theme, In Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back, with a very long string of readers' comments after it. Today hi-fi systems are rare and most music is  consumed as compressed, low quality mp3 files using rather simple earbuds. Music would seem to be one of the few areas where technology has lead to quality and performance being sacrificed for convenience, in stark contrast to say television where enormous improvements in quality have taken place in recent years.

According to one expert quoted in the article:
“People used to sit and listen to music,” Mr. Fremer said, but the increased portability has altered the way people experience recorded music. “It was an activity. It is no longer consumed as an event that you pay attention to.” 

Has music become simply a background activity, one of many distractors we have running when we're doing something else? Since we seldom give it our complete attention we are not too worried about the quality as we were in the days of the armchair hi-fi. It's simply "good enough".

Sleeve notes to make a comeback?

One of the joys of youth was spending hours in dingy record stores checking out all the new albums and listening to a few tracks on the headphones that generally hung in a dark corner. Hundreds of artists to choose between and often interest in a new band was awoken by the album cover. Sometimes the artwork was enough to motivate a listening and often a purchase. I confess to being particularly fond of Roger Dean's fantasy art that appeared on the albums of bands like Yes, Uriah Heep and Budgie. I also enjoyed thumbing through friends' album collections looking at the covers and sometimes reading the sleeve notes.

That pleasure has gone now that my entire music collection is stored on a thin little box called an iPod. Admittedly the player downloads a photo to go with the track but it's not much to look at, especially in the small window on the player. I've downloaded plenty of music that I know very little about and sometimes miss the old album covers with artwork to admire and sleeve notes to read. The mp3 format is music stripped bare; just the track and its title.

But wait, help is at hand according to an article on Wired.com, Is the world ready for the successor of the MP3? The mp3 format has been enhanced into musicDNA, a format that allows the automatic downloading of photos, notes and updates on the artist as well as the track itself. The battered and groggy music industry suddenly sees some relief in that there may be a way after all to provide added value for those willing to pay for their music. According to the musicDNA site the format allows legal sites to bundle other services with the format whereas the free mp3 download will be "naked".

Sounds reasonable though it's probably only a matter of time before the new format gets pirated too. Those who want everything for free will always find a way but the developers of this technology are hoping there are enough people out there willing to pay a little for the extra service.

Not without my iPod

The University of Missouri's journalism school has decided to require students to use either an iPod Touch or iPhone as part of their studies according to an article in The Wired Campus (even more interesting to read all the comments). See also a report in the Missourian. The reason for this move is to enable students to view podcasted lectures and communicate and follows a clear trend towards mobile learning solutions. The difference here is that the students are being asked to buy one particular brand and although Apple is generally regarded as cool, not everyone on campus is enthusiastic resulting in an anti-Apple group on Facebook.

The idea of podcasting lectures and other learning objects is excellent but we have to be able to do this to a variety of terminals and platforms giving users a choice. Most places have admittedly been locked into Windows for years but in recent years it has been possible to study using Apple or Linux computers. It really shouldn't matter what you use and we have to move away from all these proprietary solutions. It's particularly tough on students who have recently invested in shiny, happy terminals from other vendors.

One of the comments on Wired Campus claims that the university is starting to phase out campus computer labs thereby passing that cost over to the students who have to fork out for their mobile terminals. I think the age of the computer labs is soon over (let's face it, they are seldom inspiring learning environments) and that WiFi access and laptops is a much more attractive and flexible solution. The question is who finances the purchase or all those laptops and mobiles; let the students pay, offer leasing deals or even subsidised giveaways.

Missouri is one of many universities that are moving towards more mobile and flexible ways of distributing educational material. With so many universities distributing lectures via iTunes, Apple obviously have a massive student market but it's vital that education doesn't get locked into one particular brand or technology.

Are e-books a threat or an alternative?

E-books are in the news these days with Amazon's Kindle reader attracting lots of attention (not yet available here in Sweden sadly). Many fear that attractive e-readers will lead to a collapse of the publishing industry in the same way as the growth of the iPod and suchlike has caused havoc in the music industry.

A UK project called JISC National E-books Observatory has been investigating these fears and the preliminary findings are surprising. They have given all UK students access to e-book versions of 36 standard university textbooks in medicine, technology and science and monitored usage patterns. Interestingly they have not found any signs that e-book access has influenced book sales at all. Those who would normally have bought the books have done so and the others have probably used the e-books as an alternative to borrowing or copying the hard copies (as they did in the past). Another surprising finding was that there was no indictaion that the younger generation was more interested in e-books than the older generation; thereby denting the net generation myth.

The project is the largest ever survey of e-book reading habits and has involved nearly 50,000 responses. Read more in an article in Publishers' Weekly.

Books in the iPod

In the previous entry I dreamed of a link-up between the Kindle and the iPod/iPhone and as if my magic came an article in the New York Times announcing a deal between Amazon and Apple making their e-books available to iPods. Still far from an open solution but at least a little bit of compatibility. However, I don't think I'll be reading War and Peace on my iPod any time soon.

E-books get serious

E-books have been around for a long time but few people have found the idea very appealing. I can read a few pages of a report on a screen but then it becomes a strain on the eyes. We're all waiting for an e-book reader that is light, easy-to-use and has an eye-friendly screen.

Amazon's new Kindle e-book reader could be the answer according to reviewers. It's lighter than most paperbacks, can contain a couple of hundred books, newspaper or blogs and you download your content via a wireless link. Very similar to the iPod for music. The catch is that just as Apple virtually cornered the market for legally downloaded music so may Amazon for printed material.

In an article in Slate magazine, Fear the Kindle, Farhad Manjoo argues that Kindle gives Amazon a virtual monopoly on the e-book market since you can only buy content for your Kindle from Amazon. I love the idea and would love to try it out but I only wish that we could somehow move away from all these proprietary solutions and have devices that are compatible with all suppliers. Imagine a cross between the Kindle and the iPod that could hold books, news, music, photos, films and games and could access the combined resources of all suppliers. I'm sure the technology exists but the business model is the problem.

Get a life, part 347

Today I discovered a stunning new service for the iPhone - iGirl!!
Definitely not quite politically correct but evidently popular, this new service enables you to have your very own virtual girlfriend in your phone. She speaks, dances, sings and will wear whatever you give her. Seems like a variation on the tamagotchi figures that drove many people mad about ten years ago.
See article in TechCrunch.

Me and my identities

Like most people I've got an impressive and ever more bewildering collection of user names and passwords to all the different web services I use. It's not always possible to be consistent because a user name that works for some sites doesn't work for others and therefore you need to invent a new variant that you will hopefully remember when you next log in a few weeks/months later. Just coming up with yet another vaguely memorable user name can cause many minutes of creative thought.

Furthermore all the social networking tools encourage you to paste a nice photo of yourself and once again you're faced with choices. Do I put the same boring mugshot on all my networks thereby showing a consistent identity or do I go for variation and show the full range of my personality? Some people put up very artistic photos of themselves taken from curious angles thus revealing their creative flair. Others even upload pictures of cartoon characters they identify with. The question is how many identities can you maintain on the net? I suppose you can present different images of yourself in different networks. You have have to keep track of which is which.

Now I've discovered several places that ask me to create an avatar to represent myself, the latest being the new Xbox (yes I finally gave in to the pressure and bought it, enabling me to continue playing NFL and NBA). I've already got a couple of Second Life avatars and now an Xbox one too. The more virtual worlds you join the more avatars you need. Should I present a consistent "look" in virtual reality, resemble my "real" self or send forth a diverse range of virtual selves none of which have much in common with me at all? I tried having two different avatars in SL but found that behind them lay the real me and I couldn't really take on a new personality. Some people manage to have completely separate personalities in RL and SL but it must take a lot of concentrated effort to be consistent.

Identity crisis

My digital footprint keeps on growing but my life doesn't really have room for it all. Almost every week now I join up with some new social network or web service. My portfolio of user names and passwords is also becoming frighteningly impressive and it's getting harder to keep them all in order (just waiting for someone to tip me off on a web service that organises even that for me!). It's hard to find secure passwords that you have any chance of remembering. I remember reading several years ago that the most common password is "password" but many sites won't accept simple solutions like that. If you try to enter a simple password you get told that it's too easy and that you really should use a mixture of letters and numbers and preferably lower and upper case letters.

There are now several tools available to help people who are OD-ing on social software. If you've got multiple blogs, wikis everywhere and are a member of far too many networks and communities you can now gather everything in one place and showcase your entire repertoire at one address. A new contender in this category is called Popego and it even promises to deliver related content and contacts to you once you've registered all your other networks there (I've previously mentioned FriendFeed which is a similar service). I got in there and have tried to register my various identities but keep getting told that my user name doesn't exist. In some cases I can't even remember what my user name is. I like the idea and it could be fun if I can only remember who I am.

I am however quite enthusiastic about Last.fm, a social network based for sharing music. It tracks everything you play on your iPod and computer and tells your friends what you're listening to. It also enables you to compile your own "radio channel" so that your friends can hear the music you like. Whenever you listen to a track you get information about the artist via a wiki (you can add details to the wiki of course) and you can also download tracks and albums via Amazon.

The sound of silence

I can remember when there was literally nothing on television. Weekdays were largely TV free till the late afternoon when the children’s programmes started. They showed the testcard so that TV repair people could check that the set actually worked. At around 11 pm a presenter would tell us that the evening’s programmes were over and wished us all a very good night. Sometimes they even played the national anthem as a subtle hint that it really was time to go to bed. Even radio stations were silent at night.

Today there is still very little to watch on television but it goes on round the clock. 57 channels and nothing on. When they can’t think of anything to broadcast they switch over to TV-Shop with hours of hysterical ads about miracle fitness devices and anti-wrinkle cream. Or they show 5 back-to-back episodes of some instantly forgettable Dallas lookalike soap from the eighties. Who watches this stuff in the middle of the night? Anything to avoid silence.

Some channels show a very special type of phone-in quiz show. A young aspiring TV presenter gets the daunting task of filling an hour or two of non-prime time TV by trying to persuade the sparse audience to phone in and answer questions. The cash prizes are quite tempting and the questions are often along the lines of “What colour is the White House?” But no one phones and the presenter has to fill the time by commenting on the weather, what she/he had for breakfast etc. They can go on for 20 minutes without anyone phoning and you can sense the creeping desperation in the presenter’s voice as the nagging suspicion grows that there may not be anyone watching at all. I must say I admire their courage. If you survive a few months fronting one of these shows you deserve to go on to more rewarding roles. It takes guts to talk and smile non-stop for 2 hours in front of a camera knowing that your nationwide audience may be in single figures, including several who are unconscious.

We fill our lives with noise. People of all ages have their iPods almost permanently plugged in; when walking, jogging, gardening or travelling. Comfortable, handy, fun but again a sort of padding to block out the world, the avoidance of silence. When do we have time to rest, to think, to just be? Silence is awkward, it demands reflection. Sunday as a day of rest was an excellent idea and just as relevant today as it was for the Israelites of the Old Testament. Imagine a day when the shopping centres are closed and people just rest. A day when it’s OK to switch off. Hardly likely in our 24-7 globalised individualistic society but a nice dream.