So I downloaded the Kindle app for the iPhone the other day to check it out. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I don’t have a Kindle (yet), so I thought this might be a way to check out the iPhone/iPod Touch’s e-book technology. It’s good, I must admit. Supposedly these two things stay synced somehow, so that the Kindle will know where you left off, and the iPhone will also. Neat.

Along those lines, I’ve also been fooling around with Stanza, a free e-reader for the iPhone. They’ve got a desktop app that allows you to upload a bunch of different documents, including .pdf files, which I did last night. So far, I like it. And free is good too.

My wife is only days away from receiving her exciting new new-to-her Kindle, which is to say that I expect soon to get my hands on a Kindle 2. Meanwhile this note from a good friend about the machine’s effect in his household:

An (unreported?) Kindle phenomenon: 11-year old girl, drove parents crazy by not reading books because totally addicted to electronics, has now transferred total addiction to Kindle 2 – and now does nothing, ever, but read books, one after another. In bed, in the car, while eating – while crossing streets!

[My wife] says, “Let’s buy Amazon stock. In six months, the world will have discovered this particular phenomenon.” (She is the one who had the sudden insight that this might work for [our daughter].)

This from one of my favorite writers who blogs for The Atlantic Monthly magazine, from yesterday. Perhaps the Kindle and other e-readers will spark an interest in reading for some students? Having approached the issue of reading before, this one got me to thinking is all . . . .

So, if the brain has this ability to remap new functions into low traffic areas of our cortex, are we in fact remapping our brains to be more adept in navigating online spaces? Carr contends that our attention spans are getting shorter and he worries that soon we’ll be unable to make our way through a book or even a moderately long magazine article. Or, if we take the alternate point of view that seems to emerge in the UCLA study, is regular use of Google keeping our mind more limber, regularly exercising the synaptic connections between cortical areas? The fact is, the flexibility of our cortex evolved to enable humans to better adapt to dynamic environments. As our world got more complex, we needed to move beyond the programmed responses of the limbic system to something that gave us a little more latitude to respond appropriately to situations. Yes, if we use the Internet frequently, our minds will accommodate by building skills in this area. But this doesn’t imply that we’re getting the virtual version of a frontal lobotomy or, conversely, supercharging our intellect. It just means that we’re using our inherent hardware for new purposes so that we can better keep up with our world. It’s the same flexibility we all come born with, and it’s what makes humans rather remarkable.

I read this article today and it got me to thinking about my own use of the Internets and Google and my ability to focus, read, reflect and basically think. I can’t say that I disagree with this completely, but what I have found in the course of my life over the past 15 years or so is that I tend to sit and focus on a task like reading far less than what I used to do. The only time that this really isn’t the case is when I have to read something for a class. So, that being said, what I’ve been considering is why this is and how (or even if) I want to spend more time off-line and back in the “acoustic” world of magazine articles and books. It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. There are several books that I want to read and I find that when I read books I experience a level of relaxation that I haven’t felt while reading online. It’s only my experience here, but for me, there is something to this. So, now I think I’ll go grab that book . . . .cheers!

This came via dana boyd’s blog and I’ve started reading the introduction. What I think about in terms of this book (which can be downloaded here as a pdf file) is that it is our students that will continue to have the chance to change the way our representative government works. Change is slow and churning at times I know, but it seems to me that the essays in this book address a wide range of issues that involve our connectedness in ways not too often expressed. It’s worth a look over, I think.

The above linked article is well worth the read. Will Richardson blogged about this article, which is how I found it. I found his blog post via Twitter, for those who are interested.

Some of my thoughts, briefly tonight, are that reading and literacy need to be taught to our students. By reading I mean all kinds of reading–both online and offline. There really needs to be an exposure to all kinds of text, including long novels, good non-fiction essays, and even short blog posts read through an rss feed aggregator. I agree with this quote on page four from the article:

Even those who are most concerned about the preservation of books acknowledge that children need a range of reading experiences. “Some of it is the informal reading they get in e-mails or on Web sites,” said Gay Ivey, a professor at James Madison University who focuses on adolescent literacy. “I think they need it all.”

This is a good article and a good topic to consider. As school begins in a little over two weeks for me, this article is one that I will ask teachers to read and discuss.

I like books. I read books, sometimes more than one at a time and sometimes only one at a time. Recently I was invited to our school board office’s book group to talk about the book by Sherman Alexie titled, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. I was invited partly because when I lived in Seattle I had the opportunity to go to many of his readings and on occasion meet him and talk. Plus I’m a pretty big fan of his. The upshot of this is that now I’m the newest member of this book group, which I’m quite excited about. I’ve never been in a book group before, so this should be fun.

In addition to reading books and enjoying books, I read stuff on the computer. I use an RSS aggregator to pull information in from sites that interest me. I annotate, bookmark, share, blog and generally hang onto articles or pieces of information that I find online that I might want to access at a later time. In addition, I even use the Avantgo service to have websites downloaded to my Palm device for reading as well. It’s all pretty good, overall.

I also subscribe to a few magazines that I can toss in my backpack as I head out the door, or leave in the car for times when I’ll be waiting somewhere.

In reading these thoughts by John and Karen, I see that in a sense, they are both correct when it comes to text and how we interact with it on a daily basis. It seems to me that there is room for all of the above. We are in an estuary if you will, a zone where text-in-a-book and text-on-a-screen are both legitimate ways to access information. Both formats have advantages disadvantages, too. For example, I’ve never tossed my laptop, lid open, across the front seats of my car and have it bounce around and land on the floor which I then pick up and use with no problem. I’ve also never opened up a book and found one of my favorite websites available for me to bookmark and/or share with others on sites like del.icio.us or diigo.

Both of these blog posts caused me to go back and look at an article that was written in The New Republic magazine three years ago in May, 2005 by David A. Bell about the emerging technologies that were in the pipeline at that time. It is a several page article that is well worth reading, in my opinion. Some of the highlites are how reading really is an unnatural act and how Johannes Gutenberg’s revolution was more a revolution of production rather than “in the product itself.”

Finally, I thought about a conference that I attended years ago in Portland, Oregon. The speaker talked briefly-very briefly-about our experience as readers. He said something to the effect that reading a book is a process where the eye receives reflected light off of the page, which is different and far easier on the eye than reading from a computer screen as this light is projected light. I found a short piece on that phenomenon at the website, Writing For The Web. I’m sure if I searched more I could find more information on this topic.

So thanks John and Karen. Good posts from both of you have helped me realize that I will still read my books and enjoy them and also read from my computer and enjoy what I read there. Now, back to some more reading . . . . . . .