On Tablets
Hello, I’m excited by the introduction of large touchscreen tablet devices aimed at consumer markets. Are you, or anyone you know on the internet, also excited by this? Anyone?
After all, if you’re reading this, it’s probably on a laptop or desktop with a decent enough screen. Not as light as an iPad, I’d imagine. Not as convenient. Apple seems to have finally cracked the technologist dream of a computing device it won’t seem contextually alien to be using whilst on the toilet. Truly, the successor to the magazine.
Cory Doctorow is pouring scorn on the iPad already. Ostensibly for the closed and controlled ecosystem of the iTunes store, but I do recall him telling me (years before the iPhone, in the context of London Underground ticket machines) “I don’t understand your British obsession with touchscreens”.
And yeah, as Cory points out, the iPad does seem designed for a stereotype of a technophobic mother. Certainly that was my first thought: This seems ideal for my technophobic mother. She refuses, point blank, to touch keyboards. When, as a kid, I got my first computer she asked me if I knew what all the buttons did. “That’s not an answerable question,” I told her, “the function of the keys is contextually dependant. Any key can potentially do anything.” Whoops, turns out that sort of revelation is not an effective way to cure the older generation’s fear of computers. Every home visit involves lugging along a laptop purely for photo display purposes.
(Amusingly, my own long-term fear of touchscreens is based on the LCARS displays on Star Trek: TNG. Rather than have the actors learn where all the functions were located they just had them perform contextual actions and fill in the interface in post-production. Dangerously complex machinery with dynamically inconsistent control interfaces. Whenever the ship got torpedoed and the bridge crew fell against their control panels I used to worry they’d end up accidentally ejecting the warp core or something…)
Myself, I’m still a little wait-and-see iPad-wise. Certainly I’m not overly excited by the prospect of enhanced paperless versions of all the magazines I don’t already buy. (Although comic book downloads may be another story, but that’s for another post.) Of course, my instinct is to think “buy”, but magazine circulation in the UK is dominated by TV listings (already an app) and what appear to be tax dodges of some kind – i.e. not something you’d ever pay for directly. The only other magazine close to a million circulation in the UK is the sort that might be bought by those technophobic mothers.
Many on the net seem confident that the magazine format obsolete anyway, a byproduct of physical distribution constraints that mean nothing in the context of online distribution. I remember buying the Sunday paper and dropping entire sections of it, unread, directly into the recycling bin. The resentment at paying for something you don’t want is likely to be greater for anyone already used to the internet’s a-la-carte.
I’ve only managed to read one magazine cover-to-cover this year. The only reason that happened was that all the seats in the train with power sockets had been booked-up. Paper media is great for when you’re more than ‘n’ hours away from a charge point. (And I imagine charting that ‘n’ against magazine sales might reveal some rough symmetry.) It may turn out that people just want a convenient way to burn through their Instapaper queue, rather than a bundle of editorial consistency.
Certainly, whenever I see Jack Schultz showing off a Mag+ product, I’m more excited his magical CGI desk (he’s like David Warner in Tron!) than the actual real magazine he’s demonstrating. A lot of existing magazine layouts seem a little too gimmicky to me and, as Danny points out, it’s possible that the expensive presentation of text is how these paperless magazines intend to justify themselves.
I could be wrong though. While I recognise that the publishing is attempting to retrofit their pre-existing paradigm, I’m just as guilty of assuming the last decade of web-based media consumption is going to prove healthier as an ongoing model. God knows I wouldn’t wish my own online consumption on others. I learned all my bad habits back when all I had was Email and Usenet. The feed reader always fills, and every night I engage in the same goddamned truffle-hunt.
What am I thinking about? Curation? Quality vs Choice? Curating personal values in choosing quality. Like price comparisons for laptops before understanding the value of not having to use Windows. Liking chocolate fine, before tasting really good chocolate. I’ve been happy to eat the stone soup the web has provided thus far, but I’m not wholly resistant to a finer gastronomy.
I just don’t know what that looks like yet. Or, more importantly, what it feels like.
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