Review: Amazon Kindle

I finally gave into temptation and bought myself a Kindle e-book reader, which I'm so far very impressed with.

I immediately went to manybooks.net and downloaded a couple dozen literary classics (Candide, Metamorphosis, Ulysses, etc.), all free. I also transferred a couple dozen philosophy PDFs that I've been meaning to read.

Unfortunately, one of these was a scanned-image pdf (JSTOR style), which didn't transfer at all well. The Kindle shrinks images to fit, so I could barely make out the words. So much for JSTOR. But I was relieved to find that the others (including ordinary text-based PDFs) convert and display perfectly reasonably well. I think the only other downside to bear in mind here is that you lose page numbering. Kindle includes a replacement measure called "location", but that won't be much help if you're trying to sync with other people who are reading non-Kindle versions of the text. Oh, and logical symbols get mangled -- '$' in place of the existential quantifier, etc.

Other than that, I have no serious complaints. I find the Kindle very pleasant and comfortable to read from -- the main selling point is, after all, its ink-based display technology -- there's no glare, so it feels like reading a book, unlike backlit computer screens. (Minor aesthetic complaint: the background is a newspaperish gray rather than pure white.) It's small, light, and easy to hold. Some people complain that it's too easy to accidentally bump the 'next page' button, but I haven't found this a problem myself, so long as I put it to sleep when carrying rather than reading it.

I like the navigation a lot. It's actually quicker and easier than turning a page in a regular book. Granted, you can't flick through multiple pages nearly so well, but there is a 'search' feature which more than compensates for this. Other options allow you to 'highlight' text, 'add notes', or 'bookmark' pages for future reference. And you don't need to worry about losing your place, since whenever you open a document, it picks up from wherever you previously left off. (I should note that the tiny keyboard is made for thumbing, not typing, so you won't be writing treatises in the margins. But it's handy enough for jotting down quick thoughts as you read.)

Aside from comfortably reading e-books and online papers, the other great feature of the Kindle is free mobile internet. The display is a bit awkward, and - combined with the clunky little keyboard - you certainly wouldn't want to use it as your primary form of internet access. But it's nice to have access to email on the go, and my feed reader (bloglines) works tolerably well on it, too. (I'm sure the iPhone is much better in these respects, but I'm deterred by the price tag.)

Other features are fun but superficial. There's an mp3 player, but the sound quality isn't great. There's a (black-and-white) picture viewer, and it's nice to be able to carry around photos of loved ones, but the resolution is far from photo-quality. I hear you can even play Minesweeper, but I fortunately haven't gotten that bored of reading yet!

Is it worth $399? It is for me, though it may not be for everybody. There's a lot of free digital content out there that I can now take full advantage of. In particular, my main reason for buying the Kindle was to read online philosophy papers, which it's great for. But now that I've got it, I find that I'm also appreciating the opportunity to read all those old literary classics that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten around to. I don't expect to buy much paid content from the Kindle store, since I don't tend to buy much of anything, but you might want to compare prices if you're into that kind of thing. (I gather the Kindle versions tend to be slightly cheaper than hardcopies, and they're conveniently "delivered" to your device in minutes.) At present, selection seems to be limited mostly to new bestsellers and old public domain works. So be warned: anything in between may not be available.

Full disclosure: Amazon will give me a 10% referral fee if you buy it via this link!

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Review: Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations explores the power of new communications technology and social media to transform society. As a blogger, it's a topic I find very appealing.

Shirky begins with a premise about human nature: we're social animals and like to form groups. Recent changes have radically reduced the costs of doing so, broadening access to "capabilities [e.g. publishing] previously reserved for professionals" (p.17) and thus empowering people to organize themselves, with occasionally spectacular results. Shirky writes (p.22):

The current change, in one sentence, is this: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.

The fuller explanation involves Coasean economics. (1) Note that transaction costs would skyrocket if everyone worked freelance, constantly negotiating in the marketplace. That's why we have firms ("organizations"): it can be more efficient to have managers simply order their employees about. (2) However, managerial overhead brings its own costs. This implies what Shirky calls a Coasean floor, beneath which lie potentially valuable activities that cannot be profitably realized by either market or institutional means. However (p.47):

Now that it is possible to achieve large-scale co-ordination at low cost, a third category has emerged: serious, complex work, taken on without institutional direction. Loosely coordinated groups can now achieve things that were previously out of reach for any other organizational structure, because they lay under the Coasean floor.

The cost of all kinds of group activity--sharing, cooperation, and collective action--have fallen so far so fast that activities previously hidden beneath the floor are now coming to light. We didn't notice how many things were under that floor because, prior to the current era, the alternative to institutional action was usually no action. Social tools provide a third alternative: action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive.

It's a nice enough analysis, but the real value of this book lies in its illustrative examples. Shirky discusses everything from Flickr, blogs, and open source software, to flash mobs, political protesters, Wiccan meetups, and Catholic lay groups self-organizing for the first time ever to reform the Church.

There are also little insights scattered throughout the book. Consider, for example, the common disdain felt towards the "drivel" posted on Livejournal and the like (pp.85-6):

We misread these seemingly inane posts because we're so unused to seeing written material in public that isn't intended for us... if you were listening in on their conversation at the mall, as opposed to reading their post, it would be clear that you were the weird one...

Most user-generated content isn't "content" at all, in the sense of being created for general consumption, any more than a phone call between you and a relative is "family-generated content." Most of what gets created on any given day is just the ordinary stuff of life--gossip, little updates, thinking out loud--but now it's done in the same medium as professionally produced material.

I also liked his point about the impossibility of full-blown interactivity with the famous, no matter what technology we might come up with. To be famous is to receive more incoming attention than one could realistically hope to reciprocate (by any means). So even bloggers, when they hit the big time, are forced to become mere broadcasters rather than responsive participants in an open conversation. (A good reason not to desire fame, I should think!)

The book also contains some interesting thoughts on political and social change, especially the importance of "lower[ing] the hurdles to doing something in the first place, so that people who cared a little could participate a little, while being effective in aggregate." (pp.181-2):

Having a handful of highly motivated people and a mass of barely motivated ones used to be a recipe for frustration. The people who were on fire wondered why the general population didn't care more, and the general population wondered why those obsessed people didn't just shut up. Now the highly motivated people can create a context more easily in which the barely motivated people can be effective without having to become activists themselves.

One thing Shirky emphasizes throughout is the way that so-called "cyberspace" is growing increasingly intertwined with meatspace. He discusses using his mobile phone, and a service called 'dodgeball', to learn that a friend of a friend was currently in the same NYC bar. Conversation ensued: "I'm Clay. If Dennis were here, he'd introduce us." (p.219) Pretty amazing, really, and something we can expect to become increasingly common.

Finally, a couple of cute philosophy quotes:

The groups now adopting social tools form the experimental wing of political philosophy, a place where hard questions of group governance are being worked out. [p.? lost it.]

Wikis take on one of the most basic questions of political philosophy: Who will guard the guardians? Their answer is, everyone. [p.272]

Note that if you're looking for a rigorous academic work on social media and the promise of peer-production, you can't go past Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks (available for free, here). But Here Comes Everybody offers an accessible introduction to the broad issues raised by social media, so I would especially recommend it to non-specialists who are curious to learn what all the fuss is about.

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The Multicultural Mystique

Let me recommend H.E. Baber's The Multicultural Mystique: the liberal case against diversity. The book's core argument is as follows:

Multiculturalism restricts individual freedom. Because it renders characteristics that are ascribed and immutable salient and imposes scripts on individuals in virtue of them, it restricts the freedom of individuals to be “treated as individuals.”

No one is completely free to invent himself. There are countless characteristics we have that are ascribed and immutable, including sex, race and ancestry, height, handedness and sexual orientation. The aim of liberals, for whom individual freedom is of paramount importance, is to minimize the extent to which such unchosen characteristics affect the way in which people’s lives go — the way in which they are perceived and treated, the way in which they are supposed to behave, and the range of options open to them. Multiculturalism, because it promotes the salience of race and ancestry, and scripts ethnic identity, is therefore inconsistent with liberalism.

I must admit that I'm antecedently disposed to agree. But I still found it an eye-opening read, especially Baber's analysis of white privilege as non-salience:

Going native, at least temporarily, has always been an option for privileged white Americans, from anthropologists studying exotic cultures as participant-observers to journalists embedded with native families to report on their doings, and no one ever suggests that those who manage to go native permanently are inauthentic or self-hating. White privilege is the privilege of self-invention. Immigrants and members of ethnic minorities do not have that luxury. Even when they are not locked out of the mainstream by discrimination and economic disadvantage, multiculturalist notions of authenticity, role obligation and group loyalty dog them.

Baber acknowledges the tension between individual liberty and cultural preservation, but comes down firmly in favour of the former. If few informed young adults would wish to remain Amish, too bad for the culture; it's no excuse to stunt their education and deprive them of the choice. (N.B. Baber assumes that only individual preference satisfaction has real value. It would be interesting to consider whether "communitarian" alternatives are defensible. But I guess that would go beyond the book's scope as expounding "the liberal case against diversity.")

It's worth noting here that Baber's case rests on a particular conception of liberalism, according to which "individual freedom in the interests of desire-satisfaction is the supreme value." Alternative forms of liberalism might be grounded on the ideal of political neutrality between comprehensive moral doctrines (making the Amish dilemma rather more difficult!), though Baber appears to dismiss this alongside "namby-pamby relativis[m]". A bit more detail here would have been nice -- but again, a single book can't cover everything.

What this book does cover, it does extremely well. Throughout, Baber reminds us that "there is no guarantee of a pre-established harmony between individuals’ interests and aspirations and cultural expectations." It seems obvious, once she puts it like that, but the point is too often neglected in multiculturalist discourse. Whenever people make claims about "what the _____ community want", it's worth bearing in mind that there will inevitably be internal dissent. All we've really been told is what the cultural elite want. And if that involves oppressing sub-cultures and unheard individuals, we should surely think twice before "respecting" those preferences.

A final point worth highlighting: drawing on Richard Thompson Ford, Baber identifies a contradiction at the core of common appeals to 'group rights', i.e. when a person claims special exemption from the usual rules in virtue of her group identity (and not just individual liberty more generally):

On the one hand their supporters made out that their behavior was harmless: a matter of self-expression that had no significant consequences for anyone else. On the other hand supporters claimed that it was specially protected on cultural or religious grounds--in which case it was not a mere matter of self-expression that had no significant consequences for anyone else but had import for other [group members].

By granting a special exemption for Muslim schoolgirls to wear headscarves, we affirm that this is part of what it is to be Muslim. It is a slap in the face to other Muslim women who contest those norms, and who would not accept this as an accurate characterization of their (desired) culture. As Baber quotes Ford, to grant such group rights "would be an intervention in the long-standing debate among [group members] about empowerment strategies and norms of identity and identification... A right to group difference may be experienced as meddlesome at best and oppressive at worst even by some members of the group that the rights regime ostensibly benefits."

But enough for one blog post -- do read the whole thing. (And drop a comment with your thoughts!)

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