For all you readers out there...

Santa, Baby,
Leave a Kindle under the tree, for me,
Been a good reader, and so…

I probably won’t be getting a Kindle for Christmas. And I don’t just say that because I’m Jewish. I say it because the simple truth is that it’s way out of the price range of anyone I get gifts from. And, well, most people who’ve even heard of the Kindle, are early adopters, gadget heads, Oprah watchers, avid Amazon wish-list makers, writers, or insatiable readers; or some combination of all--and really, my people are all broke versions of the above description.

If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. The Kindle is a handheld ebook device. It is the proud production of the folks who brought us the internet book store, the small bookstore and independent bookstore marketplace, and CreateSpace, a print-on-demand client; Amazon. With Kindle, Amazon brings on what some consider the doom of the “book,” and others the liberation of the author.

Steve Windwalker is in the latter group. A self-published author, and Bestselling author in the Amazon Kindle bookstore, Windwalker has written several guides to the Kindle since its inception a year ago. He has also written Bey ond the Literary-Industrial Complex, a polemic part manifesto / part how-to guide. Windwalker contends in his book (published both electronically and traditionally through his press, the Harvard Perspectives Press) and when speaking that the Kindle is, and should be, part of an inexorable wave of change in the way books are published and sold.

In fact, Windwalker explains, the Kindle is simply the current top technology for a net-based movement that is far older. Writers have already been liberating themselves, they’re simply finding the Kindle to be the next best way of doing it.
“Amazon’s goal in creating the Kindle, wasn’t to create the best device ever; it was to create the bridge so that they would still be selling books in 2018” Windwalker said. “They’ve set the bar in terms of delivery and content. So I think when you combine that with the fact that writers are blogging and writing books online and doing all kinds of things and the whole focus of what is considered journalism has changed.”

The doomsayers, on the other hand, are bemoaning their private libraries. One anonymous poster on a writers’ listserv spoke of the Kindle as a machine that would need constant replacing and would make buying physical books obsolete, and thus create a situation in which, if one had a library at all, it was a collection of Kindles and memory cards. He then went on to describe his doomsday scene, in which the world is subjected to an electrical bomb, which would then wipe out all the Kindles, leaving all humanity without any of its published record. We would have no way to recover the glory of human publication from such a disaster as all databases would be wiped out and we will have long since thrown out our books.
The truth, always, lies somewhere in the middle.

Windwalker doesn’t represent the Kindle as the end of all books, but does see publishing in general headed in that direction. For him, all Amazon did was recognize the coming wave early enough to be the leader.
“The Kindle is not going to do this in any kind of quick time-span. But I think a lot of that kind of change never is absolute, as its heralds proclaim, but [it] is going to occur in waves.”

And perhaps the corner of possibility was turned when Oprah jumped aboard, in late October, with a show all about the device and a discount offer for her viewers. Those lucky enough to have been in the audience that day received their Kindle for free. It was under their seats. And as she breathlessly praised the device, she held it in her hands and suggested they pick it up. She explained that it naturally could store up to 200 books, had GPS and emailing as well as free blogging access, and users could even ask it questions. The entire audience was Kindled.

“And,” she mouthed with that deep excitement that has earned her a yelling satire on Saturday Night Live, “with a memory card it can even hold four th-OU-sand books. FOUR THOUSAND!”

For Windwalker, the Oprah effect is particularly fascinating.

“The interesting thing about the show was that we’ve seen for years that she can sell a $15 book, but there she was selling a $359 gadget, and by my calculations, Amazon sold about 100,000 after the show.”

Windwalker’s sales went up by about 500 percent by his own estimation before Amazon started having to backorder the device. The fascination is not just in Oprah’s ability to sell a big ticket item, it lies also in her ability to do so as the national economy tanks and many people find themselves jobless, or facing that possibility, and even those who have managed to maintain employment face grocery bills that climb on a weekly basis.

The Kindle is selling, regardless. Or, perhaps, because of. One of the arguments for the Kindle in a time of economic crisis is that Amazon’s Kindle books sell for $9.99 a piece; roughly half the price of the average book. By buying a Kindle, the argument goes, one is saving on one’s book budget.

One blogger, at thekindle.wordpress.com, suggests this logic is false.

“Truth is, you are never going to get back that $359,” The blog explains. “All the fancy projections you are hearing about how buying x books a month will get you your $395 back in a year are nonsense.”

Why? Because book lovers buy books. And when book lovers can buy books more cheaply, have ready access to them whenever and wherever they may be, and use simple, light, handheld technology to do so, they will buy more books.

Thekindle blog rather wisely suggests that if you are looking at the Kindle as an investment in lowering your book budget, either look again, or purchase a will of steal to go with it. Instead, the author suggests, you may want to look at the Kindle as a way to “get more book bang for your buck.”

Just as buying any item on sale still requires the outlay of money, buying the Kindle allows the user to then have an ongoing book sale at his or her fingertips. In this way, we are allowed to drool over the idea of the Kindle. We are encouraged to do so. But just a little more realistically. The logic of getting one’s money back is only economically sound for an item that can earn money.

But lookee-here! The Kindle can.

For writers, Windwalker says, the Kindle, in concert with CreateSpace brings the concept of the indie market to publishing. It may even remove some of the stigma associated with the vanity press—lightheartedly lampooned in Beyond the Literary-Industrial Complex with a dialogue between writer and book in which the writer shyly says, “But I would never want it to get around that I was paying for it.”
And while Windwalker does posit that at this point in time self-publishing is simply easier for non-fiction and niche-based books because such books have a very clear audience and thus make distribution and marketing far easier for the self-publishing writer, that may not be a long-term actuality.

“It’s amazing that there’s so much openness in the world of Indie music and film to do-it-yourself models without stuff getting stigmatized as; ‘here’s a song by a guy who couldn’t find a label.’”

In fact, Indie music and film are heralded as the truer, less commercialized forms of art. Because there are no big dollars behind the artists, there is no pop-stigma. The pieces are looked at as thinking-people’s art. An entire cable channel is dedicated solely to the world of independent film, to match the Indie film festivals that are highly attended and covered, and most large communities or cities have radio stations entirely dedicated to Indie music. No one would suggest to Ani DiFranco that Righteous Babe Records is pointless because she built it herself.
Why, then, the taboo of the vanity press, and is the Kindle really the solution? Windwalker points to the writing cottage industry both in his book and in talking about the future of Indie publishing (whether it be Kindle or any other device that allows it to flourish). In particular, he blames the MFA and big publishing industries for perpetuating the taboo. Because so many writers make money from the teaching of writing and so many writers pay money to the cottage industry of learning to write, the supposed impossibility of being a real author is made overt and self-perpetuating. But he doesn’t see that lasting very long.

“I do think that 8 or 10 years out, it’s going to be a very different world, with respect to those things, and part of it is that technology allows change,” Windwalker said. The Kindle, for him has helped bring this about by bringing the cost of self-publishing to the ground. When he first began his publishing company, the cost of a small run of books was $3-5 thousand. “Now, the cost through Kindle is $0.”

In addition, he cites generational demands that will radically change the situation within the decade.

“It will be gradual. There won’t be any point where we can say ‘Ah the Kindle did that.’ It will occur in ways and there will be other forces, and it may not even be the Kindle. One of the things that Amazon has set itself up for with the Kindle, is that they will be very well positioned if the Kindle flames out and is replaced by an Apple device. Amazon only has to flip some switches so that that stuff is available on Amazon for the Apple device.”

Ultimately, though, Windwalker believes that the Kindle is merely a bridge to the next generation of reading and readers. And perhaps, if one takes Oprah’s view, it doesn’t matter what people use to read, so long as they read more. If nothing else, the Kindle seems to be proving that people do want to read more.

As for me, I will have to wait for Kindle 2.0, as Windwalker puts it, that will likely come in colors and have even neater features, before I can afford a Kindle 1.0—whose cost will go down drastically as did the iPod’s. Unless I can get ahold of Santa before Christmas.

why I use facebook scrabble to help me grade

Wordsworth wrote (and with a name like his, how could he not?):

"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
1806.

And that was two hundred years ago.

I sit here with my facbook open, my Tweetdeck running behind the scenes, but also my TwitKit on the left-hand bar of my window, and thinking about windows. There is a jungle in my back yard. I even have Ginger plants, but I use my greenpatch to "play" with plants--possibly because I was born with two black thumbs.

Don't get me wrong; I have no need, no use, no wish to return to an "earlier" or "more innocent" time. As far as I can tell, those times had high death rates from things other than murder, war and genocide. People died of appendicitis, the flu, stomach issues, even old age (that's 40 years old). And a hot shower was not really an option at any time of day.

Worse, I would not be able to keep in touch with my friends around the world by simply sending an imaginary plant.

And yet...

And yet I look at my work and wonder if I ever stop looking at my work. If I ever stop worrying about money and possessions. If I will ever stop trying to get and do more. And I doubt I will. Even for our trip to Spain, Jaime and I have itineraries, plans, museum wishes.

So the world is too much with me late and soon. But I keep finding new ways to make it more so. And I doubt it will ever work in reverse.

I keep composing, for someday I will decompose. ;)

The Last Lecture: A Study in Circulation

Leah F. Cassorla

Prof. Kathi Yancey

Digital Convergence

29 September 2008

The Last Lecture: A Study in Circulation

Randy Pausch

On September 18, 2007, a professor at Carnegie Mellon gave a lecture that turned out to be a whole lot more. Though described in the press as “beloved” at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Randy Pausch was certainly as unknown as professors generally are. Even so, a crowd of 400 attended the lecture. It was recorded for the few who could not be there. Within days, Pausch’s lecture would become an internet phenomenon—a rare occurrence for any lecture. Pausch was giving his Last Lecture.

As he explained a month later on Oprah, the Last Lecture is a genre of lecture in which a professor is invited to give the talk she would give were it to be the last thing she could say to the world. It is intended as somewhat of an intellectual exercise, to allow a thinker to condense his understanding of his years in the field into one hour (or so) long speech. As the Wall Street Journal column about Pausch’s lecture said, “Dr. Pausch’s speech was more than just an academic exercise…[he] has pancreatic cancer” (Zaslow, “Beloved Professor” prs. 4). His lecture was, it turned out, the real deal. Pausch, in fact, began by showing CTs of his tumor-riddled liver and explaining the facts of pancreatic cancer; it is the fastest, most painful, and deadliest of cancers, with an average life expectancy of three to six months for most patients. Nearly a year past the original diagnosis, Pausch had just been given the three to six month prognosis when he chose to give his lecture. He told the audience he was one month into the prognosis. He went on, however, to talk about life, dreams, and having fun.

The Circulation of the Last Lecture

Pausch’s lecture was posted on the web the same day he gave it. He had asked that it be filmed so his young children would be able to view it when they got older. It was first circulated for the students who couldn’t attend. But then all 76 minutes of the lecture were uploaded to YouTube.com. YouTube is an interesting phenomenon as far as circulation is concerned. Because of its vast stores of video, uploaded by anyone who chooses to become a member, the chance of “hitting big” on YouTube are rather hit or miss. It could just as easily have been viewed on YouTube by a handful of people and stayed there in obscurity. Zaslow’s inclusion of the video in the online column on the lecture—and his inclusion of it in the follow up to the column a week later—may have also helped, but by the time Zaslow wrote his second column, he was writing as a result of the stacks of email he was receiving to pass on to Pausch.

By October 24, 2007, more than 6 million users had watched the YouTube version of The Last Lecture. Pausch was on Oprah. According to his homepage and the later book’s homepage, Pausch asked for 10 minutes of Oprah’s time to deliver a miniature version of his lecture as a precondition for appearing on her show. He got it. The Oprah Show, put the 10-minute speech on her web page. The page now also links to follow up shows, and one show in which a rabbi who comes on Oprah as a regular commentator on family and life discusses the book. Yes, the book.

By this time, Pausch had asked Carnegie Mellon to not copyright the lecture. Carnegie Mellon agreed. Following a $6.7 million deal, however, Hyperion published a book version of The Last Lecture. Described as an extension of his thoughts in the original lecture, the book was written by Jeff Zaslow, the columnist who helped put Pausch on the internet stage. The book was released on April 4, 2008. Pausch was still alive. On April 11, 2008, Pausch was featured on a Diane Sawyer special. By this time, according to a USA Today story, “[b]ecause Pausch had lived longer than expected, some bloggers…claimed he [wasn’t] sick at all” (Wilson prs. 39). As a media sensation, Pausch was now also an active conspiracy theory. The book has also given birth to a website—a fairly common practice in book publishing—which includes a page of “extras” including a “lost chapter” and an “exclusive” video of Pausch discussing his book. The site also has a message board. Readers are still posting today with names and levels of ability in English that indicate readership from around the world. The media page on the site includes links to the dozens of pieces of coverage. Pausch passed away on July 25, 2008. The media page of his book includes links to media tributes and obituaries as well.

The next question, once the book was out, seemed obvious; now that Pausch had a YouTube video, an Oprah appearance, a book, a Diane Sawyer special and several news stories, would there be a movie? Pausch’s refusal can be read as a commentary on remediation and on circulation: “There’s a reason to do the book, but if it’s telling the lecture in the medium of film, we already have that,” he told USA Today (prs. 32).

In Circulation

Besides being an homage to the brilliance of his last lecture, this story is a telling description of the movement of a cultural phenomenon into and through media. This is not, however, a story of remediation, though it could be told as one, I think. It is more a story of circulation. Watching Pausch’s Carnegie Mellon lecture, his Oprah mini-lecture, and his Diane Sawyer special, one gets the same message—and in very much the same way. The text may be truncated for time, and in the case of the special, it is interspersed with interview footage, but Randy Pausch is, as many professors are, a consummate performer, and his performances contain the seed of his work throughout.

I have not read the book. It might be considered a remediation because it was written primarily by Zaslow. But when one looks at Zaslow’s columns and at the vast amounts of information on the book’s webpage, one gets the sense that Zaslow’s work was as organizer and editor more than as ghost-writer. The book, according to Zaslow, is the outcome of hours of taped interviews which Zaslow transcribed and rearranged. As such, I would argue that the book is a matter of recirculation of the lecture—a story of a boy whose parents allowed him to write math equations and draw pictures on his bedroom walls, who learned to dream and followed through on those dreams, and was now trying hard to get the world to do the same; dream, and follow those dreams—and in each version of the lecture, he also begs parents to allow their children to write and draw on their bedroom walls so that perhaps they, too, will become dreamers and professors.

In addition to the faithfulness of the many faces of the Pausch story in its different media, one must also take into consideration the speed with which the story—and its versions—spread. Within a week of delivery of his first lecture, Pausch’s video had been viewed over a million times. Within a month, he was on Oprah. The longest lag was the seven months from lecture to book. I suppose that’s a necessary outcome of pancreatic cancer. My uncle died of pancreatic cancer two years ago. His disease process lasted fewer than ten months. But the speed of movement through media also affects the way in which a story is told. There seems to be less of a “telephone” effect. The message remains what it is, or as Pausch told USA Today in refusing to create a movie version, “Besides, you lose control” (prs. 32).

Works Cited

“Confronting Death.” The Oprah Winfrey Show. Harpo Productions. Chicago. 24 October 2007. Web. 27 September 2008.

Pausch, Randy. Interview by Diane Sawyer. “The Last Lecture.” GoogleVideo. 11 April 2008. Web. 27 September 2008.

Pausch, Randy. “The Last Lecture.” YouTube. 20 September 2007.Web. 27 September 2008.

Pausch, Randy with Jeffrey Zaslow. “The Last Lecture.” Hyperion. 2008. Web. 27 September 2008.

Wilson, Craig. “Professor Pausch’s Life, ‘Lecture’ go from Web to book.” USA Today. USA Today. 8 April 2008. Web. 27 September 2008.

Zaslow, Jeffrey. “A Beloved Professor Delivers the Lecture of a Lifetime.” Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal. 20 September 2007. Web. 27 September 2008.

Zaslow, Jeffrey. “The Professor’s Manifesto: What It Meant to Readers.” Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal. 27 September 2007. Web. 27 September 2008.