Jan
10

eReader Showdown: The iPad Experience

iPad Display Item
Image via Wikipedia

To call the iPad merely an e-reader shortchanges all the great things this platform can offer to consumers. However, I originally bought my iPad to have all my e-reading experiences in one place. With apps for Kindle and Nook ebooks and a limitless range of options to connect to social networking services I use for reading (i.e., Goodreads), the iPad satiates my OCD “all-in-one” mentality.

On average, my reading experience encompasses the following activities:

  • Reading the actual book
  • Listening to music to accompany the book
  • Commenting on specific things I find interesting in the book on Twitter
  • Rating the book on Goodreads and writing a short review

The iPad is the only device to offer those all-in-one capabilities. Sure, the nook’s secondary color touchscreen features an Android-based browser, but the online experience is slow and meandering. The iPad is BUILT for an integrated e-reading experience.

The main drawbacks come in the form of size, weight, and screen type. The iPad is a bit more unwieldy to hold than the Kindle or nook, primarily due to its weight. Furthermore, I have found that I get terrible eyestrain from reading too long on the iPad. It is, after all, a big interactive computer screen and does not feature the smooth, ink-on-paper quality that E-Ink technology brings to the Kindle and the nook.

What the iPad REALLY brings to the e-reader experience, however, is the promise of multimedia integration. A great example of this is Smashing Ideas’ The War of the Worlds app. This downloadable app takes H.G. Wells‘ public domain novel into a unique bookreading experience by adding interactive, animated chapter breaks. These interpretive pieces sometimes depict the alien tripods from this epic, and readers can tap the screen which causes the tripods to animate and shoot laser beams, complete with sound effects. Granted, this particular app is somewhat limited in its imagination for the format, but consider the potential: with each page swipe, you could blend audio readings of the text or an actual conversation between characters, animated or live action video, and even puzzles and games that readers can solve to unlock different parts of the narrative.

The possibilities for this method of storytelling are endless and bound only by authors’ and developers’ imaginations. I personally would enjoy re-experiencing older works like The War of the Worlds as new, interactive iPad stories. This is what makes the iPad a much more powerful experience than its E-Ink confined competitors. Eventually, someone will design a truly limitless reading experience that incorporates audio, video, and interactivity in such a fashion that it may even become a new standard for personal consumption of stories and books. I also like the concept of nonlinear storytelling on the iPad, something that books simply cannot do well in their current configuration.

Finally, I’m intrigued by the potential for the iPad as a comics reader. Digital comics finally make sense given the color capacity of the iPad. This will be fodder for a subsequent post on digital comics.

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Nov
21

Further Notes on Posthumanity

Based on discussions I’ve been having with people online and offline since my first “Posthuman” post, I’ve been struck with a braingasm full of thoughtbombs on the subject. What will follow are a series of posts under the Futurism category and the Posthuman tag that seek to collect and organize my thinking on the subject. These posts will not always make sense or be rationally organized because I’m finding that it helps to write about them in a hyper-creative, freeform stage at this point instead of something more formalized.

The Web, Social Media, and Meta-Persona

Will humans’ collective social interactions on the Web provide the foundational data and code to create a self-aware Internet?

The collective leavings of man on the Internet are becoming overwhelmingly social, left behind data on a mass of social media platforms and at-rest social technologies. If this data continues to reside on the Web, and if different sets within this data are permitted to interact (replicating conversations between humans in the form of data), then do these coding interactions actually mimic the neural activity of the human mind…thus creating the construct for an awareness?

Imagine all the information from all the social networks people use (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, etc). It’s not just being stored on the Internet (in the cloud), it’s being shared socially, which means it’s evolving past single purpose data into evolutionary ideas. Ideas are evidence of sentience. Is it then just a matter of time before the Internet “wakes up” and interacts with mankind on it’s own behalf?

Image courtesy of The Ampersand

Consider the virtual musical act Gorillaz: 4 fictional personas whose interactions and compositions are the creation of several individual humans. These personas even interact with humans via virtual social media, e.g. Murdoc’s Twitter account. This is a form of collective identity where the personas behind Gorillaz are sublimated by the perception of the characters’ realness in online space.

Now imagine if one day the Internet woke up and spoke to us through one of these virtual personas or created one of it’s own. If we perceive sentience from the collective organization of data in such a way that the data becomes self-aware….does this nexus of man-machine interface, philosophical solipsism, and posthuman creationism signify the turning point where Everything Changes? Is this the Singularity?

[NOTE: This post was drafted using WordPress's iPad app, which strips away much important functionality from posting (such as Zemanta's pic recommendations). Its a great way to capture thoughts on the fly before they slip away from y mind, but full-on publishing has to be done through the main WP CMS to make it prettiez fer yoo.]

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Nov
20

Posthuman

Work lately has been forcing me to think about existential things. I’ve recently closed some client work that’s necessitated heavy research and reading into texts and ideas that really unsettled me. Much of my unease has to do with philosophical turmoil in that some of these ideas force me to take a really hard look at HOW I believe and not just WHAT I believe.

Image courtesy of Immortal Humans

(Belief being what it is, I shy away from ideological combat as much as possible. I find I can never come to a mutually settling agreement with those who believe in something so strongly that even rational conversation about those subjects become laced with emotional poison. I feel there is such disdain for rationalism these days that it makes more sense for me to listen, review, reflect, and pontificate only when I have a solid grasp of the issues involved. Of course, that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Hence my predilection for comic books, explosions, zombies, and tits.)

Cover of

Cover of Ilium, courtesy of Amazon.com

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the term posthuman, which is something I first heard about from sci-fi comic book writer and futurist Warren Ellis. Ellis used the word as a more apt descriptor for superhuman or super powered heroes in his comics. Posthumanism is a different concept, however, in that it considers an evolutionary state of mankind that’s difficult to conceive but generally regarded as improved or evolved past our current state; hence the “post.” I’m most interested in the science fiction concept of posthuman. In Dan Simmons‘ Ilium and Olympos, posthumans are a race of humans who have evolved so far beyond what we perceive as normal humanity that they became super-powered gods who eventually manipulated time, space and probability to play out their whims (in these books, that took the form of a recreated Trojan War). (Ilium and Olympos actually post so many interesting and thoughtful questions, I could spend weeks getting to the bottom of them.)

So I’m thinking about all of this in terms of a question: “Where are we going?” From here, from our myopic view bound by present perceptions of time, I’m falling deeper into the well of contemplating our shared future. Or futures plural. In some cases, the existential questions brought on by increasing degrees of ideological combat in today’s perception space lead me to feel more and more pessimistic about the future. So I’m what I’m trying to do is link the unfortunate human realities of the present to something much more rewarding, scientific and dynamic… something posthuman.

None of this thinking is taking the form of actual product at this time, save for blog entries like this. I have a rough idea for combining some of this thinking about posthumanity with socio-political observations about the present into some type of narrative. This would be a lot of fun to produce, but I need to spend a lot of time ironing out the theory into a story. An AWESOME story, at that.

On that note, here’s a more specific list of some of the things that have inspired this line of thinking. If you have any additional recommendations for study, please let me know in the comments.

More to follow.

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Jan
06

Let Me Entertain You

In this information overloaded culture in 2010, Our Foul Year of the Interwebz, the noise to signal ratio has never been higher. Anyone who communicates on the web these days faces a growing competitive landscape across different media, so much so that it becomes necessary to develop and nurture trust networks amongst one’s social familiars to even have a slight hope of getting your content seen (much less acted upon).

Courtesy of Chris Sims of The Invincible Super Blog

Courtesy of Chris Sims of The Invincible Super Blog

While said trust networks naturally develop audience loyalty and attention over time, there is another method you can employ that will guarantee eyeballs on your content.

Make your fucking content ENTERTAINING.

At the end of the day, people are going to remember the stuff that makes ‘em laugh or tickles their AWESOME bone. As a content provider, you should be aiming to deliver entertaining stuff every time. You want everyone who stumbles across your content to come away having the same reaction you did when you walked out of the opening day IMAX screening of The Dark Knight: “THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME!!!”

Entertainment enables AWESOME. You must perform. You have to raise your game to match and beat web personalities like Gary Vaynerchuk, whose every video blog is a blast to watch even if you don’t immediately dig his content (which caters to wine). You have to transcend this homogenization of social capital across the web and bring thunder like you’re a goddamn Greek god.

I’ll challenge you to take an even further step out on the ledge: your entertainment must be provocative. Don’t just think that by adding a soundtrack to your podcast you’re automatically more entertaining. What kind of music is it? Is it AWESOME? Do your listeners rock out to it and pay more attention to your content because of it? Using provocative methods like dirty words, shocking images, and flat-out ballsy boldness will punch your signal past all the other noise.

Many will decry my endorsement of such methods as mere shock tactics; causing controversy to draw an audience in. Well, no shit, sherlock. Content providers are competing against so many different channels of entertainment today that you must enable some Shock and Ahhh to be heard. This doesn’t mean you should let these tactics overshadow your content or your message. You can be entertaining, shocking, memorable, and deliver great stuff people will love.

Here are some examples of AWESOME entertainment across a couple different online media:

  • Chris Sims’ Invincible Super-Blog raises the bar on comics commentary by incorporating funny, often ridiculous instances of comics AWESOMENESS. Chris likes his comics full of punches and kicks, and not just normal punches and kicks, but punches and kicks delivered in the most insane ways possible. Ergo, the Punisher punching a polar bear.
Cant have that.

"Cuddly. Lovable. Docile. That won't do at all."

  • Jon Stewart transformed the face of mainstream media and news through the simple art of making fun of it. The Daily Show provides a hilarious take on current events and the personalities that report on them. Comedy Central wisely made all episodes of this show available via its website as more and more of its audience professed that they get their news from The Daily Show versus other traditional news reporting.
  • The maestros at The Cheezbuger Network took photo editing comedy to the next level with Comixed.com. In this new crowdsourcing experiment in hilarity, Comixed encourages people to remix 3-4 photos into panels that tell a story (similar to a Japanese manga technique explained here). This entertaining site has birthed several great new internet memes like “The Reaction Guys.”
The Reaction Guys

The Reaction Guys

I confess I’m having a tough time finding some badass examples of online music or podcasting that really flip my shitbiscuits. If you have any suggestions for AWESOME content I should be paying attention, by all means comment away.

Now, I admit I’m just as guilty of not being as entertaining as I could be on this blog. We’re gonna change that today. If the above pics and links weren’t AWESOME enough for you, let me leave you with this little bit of Alec Baldwin love that never gets old:

Nov
09

Station Ident: It’s a Long Way There

Not dead yet, pisos. Still recovering from many days of awesomeness in New Orleans, Louisiana, the future wedding site of El Du4 and his bride-to-be. Working on some new content for you. In the meantime, give a listen to this little ditty I recently rediscovered from my dad’s music collection, “It’s a Long Way There” by The Little River Band.

Also, while you’re listening to that, consider the AWESOME of the New Orleans Saints remaining undefeated after their fourth quarter rally against the Carolina Panthers yesterday. Notable in this achievement is the Saints’ ability to get me to give a shit about football at all. GEAUX SAINTS!

Suck on THAT, Trebek!

"Suck on THAT, Trebek!"

This is Must. Be. AWESOME. Dot com.

{Image courtesy of Chris Graythen/Getty Images.}

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