Not All Who Wander Are Lost

E-textbooks aren't selling, says CNN, which posits both an eventual acceleration in sales and cites surprise that the digital generation isn't as digital as folks thought they were.

But I wonder if those who expect "comfort" to grow are underestimating the subconsciously developing instincts of the digital generation. I mean, I'm only half digital, but I found the e-version of Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe so inacessible that I made it to the library within the first ten pages to continue the job.

Quoted anecdotals in CNN's most recent foray into this broad issue cite the limitations of ownership in digital texts, such as the current inability to easily highlight, which will eventually shift as our mindtools evolve, though it may never be as comfortable or permanent as the true joy of bookhacking with pencil and pagefold.

But the paperesque strategies of ownership are not all there is to ownership; the truths of screenreading are not the truths of paperreading.

The conceit of e-speech as short-and-sweet, is constantly reinforced, and seems anathema to the idealized use of textbooks. And we know that from a primarily holistic perspective (as opposed to a practice-and-habit perspective), which would include everything from sensory psychology to workplace ergonomics, the screenread results in less and slower absorption, which means screen-writing mandates shorter paragraphs. And shorter paragraphs seem anathema to the very premise of textbook, by which I mean they are not likely to be typically best-serving of the typographic needs of the field-specific textbook, which aches to be written, read, and treated as deep and detailed.

Profs can try to assign these texts all they want, I suspect; bookstore managers are free to stock what they will, and suggest to CNN that it is a matter of time before students move towards the e-book (though they should have by now, if they were going to). But students who really grok digital may continue to resist. The medium is the message, after all: after years growing digital, our habits of mind and our sensory truths may out the digital textbook as a fluke for the few, a type for the practitioner, rather than a true medium for the learned whether cybercitizen or luddite.

McLuhanists would posit, of course, that the digital scholar would not only write to, but eventually study, that which best befits the cybertext. But Neil Postman always knew we could only reach our full potential in the best sort of literate, wordsmithed scholarship through the word-as-it-is, not the word-of-the-screen. Paper may yet be vital to our study of the universe.

It may not, of course. McLuhan and Postman have been ever-right before, but I suppose the true nature of the C-Change is that it contains all possibility, can only be proven in hindsight. In the meantime, while we wait for time to tell, let us end here, lest the screenwrite -- like our paragraphs herein -- run too long for our topic at hand.

MetaMp3Blogging: So You Don't Have To

Best musicblog aggregator, period: The Hype Machine. My mp3 bloglist overfloweth; at this rate, the iPod will hit the full 60 gigs by March.

Best musicblog concept: writer's week @ Moistworks (now in its second week). Jonathan Lethem's doublepost regarding fowlsongs makes me want to cry.

Best Valentine's mix: Trees Lounge. A dozen or more close seconds over at Hype, though -- taken altogether, they provide a comprehensive spectrum of love (and antilove) in all its guises.

Cette fois que tu m'embrasse, au bout de notre rue
Les lampes de gaz nous allumiere... (Valentine Moon)

The moon is rising, she said, and we bundled the kids up in blankets and scarves, loaded them together on to the runner sled for a haul up to the meadow.

Six months since we settled, and our first under our backyard trees postdusk. The path was unfamiliar, almostdark. Under cover of pinebranch the pristine snow obscured still-unfamiliar roots. Our boots slipped and filled with snow. The sled tipped twice. The infant first faced with snow faced it face first.

And though the slog was strenuous, our feet were light. For there, in the middle of it all, just a hundred yards and a million miles from our own warm stoves and couches, the world opened up all-of-a-wow.

The meadow was a revelation, startlingly open to the night sky. And there on the horizon, bracketed by cloud, rose the moon.

What's that? asked Cassia. Moon, we told her. Pretty moon, she replied, and we agreed.

At my feet Willow laughed, pushed glowsticks into the snow, making doubleyous.

Across a pure sheet of reed-broken white, the meadow glowed in streaks from the treebroken moonlight.

We smiled at each other in the halflight, just long enough to make forever.

And then we disappeared into the dark, separate but together, warm in our hearts, children in our arms.

You can have your flowers, your chocolate, your cards. For Valentine's Day this year my wife brought me the bright moon, the stars, the crisp clear night air; bakyard adventure and the family to share it with.

I love her for it.

I love her for everything.

World willing, she'll be mine forever.

Slashdot reports on recent research which determines that I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

(In true Slashdot fashion, the toneless thread then beats it to death, pre-empting most expansion herein.)

No clarity on whether the emoticon counts for much, plus or minus, in the original study. But the coinflip odds for interpretation suggest that tonality is truly absent from purely textual, one-shot e-speech, though surely context and design/typographic cues can make some difference in more real-world cases, especially when we're talking about ongoing dialog or more mediarich examples of textographic communication.

That said, we'll still file this under a phenom common to all human behavior -- that of thinking that we're better at most interpretive tasks than we actually are. Interesting to see hard numbers, though.

Had so much fun polishing the children's story I'm thinking of writing another one this summer instead of, say, a novel. Or maybe I'll just shop this one around for a while.

Serious consideration given tonight to dropping the formality of my commitment to literary bibliography (but not the commitment itself) a la Some Books in Some Weeks. It's not that I'm not reading the good stuff; it's that the Sunday night stress is getting to me.

Two and a half feet of snow, twenty miles to commute, and I'm just worried about getting out of the driveway tomorrow. At least the garage keeps the cars cleared.

Finally got the video, though the camera battery died seven seconds in. We'll have it in the shop this week to get the battery case open; in the meantime, enjoy a short clip of this year's indoor olympics courtesy of YouTube.

Other Olympic events today included "walking in two feet of snowpowder with Willow" and "one-and-a-half man long-distance driveway sledding". Who needs TV when there's snow?

Snow overnight: 7 inches since the first dusting long after midnight and it's still falling, white and fluffy as a snowglobe.

Up with the baby at dawn to see: an hour on the floor, while her sister and Mama slept late, set the tone for a snuggly day-to-come of hot chocolate and household laziness.

At ten months she's come alive anew. I tried to catch some video of her "walking", tiny hands clutching the small stuffed sheep on wheels as she pushes herself along, but the battery case of our camera is stuck shut; I gave up before the day could sour.

If you could see it, there'd be chickadees and nuthatches, a few solo junkoes flutter from laden tree to seedfeeder and back again, their light bodies causing avalanches on each branch as they land anew.

In the big picture windows the wind blows sporadic, sending squalls across the window. Each gust blurs out the universe, making our cozy indoor haven more real by comparison.

Here in the home the family slowly comes to morning. As I write, Willow struggles with a fresh pair of feet pajamas; infant Cassia heads up for a nap with Mama, tired after a morning's play and wonder with Daddy. The senses fill beyond the camera capturable: light jazz on the Sunday radio; warm fire in the pellet stove; the sweet sounds of rustling cereal boxes, a household full of tiny female wakewhispers.

Somewhere under these heavy white blankets green shoots are dying. One day, these memories will be all we have.

[Update 9:59 am: Not enough battery for video, but I did manage to squeeze a few pix off before the camera went dead. Click on pix below for larger images and access to the whole underutilized album, courtesy of flickr.

Cassia Jade: ten months old and already a morning person.

How to handle an older sister.

And an older shot of the older kid.