Kindle: not your parents’ eBook

On November 19, Amazon.com announced its first foray into hardware: a portable eBook reader called the Kindle. Amazon hopes the Kindle will become the iPod of books - a portable personal library you can take anywhere. That same day, the National Endowment for the Arts announced the results of a new study: young Americans are reading less. So it makes sense that despite obvious similarities, the Kindle and the iPod target very different markets. Whereas Apple turned the iPod into an icon of digital native culture, Amazon is aiming the Kindle squarely at digital immigrants.

Look at the features Amazon is touting. A display that mimics the look of ink on paper. A built in wireless book store so you never have to touch a computer. The ability to change text size. In short, it’s designed for people who hate using computers and have bad eyesight. Meanwhile, with a screen saver featuring the likes of Jane Austen and the Gutenberg printing press, along with what the popular technology blog Engadget calls “a big ol’ dose of the ugly,” the Kindle is almost aggressively unhip. As one analyst told the Wall Street Journal, “No one is going to buy Kindle for its sex appeal.”

Moreover, digital natives tend to be more comfortable reading from traditional LCD screens than their parents are. Indeed, some of us, myself included, actually prefer reading from a screen. I’d much rather read a book on, say, an iPhone, than have to carry a separate device. But as the NEA study makes clear, most readers aren’t digital natives. If older consumers take to the Kindle in droves, perhaps they could become the digital natives of literature, defining the new paradigm for how we read digital books. In a sense then, whether knowingly or not, Amazon is performing a large-scale social experiment. We can’t wait to see the results.

by Jesse Baer http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/digitalnatives/

Media Studies For Positive Change?

Can Media Studies have a positive effect? I'd like to think that it can - and does.

With this blog we will be attempting to clarify many of the issues confronting Media Studies Teachers and Students. From lack of technical know-how to being overwhelmed by the incredible amount of resources available; from the problem of lack of time to adequately research (or even comprehend) rapid changes in technology, and it's ethical uses to the fact that many students naturally understand how these technologies work and how they are used and yet seem to have no understanding of the implications of their use.

MSTFPC hope to remove the fear of technology inherent within many experienced Media Studies Teachers and provide a forum for discussion with peers and Media Professionals.