My kinda day! Politics and technology intersect. President Barrack Obama’s will address the nation tonight and Apple will announce its latest consumer gadget, the Ipad®. Politics and technology have the same objective every now and then. They both aim to change the world or fix a problem which, their competitors or opponents have been unable to remedy. Each then asks for either our vote or money.
The Ipad®, Kindle, and Sony reader will usher in a new class of readers or expand the reading palette of existing readers. As the number of readers grow, Apple and it competitors will stand to make a buck or two. To be clear, Steve Jobs did not convene a meeting and ask “how do we increase the reading population in the world.” So maybe the goal for making electronic readers was to make lots of money, but like other technologies the impact will beyond our grasp.
I wonder how these electronic readers will impact the public library as we know it today. How accessible books will be for those who cannot afford these readers? In the next century, will we have buildings where people congregate to read, write and think? What about librarians? When I was student, I only bought second-hand books, even if they were a couple of editions old because I never had enough money to buy new copies. How is that market going change?
Today, we take for granted how the majority of people access books and literature. It is the paper edition, now that we have the electronic edition. It has provided both poor and rich children the opportunity to peek into world beyond their immediate surroundings. Is all of that going to change with the electronic reader? How about censorship? Will governments and authorities be able to ban to ban and censor materials they do not want their subjects to read? I can hide a book, but can I erase my electronic library? Can the censors take a peek at my reading schedule when I connect-however one defines connection-since in electronic terms we cannot hide our tracks.
But it needs not to be all gloom and doom.
The new electronic readers will usher in an era of cheap books (I hear the going price of e-books will be $9.99 and finally we can do away with the pompous hardback. I hate hardback) and access to millions of old books that are no longer in print. It will allow many readers at the click of a button to find new authors who may have never have seen the light of day. The power of the gatekeepers and their deep marketing pockets will finally loosen some of their strangle hold on creativity. The electronic readers like the drones that search the skies for terrorist in hideouts lead to discovering writers with different voices and differing visions of the world. Our world is a better place when we can learn of how we are similar as opposed to how we are different. To understand the basics of what the human existence is with respect to love, sorrow, food, shelter and happiness draws us closer as descendants of one story-the human story.
This site will harp on my first two love politics and technology. I am a liberal with some conservative underpinnings. I have friends from both divides. I am also a techie and basher of Microsoft and a lover of Apple. I have mostly used MS products and even worked for them at some point. Microsoft folks are cool people, very passionate about what they do. It just feels like “Appleans” are much cooler.
When the Ipad® debuts I will buy one without fail. The first device I buy one for my dad who is suffering Macular Degeneration and who loves the speeches by made by president and prime ministers. Until Obama his most favorite prime minister was Winston Churchill. I will load it will speeches of presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, JFK, Aristide, Hugo Chavez, Mao, Fidel Castro and Barack Obama. As a child, I would watch my dad read his speeches for inspiration before writing his own speeches. Today, in his mid 80, his eyesight failing, the only joy he has in life is reading-I just lied-he also is still a practicing attorney who goes to defend cases in court for the fun of it. I will also be saving to buy one for my mother who loves to read the bible. On my mother’s I will load all the versions of the bible, recepies, and biographies of the rich and famous.
I love gadgets, technology and more efficient ways to do stuff. I love politics because it offers a new beginnings, new ideas and new way of solving problems, even the intractable ones.
So in my maiden post, I have found the perfect beginnings of how politics and technology intersect. On this blog I have found the place to place both thoughts without worrying about the outcome. I am neither a politican or a technologist, but I find their lives fascinating. Politics and Technology-sweet!
Let me know what you think.
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