It’s been interesting in the last few days with all the discussion thanks to the Nicholson Baker article.
However, what Radio Babylon wrote is really worth considering -
radio_babylon, on August 7th, 2009 at 8:35 am Said:i understand, at an intellectual level, that people are tribal and at the drop of a hat will form battle lines, pick a side, and start slugging it out… but i still can’t really *grasp* it. especially when it comes to non-issues like these.
for example: who cares if there are people out there who will only read paper books? good for them. why should a kindler care? and why should the paper-format lovers care if people use ebook readers? it isnt like paper books are going to disappear tomorrow (or even in our lifetime) or something.
there are things in the world worth advocacy, things worth actively trying to sway people’s views… which ebook reader one uses, or whether one uses an ebook reader at all, isn’t one of them.
Perhaps it’s time to just say – Hey, as long as people are reading books, whether on paper or on a Kindle or on a Sony, it’s a great thing.
Filed under: thoughts Tagged: | bias, lack thereof
When a writer, for a magazine with the clout of The New Yorker writes a piece denigrating a technology that is moving too quickly for his taste, writes without balance and with no context about too many details, and then in his follow-up Q&A in that same magazine gets responses that say that due to his criticisms they will not buy such an “inadequate device” (because he never mentions the many aspects that do make the Kindle so popular and also ignores that the ‘flaws’ are part of any e-reader using e-Ink while wondering in writing why a Sony reader was “ignored” by buyers — without looking into what it and didn’t have). then there is reason to respond.
There are many negative reviews out there that I have no problem with, but this was the most emotionally-biased one I’ve read, as well written as it was as an essay.
Read it again. Really. Better yet, read some of Baker’s other pieces about paper and technology, especially his book “Double Fold”, then read his Kindle piece. It’s remarkably well-balanced.
He doesn’t like the Kindle. So what? He’s supposed to offer equal time in his essay to someone who does? If Anthony Lane hates a movie, is he supposed to offer equal space in his review to the director to offer an counter-opinion? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous. The film stands to succeed or fail on its own. LIkewise, the Kindle stands to succeed or fail on its own. Baker is under no obligation to cheer for a nascent technology. If he finds it wanting, he is obligated to say so.
We’ve grown too accustomed to recycled press releases masquerading as “reporting” and false equivalencies offered as “balance”. Nicholson Baker does not like the Kindle as hardware. The New Yorker printed the piece. This does not mean that New Yorker is driving a stake through the heart of Amazon. This does not mean that the New Yorker is telling anyone NOT to buy a Kindle (it isn’t Consumer Reports). This does not mean that the New Yorker or Nicholson Baker is in the pocket of any other entity. Given that you can buy a Kindle subscription to the New Yorker, I’m sure that its editors and publisher hope that it succeeds as a platform. And yet, it printed a piece that might not be in line with those editorial and corporate goals. That’s intellectual honesty.
As for asking why Sony readers have been ignored: It’s a valid point. It would also be a good question for marketing seminars in business schools. Why did a company that was first to market with a reader that uses the much of the same technology lose so much ground so quickly to a competitor? Is it the marketing? The feature set? The store? A combination of all of the above? Again, to say that Baker wrote a slam piece with “no context” would have required that he not mention Sony at all — but he did.
I think that reading it three times was sufficient, Gerard, though you seem to have assumed it was read only once because my take doesn’st jibe with yours.
There have been countless reviews that don’t like the DX, and that’s never been a problem. The DX has many problems, some of which I’ve pointed out often.
In my own write-up I point to exactly the direction of his thoughts as he makes them and, to me, his resentments of Bezos’ statement and the ads that bombarded him on Amazon’s site are large factors, also as shown in the subtitle he chose..
Your reply to me has a condescension that is unwarranted.
In my follow-up to my first piece, after listening to his interview, I wrote,
” Baker’s review serves as a sincere anti-ad that counterbalances Amazon’s ad campaign, which Baker clearly resents and asks be slowed down despite Kindle-user excitement that he notes. The power of a strong dismissal from a formidable platform like The New Yorker has had large, somewhat destructive effect in the past, as the interview linked to in the next paragraph reminds us.
But a good product should be able to take it, even if the criticism left out important context. Balance is something we can’t really expect from an opinion piece, from any side of the issue.”
So your ‘advice’ to me about opinion pieces is not really germane though the advice reads like a teaching piece.
Yes, the New Yorker’s publishing it is intellectually honest, as they tend to be. That was not germane either as that was never an issue.
Baker asked to do the piece. He was very curious about the Kindle, he said, noting the excitement of others around him. Yet he pronounces it “not ready” (for what? to be an ideal model?) and wants it slowed down so it can ‘evolve’ on its own. He interprets Bezos as saying the Kindle will be a full replacement of what came before. No.
He’s curious but does not look at nor describe any of the other features that did excite others — he would have done better to say he just wanted to see what it was like as a pure reader, for himself — but it didn’t sell as a pure reader. No e-reader ever has sold well as a pure reader.
The Sony has the same gray screen from E-Ink, and he is wrong about it being ‘lighter’ which gets him off the hook for not disliking it.
He wonders why Sony’s readers are ignored (no doubt blaming Amazon’s marketing and all those ads), yet never opens one review, that I can tell, that will tell him of all the features the PRS-505 did not have (no study tools, no whispernet) and why the PRS-700 failed and he would have learned that the extra layer for the touch screen caused decreased readability and the side-lighting caused unevenness that bothered too many.
He asked a question but with 6000 words and time, he did not bother to look up why the Sony was relatively ignored. It’s not an unimportant question when it comes to attracting a market, and it certainly was not due to style of marketing but what was being marketed — instant from-the-air access. Built-in 24/7 wireless at no monthly cost beyond that of the unit — this was the major reason it took off. It wouldn’t appeal to many, but it appealed to enough.
Mentioning Sony as having a lighter gray screen (wrong) and not mentioning ANY of its features relative to the Kindle was not “context” whatsoever.
His Q&A and his interview on Kindle Chronicles will show you a man who’s upset over a corporation being able to buy up a little-guy operation like Stanza and being quite upset over that.
Add his previous horror over “greenish-gray” microfilm replacing aging space-taking paper and his campaigns against libraries digitizing catalog card systems, and you see resistance. THAT is fine. But to mention these dynamics noted by me after reading a review is only natural and especially a report in a magazine with the stature and distribution of The New Yorker.
I did read “Mezzanine” a few years ago and enjoy his way of thinking but on this I differ, not re the conclusion but the way in which it avoided real, meaningful context.
Andrys,
I really don’t know what else to say. You obviously reacted much more strongly to Baker’s essay than I did. Maybe that’s where we diverge: I read it as an essay by one person — a singe reader, a single Kindle user — whereas you (and, to be fair, many others) have taken it to be an official product review by the New Yorker. Were it written by someone else, like David Pogue, and published somewhere else, like the New York Times, which regularly publishes reviews of such items, I guess I would feel differently. But knowing that the New Yorker does not generally print reviews of consumer electronics, and knowing that Baker is primarily an author of fiction and essays, I’ve taken it to be be something different than you have. We could go round and round to no good end to try and parse when an essay becomes a review, or when a review would qualify as an essay, but I doubt that we would come any closer to an agreement. In fact, we would probably end up with something akin to a piece by Nicholson Baker!
Gerard,
What’s funny is that I forgot about the essay after I read it though I had felt it was an unduly-biased piece and it was even a bit gleeful as when
1) he was spending time finding books not yet Kindled! but
2) then assuring us they’d eventually be put into Kindle format, while
3) lamenting that some “not so subtle forces” would be “exerted” to Kindle-ize them.
Amazon & the Kindle wind up either lacking or inept OR draconian
However, another blogger asked me to go through it again to discuss a couple of places, so I did, and after that, I decided to put my notes into a blog entry.
No, in No way do I see that as an official product review of the New Yorker! I know the impact of that magazine too much though — how others perceive it — as I was quoted in a New Yorker article in Sept ’07 and was contacted by people I’d not seen or heard from in 20-37 years, from all over, and even by current friends I’d not mentioned it to.
This week I was contacted by yet another who’d just read it almost two years later and by two others 3 months ago.
Their awe of anything being printed in the New Yorker made me realize how widely read and how strongly felt a point of view can be when printed within those pages.
Since his is actually an unfair report, which I think I detail pretty well, I’ve felt compelled to exclaim a bit (with some facts) though my first impulse had been to forget it.
I agree totally with your last sentence
Thanks.
radio babylon’s comment applies to him too.
he’s an author. shouldn’t he be glad to have more people reading?
paper book readers and ebook readers help each other when it comes to quality and availability and price of books.
and lots of other ways we haven’t even fully understood yet.
But that’s why I wrote at the end of my piece
“After all that, my final thought on this is that the Kindle or any e-reader is just an alternative way of reading; why some feel we can have only one or the other eludes me. I enjoy both, but I prefer carrying many books at once in one small package and I know that some books will never be good on an e-reader, so I still buy and enjoy DTBs (“Dead tree books” as they’re sometimes called in e-reader forums).
It’s not an either/or thing.
I do expect more intellectual honesty out of a piece written for The New Yorker, especially now that I know he asked to do a piece on it.
[...] and Benefits Posted on August 7, 2009 by switch11 Radio Babylon’s comment (covered in the previous post) got me thinking about all the different ereaders and ebook stores entering the market and how they [...]
wow, i get too busy to check my rss reader for a weekend, and i find one of my comments elevated to a blog post… thats a first for me
i dont have much to add, because my position is a pretty simple one. its a great big world out there, and theres room enough in it for all kinds of readers, and all kinds of formats. no need to go to fisticuffs over whatever your prefered format happens to be if someone disagrees