The e-Book Revolution

The e-book revolution has arrived! Actually, it arrived a few years ago, but now that I’ve purchased my first e-book, I can finally make this belated announcement with some confidence. Previously, I had been waiting to see how well the first waive of dedicated e-book readers (namely the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook) would fare in the marketplace. They did reasonably well, though the recent popularity of tablet computers probably deserves most of the credit for mainstreaming the e-book market.

Originally, therefore, I had thought to muse about the utility of tablet computers. However, while e-readers may well be the killer application for tablets, one rail trip was enough to prove to me that the portable convenience of the compact multifunctional device (namely the so-called smartphone) still trumps the comparative luxuries of the bulkier tablet.

For my first e-book, I selected 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson’s transgendered romp across the solar system of the 24th century A.D. I had enjoyed his Mars trilogy, which serves at least implicitly as the historical background for 2312, so I wanted to see Robinson’s vision for a fully fledged interplanetary civilization and all its political and economic implications.

However, instead of a realistic interplanetary economy, I found a fantastical iteration of centralized planning. Robinson himself seemed somewhat unsure how such an economy might operate in practice, and his protagonists apparently pay their way on interplanetary voyages by washing dishes. (Then again, perhaps Robinson had merely described the perfection of each-according-to-his-abilities communism.) He suggested that a socialist utopia could be achieved with advanced computers running the economy, if only capitalism would stop resisting.

Space travel would be easier, too, if only gravity would stop resisting our attempts to fly.

The Apple iPhone as a Multifunctional Device

I recently acquired a first-generation Apple iPhone to use as a mobile multifunctional device. Before I recount my successes and failures in this endeavor, I should first define exactly what a multifunctional device is. Quite simply, it is a device that performs more than two functions within four broad categories: communication, entertainment, information, and productivity.

The iPhone operates in all four of these areas, and it does so in multiple ways. The implementation of this functionality isn’t perfect, which is partly due to the designed limitations of the device and partly due to the fact that I’m a cheapskate. Though it was intended to operate on AT&T’s premium voice and data networks, I am running my iPhone on an inexpensive prepaid voice plan, while relying solely on Wi-Fi for data.

Not unexpectedly, communications and entertainment are the iPhone’s greatest strengths, descending as it does from earlier music phones. Voice calling and text messaging are standard features alongside the built-in iPod audiovisual player. Wi-Fi connectivity adds the ability to send and receive e-mail, to stream video, and to download music, games, and e-books.

Ubiquitous access to information via the Internet would be the iPhone’s greatest value, if data plans weren’t so damned expensive. Wi-Fi helps to fill the gap here, but coverage is still far from complete. Nevertheless, the convenience of always having information at your fingertips can’t be overstated.

In my case, I’ve turned to off-line solutions for certain information needs. For example, when I can’t access Google Maps, I now use a mapping application that I downloaded from the App Store for a few dollars. While not ideal, it’s still far more convenient than fiddling with paper maps.

In many ways, productivity is the iPhone’s weakest capability, even though it has a dedicated piece of on-board productivity hardware (a camera). The failure is actually one of software, in this case the lack of a built-in editor for documents and spreadsheets. While boring perhaps, I think that an advanced productivity suite will be vital to future multifunctional devices.

Fortunately, there are already workarounds for the productive user. Notes and e-mails can be used to create content for later export to a document. Google Docs can be used to view and edit spreadsheets when Internet access is available, and Google added the capability to edit documents while I was writing this post. Finally, there are third-party productivity applications available to download, but I have yet to try any of them.

Overall, my iPhone has proved itself as a prototypical multifunctional device. Though so-called smartphones are just beginning to penetrate the market, I expect they will become commonplace as mobile computing technology grows and matures.

Entertainment and New Media

I like movies and television as much as the next guy, but in recent years, some of the most entertaining productions with the most intriguing plots, the best acting, and the most beautiful design and cinematography have come not from film studios but from game developers. Yes, video games have come a long way since two rectangles bounced a square “ball” back and forth.

Though I have played video games off and on since the days of coin-operated arcades and the first Atari console, I’ve also mostly avoided or at least lagged far behind in the electronic arms race that is PC gaming. However, there were two notable exceptions for me. StarCraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998) and Half-Life (Valve Corporation, 1998) were both innovative in their respective genres (real-time strategy and first-person shooter), but they were also novel for me in that they had cohesive stories to go along with their pixelated mayhem. These stories moved the games forward and kept the action from becoming stale.


I also completely missed several intervening generations of video-game consoles. While these systems were much more powerful than my old Atari, I felt that they still fell below the bar set even by my perpetually outdated PCs. That finally changed after the arrival of the Sony PlayStation 2.

Star Wars: Battlefront (Pandemic Studios, 2004) was the title that brought me back to console gaming. It was a straightforward action game (with the trappings of the popular Lucasfilm franchise), but the detailed graphics amazed me. In between blasting enemy troopers and robots, I found myself marveling at tree rings, blowing leaves, and waterfalls.

At the same time, I also picked up Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North, 2004), which was then the latest entry in that controversial series. This was my first experience with an open-world game, where the player is largely free to move throughout the entire game environment and to experience the story in a nonlinear fashion. In many ways, it remains the most ambitious game I have ever played.

The story itself (despite its dubious morality and sometimes ridiculously over-the-top action) was also emotionally engaging. Set in a fictional southwestern American state (complete with three major cities, several small towns, and the countryside, waterways, and airspace between them) in the period leading up to the 1992 riots, San Andreas deals with family, friendship, betrayal, poverty, crime, and corruption. Excellent voice work by the main cast (including Chris “Young Malay” Bellard, Samuel L. Jackson, James Woods, and the late Chris Penn) sells the tale completely.

However, San Andreas pushed the limits of the PlayStation 2’s capabilities. Indeed, the developers made many technical compromises to achieve the game’s breathtaking scope. I wondered what the next generation of gaming consoles might bring.

Once the winning format for high-definition video had been determined, I quickly bought a PlayStation 3. This versatile device features Blu-ray playback, wireless Internet connectivity, and many gigabytes of on-board memory. Oh, and it plays video games too.

Soon, the Uncharted series (Naughty Dog, 2007–09) brought back the action-adventure magic I hadn’t experienced since Raiders of the Lost Ark (Lucasfilm Ltd., 1981) or The Mummy (Universal Pictures, 1999). There were puzzles to solve and enemies to fight, but sometimes I simply had to stop and admire the scenery as I followed lovable rogue Nathan Drake (voiced by Nolan North) through his improbable but engaging adventures.

Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego, 2010) took me to the dying days of the Old West and into another gorgeous open-world environment. In the game, reformed outlaw John Marston cuts a bloody path across several fictional border states in search of redemption for his past crimes. The fact that virtually every other character he encounters is morally flawed (and often deeply so) tells the player how successful Marston’s quest will ultimately be.

The world of Red Dead Redemption is fantastically detailed, rivaling San Andreas in ambition and far surpassing it in execution. The sparsely settled countryside ranges from deserts and mountains to prairies and forests, and it lives and breathes with the activities of people and animals. The graphics are beautiful, and the animation is mostly fluid and realistic.

Honorable mentions are also in order for Dead Space (Electronic Arts, 2008) and Prototype (Radical Entertainment, 2009). While these two science-fiction/horror games lacked the overall attention to detail offered by most of the others that I’ve described, they made up for it with singular focus on brutal combat gameplay. They also had better plots than most movies within the genre.

Video games won’t replace movies any more than movies replaced books, but they have certainly established themselves as a powerful new storytelling medium. As information technology and computing power continue to advance, I expect that we will experience some truly amazing interactive entertainment.

The Information Revolution and the Advent of the Multifunctional Device

I never really wanted a cellular telephone. The convenience of mobile calling wasn’t enough to justify the expense—not to mention the fact that I mostly loathe phone calls. However, when our daughter was born, my wife insisted that I get a cell phone, so I grudgingly bought a basic phone and activated it on the least expensive pay-as-you-go plan that I could find.

Even then, it was already clear that mobile telephones, personal digital assistants, digital cameras, and portable media players were on a collision course that would integrate these technologies into a single multifunctional platform. (Indeed, my basic LG C1300 phone was a better PDA than my old Palm m125 in most respects.) This was a trend that interested me! Personal productivity, communications, and entertainment were about to become ubiquitous, consolidated, and portable.


A few short years later, so-called smartphones began to become widely available and relatively affordable. Among these was the Apple iPhone. With its multi-touch interface, application support, and Wi-Fi connectivity, I soon recognized the iPhone as a prototypical multifunctional device.

I usually eschew Apple products, but as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I purchased a decommissioned first-generation iPhone for a fraction of its original retail price. I then set about bending it to my will. This is not an uncommon practice with iPhones, which suffer from Apple’s typical insularity, but I was trying to do something even more basic than most.

I needed to reactivate my iPhone as a telephone on the default AT&T cellular network. What I didn’t need was to be forced into expensive long-term voice and data plans. I spend most of my time under Wi-Fi coverage, and my GoPhone account already meets my calling needs for less than $10 per month.

It should have been simple enough. I removed the SIM card from my old LG phone and installed it in my new iPhone … and was immediately greeted with an error message. The phone had detected a “different SIM” and didn’t want to play nicely with the new subscriber card. Actually, I could still make and receive calls, but I couldn’t access the iPhone’s operating system with the SIM in place.

That is when the power of the information revolution came into play. Once I stopped overthinking the problem and focused on the specific error, I quickly found that a solution had already been provided by the Internet guys, those anonymous heroes and villains of the information economy. Once I had installed a couple applications and patched some files, my iPhone was operating in all its multifunctional glory.