Jorge Arango

The Criterion Collection —the preeminent distributor of classic films on DVD—launched a beautiful new website recently. Among its many features, it allows you to watch films online for $5… but only if you live in North America. This is incredibly frustrating! All these amazing movies, available instantly… not!

If you live in or near a major metropolitan area (or near a university) in the US or Canada, you probably already have some way to watch Au Revoir Les Enfants or The Thief of Baghdad. Those of us living in cultural backwaters can’t enjoy such luxuries. The Panama City metro area (where I am) has more than a million inhabitants, but our sole access to decent cinema consists of a single Blockbuster store with a few shelves of the usual suspects: a bit of Fellini, some Kurosawa, some Hitchcock, etc. We have no art house theaters, only mall cineplexes blasting the latest superhero fluff. And as poor as our movie selection is, it’s still much broader than the music available: basically if you don’t like merengue, plena, or 1980s discount-rack soft rock you’re shit out of luck.

Why is Criterion shutting me out? For that matter, why can’t I legally buy MP3s or movies from Amazon’s online store, when I can order from them a slab of plastic containing the same bits and have it shipped to me, using up resources and crapping on the environment? Perhaps the argument is that not many people here are interested in this stuff. True enough, but so what? How much more can it cost these companies to open these digital distribution channels? Is it more than it costs to install and maintain the filters that keep people like me from becoming customers?

The internet was supposed to level the playing field for those of us that live in culturally isolated regions. But now that technology has matured to the point where cultural artifacts—music, movies, TV shows, and books—can be purchased, distributed, and experienced online, companies are doing their damnedest to maintain the old structures intact. The net result: global access to culture is constrained to a bizarro long tail, a ghetto defined by corporate lawyers and accountants.

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Rosenfeld Media’s first book?Mental Models, by Indi Young?is available for purchase. Congrats to Lou Rosenfeld, Ms. Young, and the team at Rosenfeld Media!

Because I live so far away from the bright center of the galaxy, I usually have to wait a couple of weeks after ordering a book before I can actually read it. Not in this case, though: as an incentive to buying directly through them, Rosenfeld Media is including a digital (PDF) copy of the book with every purchase through their site. (The book can also be purchased in digital-only format.)

The upside is that the PDF file is perfectly formatted for reading in my Sony Reader. Reading PDFs on this device is usually unpleasant; most are formatted for 8 1/2” x 11” paper, and look like crap when displayed on the Reader’s 4” x 6” screen. The Mental Models book, however, is perfectly scaled for reading on this device. Take a look:

I’m very happy to see Lou’s dream of creating a publishing house dedicated to UX design make its mark in the world in a more tangible way. Support Rosenfeld Media by buying the book directly from rosenfeldmedia.com.

BTW, As further encouragement, Lou’s kindly made available a 10% “friends of Jorge” coupon. Just type in FOARAN10 when purchasing from the Rosenfeld Media site.

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This weekend I bought a Sony Reader (PRS-505) as an early Christmas present for myself; it should arrive within the next couple of weeks. When I moved back to Panama, one of the things I missed most about living in the developed world was having easy access to quality, relevant books. Panama doesn’t have any large bookstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble, and the less is said about our public libraries, the better. I’m hoping the Reader will help me fill this hole in my life.

Currently, I get most of my books from Amazon. This gives me a broad selection, but it’s expensive and time-consuming to have large blocks of paper shipped here. I also end up with a lot of books, most of which I read only once; I’d much rather check them out from a library than having to purchase them. There’s also an ethical problem: with the rising environmental, social, and economic costs of oil, transporting information in book form is becoming a moral dilemma for me.

Ebooks have been around for a while; I read quite a few them on my Palm during my commutes in the early 2000s. So why do I need another gadget to do this? I already do most of my reading on computer screens, and at the end of the day my eyes need a break. Reading long ebooks on a LCD is neither comfortable or practical. From what I’ve seen, the Reader’s Vizplex screen solves this problem in an elegant way.

I knew before ordering that Amazon was coming out with an ebook reader today; I’ve been researching the e-reader market for the last couple of weeks, and considered devices from other companies as well. I went for the Sony because I suspect that Amazon’s device is going to be closed to non-proprietary ebook formats. Also, due to its reliance on Amazon’s wireless network it’s probably practical only for folks living in the US. While the Sony Reader also uses a proprietary format (it’s a Sony, right?), it can also read plain pdf, txt and rtf files. There are also many freely available third-party tools that allow for the conversion between formats into Sony’s BBeB format. The Sony also seems like a simpler device. My hope is that the Amazon device will help spur interest?and competition?in the ebook market, increasing the amount of books available in ebook form.

I don’t have expectations that the Sony Reader will be the “end-all-be-all” ebook reader. It reminds me of the Creative NOMAD Jukebox I bought back in the day; at the time I just wanted something portable?and with large storage?to play MP3 files on. I knew that the devices would be getting smaller and better; the Jukebox was a sort of prototype of what the iPod would be in later years. I had no illusions then that the NOMAD Jukebox would be my last MP3 player, and I have no illusions now that the Reader will be my last ebook reader. I just hope these devices gain enough mainstream acceptance to eventually reduce my reliance on wood pulp for reading.

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Today I received my copy of the Worldchanging book, and have been browsing through it. (After reading the introductions, which is important in this case.)

Some thoughts:

• This book is as important as people are claiming it to be.
• It reminds me of the Whole Earth Catalog, but more beautiful and with a more overt agenda.
• I want to purchase a copy for each of my siblings and my parents to read, but I feel this would go against the value system promoted in the book.
• I ordered the book through Amazon, and it got to me via Fedex. Again, this seems like a betrayal of the book’s values. I’m now exploring the Worldchanging website, and thinking “did I really need to have the atom-based version of this thing shipped to me?”
• The flipside of this thought: I may end up giving my copy of the book to someone who would never use the website.
• The book is beautifully designed and laid out, but I have a couple of complaints. First, some of the fonts are difficult to read. Second, it stinks—literally: its pages emit a very strong chemical ink odor. Again, this seems to go against the book’s values.

  After seeing An Inconvenient Truth last year, I’ve been wondering “what can I do to improve my (and my society’s) relationship with the earth?” I’m inspired by Worldchanging to take action… I don’t know what to do about it yet, but this question is something I plan to devote time and energy to over the next couple of years.

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Chris Fahey just finished reading Don Quixote, and has published an excellent review of the 400-year-old novel. I keep wanting to re-read as an adult (I first read it in high school, as most kids do here), Chris’ review makes me want to get back into Don Quixote’s world.

Update 19/5/2006: I’m more than half-way through Part I of DQ, and am astounded by how good it is. Having been forced to read it at an age when I did not yet have the intellectual tools to appreciate it fully, I was initially turned off by the novel and probably could have gone through the rest of my life without discovering the marvels it holds.