Tag Archive for 'Ender’s Game'

Kindle Redux

jackson published on May 20, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Hello All,

A thought just occured to me…

I think a major facet of why I love my Kindle so much is the idea that:

If I could be satisfied with reading only the books I downloaded from Amazon (or another eBook retailer,) theoretically, I would never again be responsible for the death of a tree.

That is a very powerful meme.

Of course, materials were used in the creation and distribution of my Kindle, but that is over and done with. My Kindle can and will be recycled when it reaches the end of its useful life.

In the meantime, those majestic and incredibly useful creatures called trees will no longer have to be toppled over, pulped, bleached, pressed flat, dried and then have ink sprayed on them in order to convey intel from my visual cortex to my cerebrum.

I absolutely LOVE that.

I no longer want to own books willy nilly. Sure, a first edition of Catcher in the Rye, or Ender’s Game is something I would cherish, but the run of the mill Hudson News airport purchase? Paper no longer!
And once my precious little device can render images in color, well, that ends my addiction to Wired; in print form anyway.

I’m already reading the Times on my Kindle, which translates the grainy, black and white nature of a newspaper perfectly.

The Kindle is in its Game Boy stage right now, but soon it will be an XBox. Fast, furious, and gorgeously rendered.

And in the meantime, the sound of a tree falling in the woods has nothing to do with my reading habits and everything to do with my eBook version of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

This goes for everything in my life. I no longer wish to own things. Just gimme the data.
I don’t want dvd’s, I want the codecs contained on them. I don’t want books, just the info they contain. No more cds, just the mp3s please.
It’s the ideas things represent that I desire, not the things themselves.

Little by little, the world of things falls away and the truth is revealed in its shining glory. This is the SuperForest way.

I feel so free!

Buy a Kindle, save a hundred thousand trees.

Love to All,

-Jackson

"Little Brother" – Cory Doctorow

jackson published on May 6, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

“Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.”

Little Brother could be one of the most important books I’ve read all year.
This book is like a primer on free thought and the Bill of Rights. I just wish that i could be thirteen and reading this for the first time.

The thing I liked best about it it is that the book deals a lot with shades of grey. As the idea of a monolithic morality degrades and is replaced with something new, it is refreshing to read a book in which there are no real villains or heroes, just people doing what they can, with the tools they’ve got, with the inevitable friction those circumstances produce.

If you liked “Ender’s Game” or “The Diamond Age”, you’ll love “Little Brother“

Little Brother on Amazon