It’s certainly an interesting artifact, and if you’re a geek you realize just how right it is on so many levels. In many ways it represents a genuine manifestation of the role that R2D2 fulfilled in the series, providing mobile technical expertise, and displaying just the right video to the right people at the right time.

It also has all the right inputs, allowing the player to interact with a variety of modern objects. I have to admit that I almost gasped with glee when the iPod dock popped out of the chassis.  This is clearly something that has been thought about, and designed with a clear audience in mind, although it’s doubtful the slacker hipster stereotype who’s playing their awesome game on the ceiling of their deluxe bachelor pad is the person who would buy this (or even actually exists). But the nerd is clearly the target market, and it’s a well aimed piece of tech.

It’s also a masterpiece of instant obsolescence. 

From the moment you buy it, those slots and connectors are already out of date, and note that if you want to watch an HD-DVD you’ll need to hook up that PS3 they’re talking about. This is a piece of tech that is all about the moment, and as impressive as it is to have a mobile high def screen, it’s something that’s going to last about as long as your average computer.

That said, there’s something truly futuristic about the idea of this thing. It’s the beginning of the transformation of the appliance from a passive to an active device, wrapped up into a context that defines both the expectations and the use of the device.

But then you realize that you actually need to walk to use it… It’ll never catch on.

via the far too British Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

This thing is truly an abomination. If the robots do rise up and kill us all, I can no longer blame them.

It also doesn’t use Dan Castellaneta’s voice. Instead it has a “sound alike” who doesn’t sound a thing like him.

Thankfully this monstrous hunk of plastic is only available in England.

But if you are, then you’ll dig this:

via Engadget

And not everyone is happy about it.

The cranky old man factor non-withstanding, David Lynch does have a point. But what he doesn’t address is exactly when do you “experience” the movie the way he’s talking about? Can you get it on a 20″ standard def television? Or a 40″ 1080p set? Is surround sound necessary, or is only the image that increases the genuineness of the movie going experience? You can put all the filet mignon you want into meat grinder, but what comes out the other end is still hamburger.

In a world with low quality compressed audio, and most video being watched in an area roughly the size of a postcard it seems like the modern audience doesn’t care much about quality playback. That’s nothing new of course. The need to get information out to a mass market has always driven down the quality of the “experience”. Even before the digital revolution most media consumers have been quite happy to watch the low quality image on the television, see movies on constantly degrading videotape, and listen to music on eight tracks and cassettes through tinny speakers in their car-stereos. When the “stereo” version of the VHS tape needed more space to hold the improved audio data, they just wrote it across the top of the video, degrading the image quality for the next decade.

While digital media allows for perfect copies of recordings, it’s entire history has been about low quality media. Record executives in the late 90s proclaimed that the mp3 format wouldn’t survive because they were too low fidelity to satisfy the fans, but that seemed to be a pretty basic misunderstanding of who the audience was, and what they really wanted. Instead pop music has been refocused on playing through smaller speakers and little white earbuds. Loud and compressed is the way that our media is delivered, and for the most part we seem to like it.

Another elements that changes with consumer distribution is the point in the playback chain where the quality degradation occurs. In previous generations it was always the media itself that held the highest quality. It was the job of the consumer to unlock the potential. Audiophiles were constantly upgrading their speakers, needles, players, and amplifiers to wring out that last bit of depth from their records. Solid granite record turntables would spin on cushions of compressed air, even while their sons and daughters were scratching up the exact same LPs on a cheap all in one plug and play machines.

In the digital world the manipulation and degradation of the data begins with the transformation of the original media to digital format. Instead of being handled by an engineer, the user simply “rips” their music to mp3. The highs and lows are simply chopped off, before the software gets down to the business of compressing the rest of the signal. Converting DVD video to DivX is a similarly brutal experience, as subtle colors and details are sacrificed to make sure that a two hour film can fit onto a single CD-Rom. Software doesn’t care about anything but getting the job done.

So now that anyone with a $300 PC can suddenly play producer we tend to end up in a race for the bottom. What matters is increasing the portability of the media by crushing it down to make sure that we’ll easily be able to play it back on the tiniest devices, and that it won’t take too long to download or take up too much space on the hard drive.

The media producers seem not to care as well. They’ve given up on the idea of educating the audience with any message besides “copy bad”. By focusing all their energy on the media wars the media industries have validated the idea that crappifying their content is a good thing. Because if they’re so desperate to keep that low fidelity mp3 out of your hands that they’re willing to sue you for it, it must be pretty good, right? While they’ve been decrying that an entire generation of kids have grown up to be amoral music pirates, they’ve also lost the chance to educate the kind of audience that tends to spend the most, and actually care about the work.

Meanwhile the technology companies, who were once partners with the content providers, have found themselves having to wage a campaign of subterfuge in order to offer devices to the consumer that give them the portability and accessibility they crave.

Meanwhile the major forward movement has been about adding more and more speakers to the surround mix. Formats like DVD Audio have landed with a thud, and most people are unaware they even exist. And that’s not really the consumer’s fault. Every new format seems to come with a warning label and a boatload of restrictions that make it hard to imagine who, if anyone, would actually use this media under the conditions they’ve mandated. Or to put it another way, audio files and audiophiles don’t mix.

Low quality media will always be a part of the landscape, and even as we are forced to upgrade to digital TVs and start buying Blue-Ray DVD discs, a large portion of that audience will continue to be perfectly happy watching their movies on a cheap LCD screen with $10 ear buds. Luckily a large portion of that audience will also be happy to pay a little bit of money to make sure that they can watch the latest and greatest piece of content, as long as they can put it where they want to.

There’s no doubt that we’ll continue to see our media morph and transform as it moves onto new devices such as media players and cell-phones. Change itself has become a constant part of the media landscape and one of the defining ways that media can transform itself and continue to be profitable. But that can only happen if the producers stop wishing for the future they thought they were going to have, and start dealing with the one that’s already here.

One of the reasons that we believed that was that Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, had told us that it would.  Both he and Steve Jobs, the guru of cyber-cool, had claimed this was going to be a revolutionary invention, one that could potentially change our lives.

Released in December of 2001, the Segway came hot on the heels of the iPod, which had been released only two months before.  And while the little white box came with a bunch of hype, as all new Apple products do, the Ginger (or simply “IT”) as it had been known, was about hope. It couldn’t possibly live up to our expectations, and it didn’t.

The little Scooter that couldn’t was ridiculed, and quickly banned from city sidewalks.  It became an example of the kind of overheated thinking, and “fast forward” vision that had sent the Internet spiraling from boom to bust.  Meanwhile the iPod slowly built on its initial success, and proved that the right product at the right time could still make a difference.

Fast forward to six years later.  Apple has once again released a revolutionary product into the marketplace.  Love it or hate it, the iPhone has proven that Jobs hasn’t lost his magic touch when it comes to finding a device that can change the way we think about the things we do every day.  Since it’s launch in August that little phone has turned the telecommunications world on its ear, and forced everyone to react.

And once again another product comes out hot on the heels of Apple’s ten ton gorilla.  Another product that will supposedly change everything. But unlike Apple’s well crafted little bit of magic, this product doesn’t seem to have the same kind of zing.  So with much fanfare, and more than a little head scratching, we meet the Kindle.  Amazon’s first foray into hardware.  A device that is supposed to be the biggest step forward in reading since the book…

But unfortunately it’s more smoke and mirrors than magic.  There’s no doubt that the idea of e-paper is great.  It’s screen remains visible and stable when it’s turned off, so that you can simply put up your image, and have it look as clear and relaxed as ink on a page. And who doesn’t want magic paper in their pocket?  Books do seem a little bit old fashioned when compared to the laptop or the cell phone.

But while the mp3 player and the phone are both recent devices that let us do new things in a new way, the book has been around in one form or another for almost 1500 years.  It’s a form factor that has seen many other innovations come and go. That’s not to say that its days aren’t numbered.  Clearly the modern displays will, sooner or later, provide us with a device that is going to replace what we now think of as a book with a clear readable screen.  So why shouldn’t the Kindle be that device?

Firstly because it isn’t a digital book, it’s a “wireless reading device”.  While it may sound like a form of birth control, in actuality it means that in order for it the device must connect to the Internet.  Much like the iPod needs to dock with your computer to be useful, the Kindle needs to connect to the Amazon mothership before you can get the books you want on it. But unlike the iPod revolution, you the Kindle has barred the gates.  You can put mp3s on it, but you won’t be getting your pirated best-sellers on it quite as easily. And if you buy your books form Amazon, you can’t share them with your friends. At least not in the way you’re used to.  Everything from pdf files to word files must be translated by being emailed to the device before they can be read.

We’ve all been around the block with DRM enough times to innately understand that if we can’t move data off of something and onto our own storage then we don’t really own it all.  And while that may be okay with music, movies, or other media that can be experienced socially, books are more personal.  We read them alone, and when the volumes sit on our shelves that’s the way that we tell other people about what we have read, are reading, or might be willing to share.

Looking at the specs and the business model it’s clear that the Kindle intends to seal its readers into a social cocoon, and won’t let us out to play. So, unfortunately, the Kindle isn’t a Web 2.0 device. 

And that feeling of an almost Soviet style mentality is repeated on the outside as well.  It’s a strange looking box, and one that clearly shows just how muddled the thinking about it really is. From an industrial design point of view the nicest thing you can say about it is that it looks like something that people in the past might think the future would look like.  It’s sharp angles and big buttons seem unfriendly and uninviting, and honestly a little confusing. 

And all that might that might still work if the cost of entry were low, but it isn’t.  At $400 you’re not only looking at a lot of old-fashioned books, you’re also spending the kind of cash that could pay for a lot of cool devices from laptops to iPhones.  They may not sip power the way the Kindle does, but definitely don’t treat you like a bank coming and going.  You want to use that Kindle to read something? You can get best-sellers for $10 each, newspapers for $15 a month, and blogs that are free on the net will only cost you $1 a month to read on your brand new book reader, if they’re willing to sign up with Amazon.

And that’s the last part that really confuses me. What does branding this device “Amazon” really bring to the party?  I’m a fan of the store, and I’ve even been won over their Prime service. But what makes them a trusted provider in the hardware business, and why are they getting into this buiness?  There’s hundreds of existing brands that they could have worked with.  Partnering with a trusted business would have sent a message that there’s a steady hand behind the wheel.  It might have looked better as well. 

Often times when something lands with so much fanfare it can be hard to trust your instincts.  It’s replacing an object rather than expanding our experience, and that’s a sure sign of danger.  And can it really be as ugly as it looks, as crippled as it sounds?  In this case I think that the Kindle is all that and more.

One day soon there will be a cheap, powerful, open e-book. A device that expands the idea of reading, computing, and the Internet.  But today was not that day.