Tag Archives: technology

27/07/2011

ABA #2: The Times They Are a-Changin’

By The Cultured Animal

As a very famous person once said, “the times they are a-changin.”

We are in an age of rapid technological change, most of which is not worth bothering to keep up with, because you can’t, not really. The book is a form of technology that has been with us for centuries, and many have compared this age of digital media as having a similar force of impact on reading, thinking and society in general as that following the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, which facilitated the beginnings of mass proliferation of the book. Today, the ubiquity of the Internet means the ways in which we consume books is changing – not just in terms of how and where we buy them, but in what form.

One of the most tense panels at this year’s ABA conference featured competing representatives from the budding eBooks industry marketing their wares. Meanwhile, one of the most compelling speakers was Mark Higginson of Nielsen, whose audience pounced on his wealth of statistical information about consumers’ online book-buying patterns. The flurry of tweeting activity during the presentation indicated a hunger for tangible information in an industry faced with an uncertain future.

It’s certainly not just a matter of choosing between a hardback or paperback any more.

But if we’re hungry for new information about customers, they’re equally curious. Unfortunately, some very uninformed comments and queries are frequently thrown at the good people who stand behind bookshop counters. Plenty of it is well-meaning and borne from a desire to correct any ignorance. Some of it is downright rude, to the point where one’s very purpose in life is undermined. (Sort of like when my musically challenged friend bags out my favourite bands, not understanding that, as a musician, it kinda hurts my feelings.)

We understand that as representatives of the industry we are generally better versed in decoding what the hell is going on for the general public. But when faced with the same handful of recurrent questions, such as “What do you think about Borders closing?”, or “Did you know I can get this cheaper online?”, day after day, how does one quell the spirit of Bernard Black, who lurks dangerously close to the surface of one’s amiable front? How, indeed, to maintain one’s excellent customer service skills as well as one’s dignity (and sanity)?

The thing is, we might look smart (especially when wearing our horn-rimmed glasses), but as The Papa of Independent Bookselling and Publishing Henry Rosenbloom said: “While there’s no clear way forward, we’ve come to the conclusion that we know as little about it as anyone else.”

I'll be honest, I just wanted an excuse to post a photo of Dylan Moran here.

Well, if we can’t give a definitive answer to all that complicated stuff, we can at least try to deal with the yucky ‘feelings’ part of it.

Becky Anderson’s Guide to Dealing With Annoying Questions 101

In her keynote address to the conference, Becky Anderson (President of the American Bookseller’s Association, 5th generation heir to Anderson’s Bookshop, and general champion of independent and community-focused business) read to us a beautiful statement on behalf of Anderson’s, summarising their thoughts and feelings on the collapse of Borders and the state of the industry. She insisted that “first and foremost, we are not celebrating … the loss of so many jobs”, and maintained again and again her mantra: “we [independent bookshops] are still here.” Barwon Booksellers, an absolute treasure trove of second-hand books in Geelong, Victoria, sent out a heartfelt letter to its subscribers expressing similar sentiments.

It’s a good idea, and one which I urge all booksellers to follow. Either that or leave yourselves open to continued onslaughts of misinformed flak, to which you’ll be forced to respond personally each time until you sound like a broken 78. (Which would be ironic, because they’re obsolete.) You can frame your letter in Christmas lights and stick it on the shop door, so as to spare your beloved customers the embarrassment of asking any awkward questions from the get-go.

But let’s emphasise the beloved part. It may be a good idea to, er, bookend your eloquently crafted message with something along the lines of: Dear customers. WE LOVE YOU. We love you because you love us, and your custom is the reason we’re still here. We’re still here, because you’re still here. Thank  you for choosing to buy all your Christmas presents here. We hope you’re not disappointed we don’t also sell turkeys, but did you notice that Borders was kind of turning into a homewares store towards the end? One day it’s turkeys, the next – no more books! By the way – did we mention how much we love you?

And so on, and so forth.

Booksellers and customers alike, please feel free to share below your thoughts on any of these matters. Perhaps you’ve done something similar to Anderson’s or Barwon Booksellers. Maybe you’ve experienced a Bernard moment. I hope you at least got a laugh out of it, or a glass of wine.

Stay tuned for Pip Lincolne’s Guide to Online Social Deportment 101. We do like hands-on ladies.

Ciao for now xx

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23/07/2011

Keeping Up with the Mobile-Joneses: The Emotional Trauma of Technological Development*

By The Cultured Animal

It is with great aplomb that your esteemed Animal can announce: I have now entered the world of smart phones. Having once thought my trusty Nokia E71 was classified as thus, I am now proved but a fool. That archaic device, as it turns out, actually suffered from severe learning difficulties and, due to not receiving the requisite nurturing (read: frequently dropping it on its head), it has now come to a tragic end. (Or has it? Oh stop, the suspense is killing you.)

Techno-Trauma

Upgrading one’s phone feels a little bit like plunging down the rabbit hole into a strange and unfamiliar landscape where things don’t quite work the way they used to. It’s two years since I changed my phone, and in that time a lot has happened. There’s a lot of catching up to do.

I missed a shift at work and blamed it on the fact that my new phone’s calendar app is surprisingly shit in comparison to my old Nokia’s simple-but-precise inbuilt planner, which I’d been using in one incarnation or another for about five years across three different models. I can’t even type properly with this new bloody touch-screen predictive text bizzo. Where’s the tactility? How can I hit the right button with my clumsy fat thumb if there’s no button to feel in the first place? Grrrr. I’m barely old enough to have children, and already they should be head-hunting me for the next season of Grumpy Old Women. (Except for the bit where I’m not famous.) (Yet.)

Suffice to say, the week has been a bit stressful.

Retro handset by Yubz. Utterly counterintuitive.

Now, if I were the sort of person who upgraded my gadgetry every time a new gimmick came on the market, this anxiety-ridden technological learning curve would no doubt have been blunted somewhat. Yet it’s not all bad. Actually, it’s kind of refreshing to be privy to a digital time lag, if you will. Not too dissimilar to a mild slap in the face, or a stiff drink after a harrowing day of navigating cubicles and paperwork. It’s a little reminder of just how fast technology develops, and how much we take it for granted.

To Upgrade, Or Not to Upgrade?

Usually whatever digital device I already own does a sufficient job at word processing, making phone calls, scheduling appointments or playing downloaded episodes of Party Down,  as to remove any need to replace it until it starts to give up on life altogether. And, as somebody who never reads technology news or reviews, I don’t have a clue what I’m missing out on in failing to upgrade regularly. Unless, of course, the device in question becomes so socially prevalent (cue, iPhone) that the hipster in me instinctively shuns it anyway by way of its mainstream popularity.

And yet still I struggle with this idea of throwing out a perfectly good phone/MP3 player/tablet thingy simply due to an unhealthy, insatiable, market-driven hunger for new features. (Quite obviously this reveals me as some kind of a freak in my generational bracket.)

There are strong environmental/anti-consumerist arguments against buying the latest, flashiest, smartest, geekiest new piece of technology as soon as it comes on the market. On the other hand, there are also strong health arguments for the regular upgrading of one’s digital assets (I refer you to previous section).

Techno-Consciousness

The answer to all this, dear techno-freaks, is to simply be more mindful of what you use and disown. Are you guilty of hoarding perfectly working (but technologically inferior) phones in a bottom drawer, like little dormant melanomas festering amongst undeveloped rolls of film and gimmicky, once-used kitchen appliances? Sure, it’s no bad thing to have a back-up phone for when your current one mysteriously goes missing during a drunken bender (cue more technological stress – did you know that a mobile phone is actually connected to your cardiovascular system and that if it’s not within ten metres’ reach you will quickly begin to die?), but if you’ve got more mobile appendages than two, perhaps consider giving a new lease of life to your dormant digital device. (You know, like donating your second kidney to a distant cousin afflicted with poor health.)

How COOL is this guy!!!

What better way to assuage your environmental guilt than to recycle your phone? In Australia, the official phone recycling program is called MobileMuster (‘muster’ sounds a little bit Grandpa, but obviously they do not have a marketing budget akin to Apple’s, because Australians do not like paying taxes). They run a joint Landcare Australia initiative to raise money for regenerating our coastline. All you have to do is print this pre-paid label and send in your crappy old phone by post – plenty easier than enduring a bush rave followed by a marathon tree-planting binge the morning after. Or, you could just take your old phone to a phone shop. Or Officeworks. Whatever. Just do it before September 30th, or you’ll have to do the hungover tree-planting marathon instead.

Techno-Branding

Well, that settles the environmental dilemma somewhat; as for the stress issue, my advice is this: don’t go changing the brand of a thing that is integral to the functioning of your everday life, unless you absolutely must, for whatever your own neurotic reasons. I’m not talking phone companies (they are all out to screw us equally) – I’m talking the make of phone.

Every time my Mum buys a new Toyota**, it feels a bit different to handle, yet strangely familiar, like New Dad as opposed to Old Dad. There’s a leap, but there’s continuity too, in simply upgrading to the next model by the same brand, allowing us to ease into the next phase of digital development.

Course, if the car is shit, change the brand.

© The Cultured Animal 2011

*A bit like the trauma after a car accident. Because technology is developing at really high speed. And if you speed a lot you will probably, um, crash.

**I hate to bring my mother into it, but this Animal has only bought one car in its lifetime***, and is therefore not a particularly useful subject here for illustrative purposes.

***Owned two. Wrote both of them off. (Cars are very bad for the environment and should all be destroyed.)

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28/06/2011

Everything but the Screen: Finding Mystery and Romance in Digital Dalliances

By The Cultured Animal

Walking home this wintry Melbourne night, I passed under a pair of sneakers hanging from the telephone wires above a crossroads, and was struck by how archaic that old marker of a drug pick-up point seemed. Did people really ever hang out on street corners waiting for their hooded dealer to turn up with an ounce of dope? If they didn’t just use the telephone then, they’ve got plenty more options to choose from now. I imagine an online courier business would work rather well.

Street art by Skewville

The thing is, the immediacy of personal, digital communications devices means nobody has the patience to work on that sort of a clock anymore. Except maybe in Peru, or in remote indigenous communities far from this particular inner-city street corner. In which case, pull up a pew. The telephone line’s not in use, so maybe bring a letter writing set too. I hear the postman passes round this way on Tuesdays.

The immediacy of digital technology removes a lot of the mystery from our lives, some of which can be rather thrilling. Gone is that building of excitement that comes when you just have to wait for something – like finding out who won the game when you get home from work, or waiting till Thursday night for the next episode of your favourite TV drama, instead of downloading it early or buying it on DVD from overseas (although it’s got to be said, the DVD marathon is one of today’s many pleasures). What about hanging around that pretty girl’s favourite café in case you accidentally-on-purpose bump into her? You’re probably more likely to pull off those sorts of casual, just-popping-by airs on Facebook than in the bookshop.

Technology vs. Romance?

I had the privilege of being in Edinburgh during its world-famous Fringe festival last year. One of the highlights was York theatre group Belt Up, patroned by none other than Dame Judi Dench. Belt Up went about transforming one floor of a big old building (owned by the University of Edinburgh and now only in use during the festival due to extensive fire damage) to look like the interior of a 1920s house. Inside this magical space, their wildly original and surreal comedies transported audiences back in time, to the bohemian circles inhabited by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (Lorca is Dead), and to the home of much loved children’s author and creator of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie (The Boy James).

My friend, a gorgeous little thing from Rome who liked to wear grandpa jackets, train driver hats and horn-rimmed glasses bigger than her face, began a romantic affair with a member of the troupe. He was quietly spoken and thoroughly British, with foppish brown hair and good, strong shoulders. Perhaps because she was so romanced by the historical setting of their plays, she refused to give him her mobile phone number. And so they were forced to rendezvous at exciting hours in the ephemeral festival bars, or chance encounters in poster-covered stairwells on their ways to separate shows.

The elimination of technology from their courting injected some magic – and indeed, romance – into what might have otherwise been an enjoyable, but more conventional, holiday fling. When the not-so-heady Scottish summer waned and the besotted couple in turn went their separate ways, there was the requisite emotion and grief; yet the memory of their time together was left intact and pure, untainted by the inevitable markers of a dying romance: the length of phone calls and text messages decreasing, the days between them increasing. The nature of their encounter seemed to distill and celebrate the very thing that matters most in relationships: direct, in-person communication.

Throwing an Electric Spanner in the Works

If technology removes some of the mystery from our lives, genre writers must be tearing their hair out. I remember once watching an episode of Buffy and shaking my head in disbelief as her party faithful ran round hysterically, crying “Where’s Buffy? We can’t find Buffy!” and imagining all sorts of perilous, vampiric ends for her. Why didn’t they just ring her mobile, duh? Panic-driving plot devices like this one can now be trumped by phoning on the run, which means the storyboarders require a little more ingenuity. I suppose the flip side is they’ve now got a lot more to work with when it comes to sci-fi monsters and techno-dystopias. Meanwhile, period dramas such as Mad Men, Deadwood or Downton Abbey are even more appealing for their old world, pre-digital charm.

There’s another way in which our communication devices cause hiccups in storytelling: a screen doesn’t look particularly exciting on another screen. Face-to-face conversation, replete with theatrical expressions and spit, is a far more compelling depiction of character interaction than texts or online chats, and even the old phone conversation. There’s something jarring about having to constantly cut between two people in different places for the duration of a conversation that already feels unnatural anyway. The requisite small talk – “Hi, how’re you going?” – is often glaringly omitted, and too frequently characters neglect to say their farewells before hanging up. (Er, rude! I think you’re de-friended.)

Digital devices provide endless fun for the person using them, but are rather boring (or irritating – think headphones up way too loud on the train) for anyone else around them. I’m reminded of one night, pre-smartphone-owner, when I went out to the pub and became incredibly fed up with my friends who repeatedly pulled out their phones and fiddled around with their apps (if that sounds a bit wrong, that’s because it is). Etiquette, schmetiquette. Us self-involved Westerners should take a leaf out of the Japanese Big Book of Social Niceties (or maybe the ever-popular Social Primer‘s blog pages), and save our personal bits for when we’re in private. No-one wants to hear you yelling at your boyfriend on the street … through a phone. And if you’re selfish enough to not give a rat’s arse about anyone else’s comfort, then at least consider how you might look to them – a bit mentally challenged.

Bringing back good manners: Boston based artist Nick Rodrigues inside his mobile phone booth

“Carn, Show us Yer Texts!”

But technology can do some stuff that more direct interaction isn’t always so good at. Naughty stuff, for instance. It’s easy to hide behind the anonymity of internet chat rooms and proffer vitriolic comments that we’d never say to a person’s face – but removing that nakedness, if you will, of stark, face-to-face contact can also work in the positive. I’m not sure how well I’d do sexy talk over the phone, but having a greater buffer between yourself and the receiver through, say, texting, makes it easier to say a few cheeky words. Phones are still quite personal, though – you’re still giving something of yourself, opening yourself up, when you choose to give someone your phone number. For these reasons, texting is a great invention for anyone who struggles with expressing themselves intimately. Even if that’s not a problem for you (you lucky thing you), it’s still a quick and precise way to remind someone of intimacies shared. Just don’t try to say anything too deep – it may backfire.

© 2011 The Cultured Animal

Muggers are also surely benefiting from the ubiquity of personal digital devices. Who wouldn’t want to exact revenge upon an obnoxious Gen Y who’s wandering obliviously across a road, punching away at buttons, ears plugged up, stylish haircut obscuring everything but the screen? Petty theft just got a whole lot more profitable. I’m not sure why Spain’s economy should be struggling so much, what with its high incidence of pick-pockets. Sure, wired-up youngsters might be fitter than your easy-target Nan, but they’re probably about as switched on, and these days they’re sporting smart phones, headphones, iPods, iPads, netbooks, scooters and expensive sneakers. (Though if Nan’s carrying a wad of cash in her purse, your odds might still be best with her).

Perhaps that’s what the sneakers are doing are up there – they didn’t fit the thief.

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03/06/2011

Innocent But Aware: Cutesiness in Pop Culture, Part 2

By The Cultured Animal

In the second part of a series on all things cute and/or animalistic in pop culture, The Cultured Animal examines their significance in art, craft and fashion. To read the first part (furry things and music), go here.

Candles from Melbourne's Douglas & Hope. So scarily cute that you might just have to burn them.

What’s that? You don’t have a child? That’s okay, perhaps you’d like them for yourself!

Yep, they’re everywhere. Just about every trendy gift shop you walk into in Melbourne is packed wall to wall with things like cut-out deer, jewellery made from children’s storybooks of yesteryear, or bunny rabbit ornaments (even though it’s not Easter anymore). Check out Little Salon (City and Fitzroy), who go delightfully overboard on the theme; or Zakkaya (Fitzroy), whose fine Japanese products are top of the safari range. I Dream a Highway on High Street, Northcote, is also a favourite. Not because it’s Oh So Melbourne Alt-country Rock (complete with their own Western style shirts and a mini music shop stocking local artists), or because they stock independent local designers – but because it’s named after a Gillian Welch song. Who does that? (They do).

Scientist, former Australian of the Year and all-round amazing harbinger of hope for the future, Tim Flannery, argues that we are a world in its infancy, only just beginning to come fully into consciousness. These childish sensibilities may symbolise a coming to terms with this infancy, a declaration of how little we actually know.

Bring Back Baby

Another reading of all this immature paraphernalia is that it’s a backlash against the elusiveness of childhood in today’s world*. Gone are the days when we let our children run off and play freely in the streets – you know, “Just be back by dinner, Rory, we’re having bangers and mash” kind of thing. Whether it’s due to a hyperbolic, fear-inducing media, or simply an attempt to somehow mediate the flow of unfettered information coming from everywhere at our children, today we want to know where our little ones are at every moment, and precisely what they’re doing. We’d tag them with trackers if we could – but smart phones are a good substitute (god knows what else they’re using them for, though).

And so today’s little people are caught in a sort of oxymoronic homeostasis – they have at once less freedom, because they must be kept close tabs on lest they become fodder for some hideous, child-hunting monster; and more, because they have new routes for clandestinely playing out their lives: Internet chat, texting and so on allow them to extend their social selves far beyond anything a parent could ever hope to monitor with any real effect, beyond flagrantly removing a child’s right to privacy. And if anything’s sacred today, it’s the right of the child, is it not?

Informational Trauma

In The Information Age, kids’ brains are like expectant receptors for potentially anything, including highly sexualised images from billboards or Saturday morning pop music videos, which often verge on soft porn. There’s plenty of voice given in the media to concerns about the sexualisation of children, even if ultimately these (not-so-)subliminal influences continue to thwart the censors. But a less talked-about potential threat to childhood, and an extension of this “information overload”, is the knowledge that Earth is (arguably) hurtling towards environmental catastrophe  at an alarming rate.

When I was a child, I used to have nightmares about dolphins washed up on toxic beaches covered in fluorescent, radioactive goop which burnt my feet. I adored dolphins, so this was a truly terrifying image. Yet all this public chatter about global warming and environmental issues was far less prevalent then. Today our kids know more about these issues than we do. Making sure we instill respect for the environment in our children from a young age is crucial; but is there a dark side to knowing in graphic detail the potential consequences of inaction? Does it scare them in the same way it used to scare me (and still does)? If so, isn’t that a form of trauma – the kind of trauma that makes you grow up pretty fast?

Think of the children: 2008 ad campaign for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand

Kill Your Darlings

If real innocence is hard to preserve, artists are immortalising it on canvas. You’ll find it peeking out at you through hooded eyelids as you trawl the galleries of Fitzroy,  or perhaps somewhere a little more famous – think Mark Ryden, the pin-up boy for this movement (if you could call it that). Yet Ryden and his contemporaries are often concerned with exposing the dark sides to these visions of innocence, through juxtaposition or brutalisation. Gore dolls are a pertinent example, as are the nightmarish dystopias of Camille Rose Garcia, which read like dark fairytales full of forlorn creatures who’ve strayed from the safe, childlike havens where they really belong.

Stumbling into dangerous worlds: Camille Rose Garcia

This distortion of innocence in art can be read not merely as children’s loss of innocence, but more broadly as humanity’s loss of innocence. Today we are aware of what we are doing to the planet, and any failure to acknowledge and take responsibility for our actions, or stand up to those who perpetrate them, is immoral (you could use any example of human abomination, really – human rights abuses, war – take your pick). We can no longer feign ignorance when hard science and information are now so easily available to just about everybody**.

These visions of thwarted childhoods can also be read as more literal, direct warnings: if we don’t act now to stem the environmental pressures facing our planet, we are potentially leaving our children the legacy of a damaged environment, which may prove inhospitable to human life as we know it.

Mark Ryden’s Little Boy Blue: is humanity in its infancy, toying with dangerous things it can’t yet comprehend? Or, does childhood elude us entirely – the boy’s knowing facial expression indicates a maturity and awareness beyond his physical years, linking him to the horrific, adult motifs against which his childish appearance is juxtaposed.

Bittersweet Nostalgia

The growing love for childish paraphernalia (the ones that haven’t been subjected to violence, that is) may also indicate a sort of Freudian denial at work in our social subconscious. It’s fun to inhabit our inner child, because it means we don’t have to deal with the heavy responsibility that comes with being aware of our complex world, and our part as a species in shaping it. Wallowing in pastel-coloured ’80s toys purchased from eBay, or flouncing around in a tutu, are delightful acts in reclaiming childhood – a retroversion toward the safety of the foetal position.

Cute craft revivals are a further conflation of this regressive psychological process. Hand-sewn aprons made from vintage children’s fabrics, for instance, hark back to not just childishness, but childishness from eras long gone, from a nostalgic (perhaps fictional) place when the world felt a little less complicated. Yet to view these movements as motivated – however subconsciously – by a denial or rejection of the contemporary world may irk the many crafters whose creative pursuits are underpinned by environmental and/or social philosophies.

Faythe Levine’s film and book, Handmade Nation, documents the rise and significance of indie craft culture in the USA

Recycling old things into something useful is a positive environmental statement, while the renewed recreational interest in crafts – many of which were once practiced as a matter of necessity – is right on cue with increasingly popular “slow” movements (think slow food, slow reading). These movements offer an alternative to the fast-paced, mindless consumerism of contemporary, urban life. They espouse a back-to-basics ethos and a more interactive, social role in the human chain of production and consumption. Even if a handmade product ultimately ends up on sale at a craft market, the buyer is more easily aware of where the product has originated, and therefore more aware of their consumer impact should they choose to buy it.

Peter Pan Rocks

I’m not suggesting for a moment that childish fun just for the hell of it (that is, without a hand-stitched manifesto to justify it) isn’t a good thing – so far as it doesn’t usurp our responsibilities in dealing with the world’s big issues. I’m all for children running around in the street playing cricket, without a mobile phone in sight. In fact, “disconnecting” in healthy doses might be just the thing our society needs. Writer Susan Maushart unplugged her family for six months, to some surprisingly positive results. Embracing play, creativity and childishness reconnects us with humanity and returns us to a state of freedom, unfettered by the chains (or wires) of our fraught, digitalised lives.

Digital media are not intrinsically bad either (unless you take issue with psychological addiction). But we may, from time to time, and whatever our age, need to go and play a game of hide and seek, or steal a shopping trolley and take it for a spin at 3am. Just to allow ourselves a little  mental and spiritual space, so that we might be in a position to better comprehend the ways in which we react to the world of information surrounding us, and the implications this has for our humanity. Hopefully we can then figure out how to swim through it (maybe throw in a few backwards somersaults – but purely for the joy of it), rather than drown.

*I’m being very Western-/First World-centric here. Sorry.

**Sorry.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Art, Environment, Technology

23/05/2011

The Flipback: Revolutionising the Book Trade Some More

By The Cultured Animal

Yours Truly is a bit sick to death of all this talk on about The Death of the Book, The Death of the Bookshop, and The Death of Our Brains at the hands of Monsieur Internet. (Except, maybe she’s a woman. In fact, yes – let’s call her Señora Internet. Look, she’s even got a little hat!)

In his editorial for the latest issue of McSweeney’s, Dave Eggers puts paid to all that with some encouraging statistics about the current vitality of the book industry. And just to waggle it in our faces, the current issue is “a book designed to look like a book!”

Borders might have thrown in the towel, spat the dummy, or whatever other clichéd figures of speech you might want to attach to that Dodo-ified business; but all I can say is that our “local independent” seems to be doing rather well. As a direct result of said closure? Who knows. Probably not a bunch of puffed up, Internet-fearing catastrophists.

Bringing it Back

It was with some pleasure that I was introduced to an exciting new piece of technology this week. It’s called the Flipback, and if it sounds half like a Paperback, well, that’s because it is.

Printed on super-thin bible paper and bound with its spine unattached to the cover, the Flipback only requires one hand for reading and can lie open on its own (no more panicky searches for a bookmark). You read it sideways – or you would, if the writing wasn’t printed perpendicular to the usual way. This means it’s more similar visually to reading digital text, but the experience is altogether more tactile. The idea is to flip the pages with your thumb whilst holding it in one hand. Hey presto! (But perhaps it’s a little too tactile – I found myself needing to lick my thumb in order to turn the pages easily. Maybe it just takes practice. I hope they release a Flipbacks for Dummies for this difficult new technology). Meanwhile, you could be doing almost anything with The Other Hand. I’ll leave that one up to your imagination.


When that chock-full peak-hour train suddenly surges round a bend, and the geek sitting by the aisle flounders as his slippery iPad shoots off into a sea of high heels, who is triumphant? The old-fashioned book-lover, that’s who – one hand’s steady grip on the rail, nifty little Flipback wide open in the other. Additional perks include not having to hide it from thieves, and not having to experience that annoying moment when you realise the power point wasn’t switched on after all, and the batteries are still flat.

That’s because it’s still a book, albeit one that feeds into today’s obsession with multi-tasking and compactibility (it fits easily into your back pocket). Its size also makes it kind of pretty – from a distance, you might mistake one for a cassette (remember those?), and they’re just about as sturdy. They’d look rather cute all stacked up like Lego on a shop counter.

They’ve already sold over a million of these things in Holland, where they were conceived; it will be interesting to see how we take to them when they’re unleashed in Australia this August.

Rock Will Never Die

Well, it hasn’t yet. But speaking of cassettes … Okay, so the cassettes might not be a particularly good example. How about vinyl, then? I mean, if you’re looking for an antiquated technology from an industry that has been absolutely, positively, well and truly revolutionised by digital technology, then records are most definitely it. The music industry might not be making much dosh out of vinyl, yet still it prevails.

Once the musical medium of choice, vinyl has now been transposed to a niche market for nostalgic music-lovers, serial op-shoppers, professional (and un-professional) DJs, and smug rock’n'rollers who believe noise just sounds better on vinyl. Not only are all sorts of great bands still releasing versions of their new music on record, but audio manufacturers continue to produce turntables for your listening pleasure, replete with flash 21st century packaging and super-precise speakers. If the contemporary perks sound counter-intuitive, go get one of those old boxy things with the peeling brown faux-wood. People will think you’re cool just for having a turntable, especially all of your art snob friends.

Franc Kuzma’s Stabi XL turntable. Don’t confuse it with the coffee machine.
I Heart Art

Aside from the retro-nerd kicks you might get from owning a record collection, there’s also the crucial element of art and design appreciation. If you’re downloading music, especially from an unqualified source, you’re likely to not even see the original album artwork. If you do, you’re probably viewing it as a tiny little picture on a screen. Hardly the best medium for displaying a work of conceptual art.

Which brings us back to vinyl, whose sleeves sport a large surface area, rather good for displaying album artwork. You can then sit in your velour, op-shop lounge suite and ponder it whilst soaking up the sounds of a new album. The record sleeve’s papery feel is also a bit nicer than a plastic CD case – an opinion affirmed by plenty of high-brow indie artists who prefer to package their CDs in paper (often recycled, just to underline the extent of their cultural envelope-pushing) rather than the usual plastic.

Andy Warhol’s famous cover art for The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, complete with real zip. Tactile.

The continued love for vinyl shows an appreciation for the album as a complete, conceptual piece of art and a fulfillment of a band’s artistic vision, from the choice of song order (none of this shuffle bullcrap, thank you), to the cover artwork and design, and liner notes. It’s a preference for quality versus convenience. It’s not that there’s no positive place for Internet-sourced music; rather, there is a place for the old-school to continue alongside the new. Radiohead had the right idea when they realised their die-hard fans would still pay money for the hard stuff, even if they could get the online version for free.

Bon Iver’s forthcoming self-titled album will look super pretty on vinyl.
Dear Sir or Madam, Will You Read My Book?

If vinyl can do it, is it really so far-fetched to suggest something that has existed for about 10 times as long in one form or another might also hang in there for a little bit longer? Unless, of course, they invent a solar powered eReader. Now that might really be something worth ditching your Flipback for.

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