Do we still need to think?

In my research into Young Adult fiction, I have chosen to appropriate the word ‘geek’ to describe a very technologically able individual in a world filled with digital insiders who understands the technology in their life rather than just being a user of the technology. While it would be interesting to canvas opinion on my choice and to explore what people perceive is meant by the word, a conversation I had last night reminded me of the need for us all to understand our technology, rather than just use it.

I was 18 in 1995 when the Internet started to become available to people outside academic and military institutions and I believe that having been an adult user close to its inception has helped me to think critically about it. At that time AltaVista and Yahoo! were the main search engines, with Google only joining the party in 1998. To find something, people had to parse their question, say ‘Which is the oldest college in Cambridge?’, to select the keywords in order of importance; the query would therefore become ‘cambridge college oldest’. Having grown used to this as the Internet grew, I still search this way and still expect to hunt through search results to find the answer. However, one of the aspirations of companies such as Google is to be able to understand natural language queries and even pre-empt the whole question. If you’re usually a keyword user, go and try typing the full question into Google: it suggested the whole question to me as I got to ‘college’. Watching children search for information at school, I regularly see them typing the full question as if they are simply talking to a human repository of facts.

The information I have given Google over the years helps it to guess my question as it knows I am in the UK and I assume it knows I look at .cam.ac.uk pages quite regularly. This must also be quite a common question as Google is able to find it in its archive of previous searches people have executed to find other old things.

Take another example: Amazon. How often are we told that people who bought the book that is just being downloaded to one’s Kindle also enjoyed a host of thematically related books? This is a great way for researchers to discover similar texts which may be of use, and a helpful way to find something which is unlikely to be a risky choice.

Again, our personally shopping history combined with millions of other people’s shopping history is combined, processed and spat out as recommendations.

These are only two examples out of many, but they exemplify perfectly the need to understand the technology.

Both Google and Amazon are providing an amazing and useful service in helping their users find what they want quickly, easily and efficiently. However, in doing so they are perpetrating the same questions and same recommendations to a wealth of different people linked only by a gossamer thread of curiosity or reading tastes.

Considering this in the broadest of terms, there are three things which worry me – and I believe should worry you – about this.

Firstly, moments of serendipity when we discover something by accident are excluded from the algorithms which predict what we want to know, and the likelihood of stumbling across something accidently is lost. (Communicating virtually through timed Skype meetings also has this effect as ‘watercooler moments’ are less likely to happen, but that’s for another day.)

Secondly, without serendipity, we are all being made into homogenous individuals who are privy to the same information and are expected to have similar consumer tastes.

Thirdly, an array of digital intelligences is growing on the servers of big companies dotted around the world that knows us as well as we do and is thinking for us and shaping our choices.

The technological singularity has been something of science fiction for decades. It wouldn’t be the first thing written about in fiction to become a reality.

Originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today.

Las Vegas and Free WiFi

This is a somewhat niche post which was initially written for my personal future reference, should it be needed. However, as it might prove helpful for other travellers, I thought I would make it public.

A couple of years ago, finding free WiFi in Las Vegas was a challenge. Over the course of a few days at the end of August 2012, it seemed that matters have improved to some extent. While the casinos still want to keep people focused on losing money playing on the slots and tables, the following is a list of places where I found free WiFi.

• The Aria casino has the best gaming floor coverage I found with a decent connection guaranteed wherever your find yourself losing money
• Bellagio's gaming floor appears to have some access, but it was a little patchy.
• The Cosmopolitan casino has free access which was certainly available around the bar close the gaming floor entrance on the Strip.
• Excalibur has no free WiFi in the casino itself, but on the first floor, krispykreme offers free access.
• There is access to Luxor's service towards the hotel check in desks on the gaming floor.
• Macy's in the Fashion Mall offers the 'Macysfreewifi'.
• The Apple Store in the Fashion Mall has a multitude of devices connected to the Internet to use, and users can connect to the free WiFi too.
• The Monte Carlo casino's gaming floor has access at various points, but the signal was never particularly strong.
• The Wynn seemed to have coverage across the gaming floor, but in the areas near the entrance from the Strip the signal was not very strong.

In the past, I have found some Starbucks and MacDonald's offer free WiFi, but this is not guaranteed and not something I had chance to check on this visit.

If you are down town, WiFi seems pretty much non-existent. However, people braving the streets outside the Fremont Street Experience will find a cafe with WiFi for its customers at Emergency Arts.

This list is, of course, liable to change and living some 5,000 miles east of Vegas, I cannot guarantee the current validity of the information. Nevertheless, if it is useful to at least one person it was worth posting.

Technology's Effects: 13 Years On

In 1999, on the eve of the new millennium and a mere four or five years after the birth of the Internet as we recognise it today, Eliza T Dresang identified technology changing children’s literature in three main areas. Writing in Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age she describes these as

• Connectivity, or ‘the connections that readers make with hypertext-like links, both visual and mental, prompted by the changing forms and formats of handheld books’ (p12)
• Interactivity, as ‘the changing format of books enables a more active, involved reading […] encourag[ing] a wide range of different responses […as readers…] approach the text in various nonlinear or non-sequential ways that the author does not determine in advance’ (p12)
• Access, or ‘the breaking of long-standing barriers […which…] blocked off certain topics, certain kinds of characters, certain style of language’ (p13)

Looking back on predictions for the future from the safety of that future can be seen as a cruel pastime, but in a world which has – in some ways – been dramatically changed by technology over the past thirteen years, Dresang’s descriptions can be seen to be both prescient and slightly flawed.

The changing forms of handheld books can most readily be seen in Amazon’s Kindle (notably already a Hoover/vacuum-like synonym for ‘e-reader’) which first appeared in 2007. The Kindle does allow readers to interact with their reading matter in new ways and words can be glossed or ideas googled from the device. While I still do not own a Kindle, I know that having a smartphone has changed the way I read printed books as I am able to check references or explore related ideas without having to turn on the laptop.

Dresang’s connectivity category also includes books which use new graphic formats and where links between text and graphics are far closer than just, say, a caption or label. However, from the 2012 perspective, this seems to fall more into her second categorisation.

The rapid growth of tablet, or slate, computers since the introduction of the iPad in 2010 as an additional (rather than replacement) screen in people’s homes has already had a massive influence on the way in which texts can be accessed. Unlike the electronic-ink based Kindles, which fundamentally function as a directly replacement for the printed text, books – or more accurately apps – which are being produced for tablets are founded on the idea of interactivity. Last year, one of the 'Children's Literature at Cambridge' blog posts looked at the potential for picturebooks on iPads, and since then the number of such texts has continued to increase apace. However, while picturebooks are well suited for the transition to new media, YA texts are still, for the time being at least, adhering to the traditional linear narrative, even if they are now available on the Kindle.

Similarly, last year’s launch of Pottermore marked a new step in the production of interactive texts as it was web – rather than app – based. While the reception to Pottermore remains mixed, it wholly fulfils Dresang’s description, and as the rest of the series is made available to online readers, it will be interesting to see how a new generation of even more technologically-savvy Harry Potter fans respond to it as both a narrative and web-based experience. As a little aside, it is worth noting that although these examples do take advantage of new media, paper-based 'interactive' texts were available in the 1970s in the form of the 'Choose your own adventure' series.

While Dresang’s first two categories have stood the test of time well, her third is more problematic. In terms of ‘taboo’ subjects and characters previously without voices, these are things which children’s literature has never shied away from and, although not necessarily commonplace, examples going back to the nineteenth century can be found. While the ready online availability of information on any topic imaginable (and probably some unimaginable) in the twenty-first century may have made some ideas more accessible to readers, addressing taboo topics is not a result of the digital revolution.

In terms of individuals’ access to texts and the sharing of information, new technology has arguably made it more difficult for some people as ownership of a Kindle or tablet and Internet access is a pre-requisite. Indeed, despite having a penchant for gadgetry, trying to use the app to make the cover of Lissa Price’s Starters ‘come alive’ by downloading and installing it failed for me, as my two year old smartphone was simply not powerful enough to cope with it. I will nevertheless try it again when I have upgraded my handset. At a financial cost, of course.

Even though the Kindle will celebrate its fifth birthday in a few months’ time, and the third generation iPad was launched earlier this year, this is still a fascinatingly new area to watch for developments as Dresang’s first two categories continue to shape (or be shaped) by changes in technology. Whether aspects of her third will begin to be realised might also give a commentator in 2025 pause for thought.

Originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today.