Shatner, Sleep, And Electronic Reading & Writing

What has William Shatner got to do with Christmas cards? Not a lot really, I suppose, since he's Jewish. Although if he is like a lot of my Jewish friends he knows a lot of people from all sorts of backgrounds most of whom don't think about religious issues much and he probably receives a few each year and may well reply to some of them where appropriate. But that is beside the point because I was thinking of another more indirect connection earlier. 

I couldn't sleep. It is that betwixt and between sort of weather at the moment where it can't make up its mind whether it is winter or summer so if the choice of blanket density is wrong when going to sleep I can wake up from either being too hot or too cold. I experience the same thing at the beginning of winter. I hate this time of year - I would prefer it if the weather would just make its mind up to be consistently hot or cold and make it easier to sleep. Today I woke up too hot. 

I had only been asleep for a couple of hours but when I wake up like that the mind starts working and it is hard to get back to sleep. So I got my iPhone from under my pillow (yes, I have to admit to sleeping with my iPhone) and did a few emails, went onto Facebook, said hello to a couple of people, did a quick crossword puzzle and was still not sleepy so I did a quick jig saw puzzle (yes I have a jig saw puzzle app on the iPhone. It is called Allis Jigsaw. It is great - I can recommend it.

Still not sleepy. So I thought I would do some reading. I have just finished the Steve Jobs biography and intended to read George Takei's biography but then I noticed I had an interview with William Shatner in the iPod (for those who are unfamiliar with the iPhone it has a great iPod as part of the phone). I figured it was perfect. The interview is a little less than an hour and a half and would be perfect getting his perspective before starting Takei's book as they both starred on Star Trek together. I only need a few minutes before sleeping.

So, almost an hour and a half later I had finished the interview. Oops, didn't mean to do that but the interview was dangerous in that once started it was impossible to put down. William Shatner is a real gentleman, he has a wonderful attitude to life. At an age when most people start slowing down he is a whirlwind of activity. Best of all - when he speaks he speaks from the heart, a quality which has probably given him a few personal problems over the years but which also endears him to his audiences as a general rule.

The interview is available as a download from Audible.com. It is called William Shatner At The 92nd Street Y. It is worth getting if you use Audible. If you are not familiar with audio books you should try it. As I listened with the iPhone on speaker having those voices beside you in the bed is a lot like listening to a story teller and I think that childhood experience is in all of us and we all respond to that story telling in bed in a very calming way.

Shatner is most famous as Captain Kirk from Star Trek and as I listened on my iPhone I thought about how the incredible handheld devices they had in Star Trek which was back then jusat science fiction has become reality with the iPhone (for anyone interested it is possible to download any of several apps that purport to be a tri-corder but no, I don't have one of them). It also made me think about how things have changed.

On the enterprise a tricorder was used to shove in front of things and Spock would say something like "it is some kind of carbon based molecule which has been altered somehow so no radio waves can pass through it, Captain." The device meanwhile would have flashing lights and maybe some kind of electronic noise. By todays standards it seemed not terribly useful but in 1966 it seemed extraordinary. The iPhone on the other hand does so many more things and tends not to have flashing lights (although there is an app for that...) 

The iPhone has turned out to be a great reading device both with text based reading with e-readers and with audio books. Just like my first iPod reintroduced me to my music collection and I listen to much more music these days, the iPhone has reintroduced me to reading. Whenever I talk about the latest book I am reading it will be either an audiobook or in an e-reader, both on the iPhone.

A lot of people who have never used an e-reader before tend to scoff at the notion of electronic reading. They say that you cannot beat the feel of paper. Maybe, but reading was done for thousands of years before paper and will continue long after stop leveling forests to make paper just to satisfy some misplaced delight in paper pages.

Electronic books actually have some very lovable qualities of their own. Weight and storage space for one. As someone who has lifted tons of boxes full of heavy books when moving house, dealt with the expense and hassle of shelving for thousands of books, and spent hours in the frustrating but fruitless search for a particular book I can assure everyone that there is nothing more pleasurable than keeping books on an iPhone. I only have about a hundred on there right now but it actually has plenty of room in its memory to hold tens of thousands of books. In fact it could hold more books than I have ever owned in my entire life including all the reference books and poetry and science fiction and every other kind of book all on an iPhone that weighs just a few grams and can fit in my pocket. Every pain I have ever felt lifting tons of books is cheering as I write. That is a great pleasure.

But more than just having books available in the pocket, electronics has changed and broadened what we define as reading. Back in the 60's reading meant basically 2 things - reading books and magazines or reading letters people wrote to you (although there were precious few of those). Now a normal daily routine of reading will include SMS on the phone, news on the computer (although I also read mine on the iPhone), audio books, emails, IM, in addition to books and magazines. While booksellers worry that people read less these days, in fact we read more but we have changed the way we habitually read and our reading of traditional paper based books has actually declined in recent years despite our over all appetite for reading increasing with e-reading rapidly increasing its share.a

Naturally there are those who lament the long form of reading and point out that so much of our reading and writing these days is in the form of short messages. It is true that email, SMS, and IM are recent phenomena but the past had its own way of proving a common short form of messaging. In say the 1960's people did write long letters but they also wrote very few of them. It would have been considered a lot for someone to write a dozen in a year and while a few wrote considerably more, most wrote less. Many would look forward to Christmas when they would have the opportunity to send their annual SMS length message to friends and relatives. Christmas cards are the evidence that the mobile phone and computer generation cannot be blamed for short messaging and the claims of short attention spans that go with that. Their grandparents were doing the same thing, just doing it the old fashioned way.

As to William Shatner and the creators of Star Trek way back then they were good at imagining hand held devices that could go beep and flash lights but none of them ever imagined that the device would be used for reading and text messaging. I also get the impression that Captain Kirk would have been very surprised that I was listening to an interview with his alter-ego on a phone smaller than his blinking tri-corder. 

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