這個應該是離開前辦的最後一個展覽，不是最辛苦的卻是收穫最豐的，規模較前兩次的都大，要應付的單位也特別多，幸好上頭給了100分，不滿的聲音自然石沈大海，爭論最激烈的要算陳列系統，全程 “妹仔大過主人婆”，畢業生的作品淹沒其中，反成了陪襯品；最開心的應該是一眾Year 1 的學生，自家製的設計有幸能派上用場，那種喜悅只有當學生的才會明白。
Monday, June 1, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
當代荷蘭交流設計 - 深圳華．美術館
繼去年底香港的“設計營商周”找來了荷蘭為合作伙伴後，荷蘭設計繼續進軍內陸市場，單一的平面設計展能用上整個博物館作展示，規模之大香港實難比擬，再看展品的多元性，我這個香港設計人也不得不對國內提供的藝展平台嘖嘖稱羨，但同胞們可有把握機會“偷師”則無從得知，現場所見人迹罕至，看來他們都不認為外國的月亮特別圓。
聽國內一唸設計的小弟說道，最少學生選修的便是平面設計，因其專業性不高，容易被取代，再加上薪酬及前景遠不及產品或室內設計，自然沒多少人投資這一門專業，就連跟平面設計分屬兄弟的學科如電腦動畫及網頁設計也都遇上“畢業等於失業”的困境，年青一輩唯有敬而遠之，更別說花時間看設計展。莫怪乎書店裡順手沾來的都是褒揚中國現代建築的書籍，要找當前中國平面設計師的總集，首推由呂敬人設計的“書戲”，我可是在台灣“誠品”找到了，深圳及香港連一點影兒也沒有，看來中國平面設計的展示空間還有待擴展，這個創立印刷術的文明古國，應該懂得珍視活現於紙上的藝術吧？
Thursday, February 19, 2009
TBS DigiCon6 Video Festival 2008
哪裡傳來了這兩套動畫，充滿驚喜；記得設計學院的學生都想做一套本土味 + 人情味十足的動畫，一來是分數的保證，二來是從眾多畢業生中突圍而出的捷徑，可惜綜觀歷屆作品，為人青睞者並不多：蘇敏怡、鍾偉權、淡水...屈指可算，要道理說得顯淺易明又不落俗套，我想這兩個故事做到了。
二等獎: "我阿媽係外星人"
一等獎: "動畫鏗鏘集-隱蔽老人"
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Tangible Traces: Dutch Architecture & Design in the making
這場展覽辦得真趕，不但時間短，經費缺，所有籌備工作基本上都由香港這邊一手包辦，還真沒聽聞過設計師會突然消失，好佩服老闆的臨場應變，最終還是搞得有聲有色，我都以為即食文化為香港獨有，原來歐洲也不賴。第一次到這個由工業中心改建而成的藝術中心，感覺不錯，只是每層的樓底太矮，氣勢遠不及國產798或1933，都怪香港空間少，但不也是我們的獨有特色乎？綜觀現場閃光燈的頻率，好評如潮耶！
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
An Evening with Nick Vujicic
Well for sure it's been a much anticipated event of the month. His story has been around for few years already and i finally got the chance to meet him outside YouTube. What a loss that we couldn't hug him one by one as scheduled. His Hong Kong tour was just a bit too packed. Guess the organizer was making full use of the cost they spent on the event. But judging from Nick's sunshine smile all along, I think he felt complete in this trip. He definitely would not forget this brilliant translator of the night who even made sense of his every single body language which in turn added extra colours to such a formulated seminar. Just not to mention how many times tears had welled up in my eyes, Nick's speech was gorgeous. I've listened to the same content at least more than once online, but the live impact was not at all diminished. He's a true miracle and he creates miracles in others' life. Wish him all the best on the Mainland tour!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
a book to share, a thousand look to bear...
努力了一年的書快將面世，心情有點複雜，兼任設計與助理編輯，更可於PageOne出售，該是樂極了的喜事，可我卻擔心其質量叫人失望。設計過程本來就千奇百怪，有人因一個突如其來的靈感一夜成名，有人十年寒窗為人類帶來無盡的福祉，更有人只為挑起你的物慾而不斷設計廢物... 諷刺地這本探討設計過程的書卻用上了同一個框架來處理六個不同的案例，加上單一的排版，把設計者的個性完全淹沒，造就了一本工具書，卻成不了一本兩者兼備的設計書，可惜。
再談設計一本書時功能上的考慮。近日因工作原故要翻印大量的藝術雙年展年刊，發現不同地方的設計師在構思這樣一本書籍時，往往忽略了我們這一類用家（研究員）。北京上海廣州把年刊的結構規格成有如《論語》一樣的典藏，笨拙得來嚴肅，翻閱時非常不便；新加坡與台灣就把年刊當商業書來設計，俗得很；最恰如其分的要算日本，不單在內容及排版上落足心思來突顯當年的展覽主題，紙質和尺寸亦恰如其分，極方便查閱及翻印；果然，日本的設計特別細心。
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Shanghai Biennale 2008 - Int'l Student Exhibition
這趟到上海辦展覽，看到國內同胞不一樣的面貌。除了愈見豐裕的生活質素外，還有那好客之道，是以往自由行時難得一遇的，大城市所具備的內涵，似乎漸漸地從她身上散發出來，老實說，我較上一次更愛上海。
友人紛說這是上海人的野心，「禮」是裝出來的。本就勢利的香港人不好說話，難道我們還嫌自己的面具造得不夠肖妙？人家才只不過是大專生，想得單純一點吧！我倒覺得他們有自信、願意交流，一點不怕給外人批評，渴想進步的動力遠超本土學生；這也難怪，國內的大城市本來就由不同省市的人才匯聚而成，兼容性之高難以比擬，自認多元的香港人多久了還容不下自己的同胞，更莫說其他小數族類在港的辛酸故事。也許，吃不到的葡萄總是酸的？
Monday, August 25, 2008
Impossibility in memory forgetting: Atonement (Part II)
The thin borderline between fantasy and memory was heightened with Briony constantly revisiting her childhood memory, consciously in the form of a letter asking for forgiveness from her sister and a novel draft based on the event she saw by the fountain; unconsciously in the form of day-to-day conversation with other nurses, from which we grasped bit by bit Briony's real feeling towards Robbie, and hence disclosing the part of memory she had screened off and repressed over the years. Lots of mirror shots were used throughout the film to associate the kind of vanity in story telling by exposing the ego in each of the character, if we recall Lacan's mirror stage of "I". Briony has constantly been splitting among her outer self and inner ego. Is not it the same for memory? How could we tell the truthfulness of our memory? Are they only fantasies or more accurately dreams?
In the first part of the story, we might well be thinking that Briony experienced tremendous shock from what she saw happening between Robbie and her sister Cecilia by the fountain. She immediately expressed her shock through the narrative of her play, in which she rhetorically paralleled Robbie to the character of her story and described him as "the most dangerous man in the world", which led to her preconceived "mistake" in accusing Robbie for the molestation after the second shock in the library. Fantasy and memory again intertwined within little Briony's mind. It was through memory that Briony's fantasy got nourished, while from the other way round, it was through fantasy that Briony's memory got revived and relived. As Deleuze described, "writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience." (1) Briony's writing (fantasy) was constantly refining and redefining her personal experience that lived through memory. It was never formed in a chronological and ontological way.
It was not until the flashback of Robbie saving Briony by the river bank were we able to know the true feeling of little Briony. She has been repressing her love towards Robbie whom she regarded as a "crush" when she was 18. By then, it would make full sense to interpret the accusation as repulsion out of jealousy. That "mistake" made in remembering the assault was to a certain extent quasi-deliberative. As Briony watched the incident, we were immediately flashbacked to the actual scene from the perspective of this "two figures by the fountain", learning the true story behind. With a smooth transition from the previous to the present scene, this part of flashback worked as a holistic structure of the story rather than a distinctive intervention. One might realize that it was a flashback very lately if he or she missed a second of attention to the details. It not only brought us back to the past just a moment ago, but at the same time challenged our conventional way of looking at past events. Was it really past or simply living along with our ongoing memory? When we perceived it as something that followed, it might turn out to have happened before. "Memory is of the past" as historians put it but here we could see the linear temporality of memory being broken down and challenged by cinematic approaches.
In the first part of the story, we might well be thinking that Briony experienced tremendous shock from what she saw happening between Robbie and her sister Cecilia by the fountain. She immediately expressed her shock through the narrative of her play, in which she rhetorically paralleled Robbie to the character of her story and described him as "the most dangerous man in the world", which led to her preconceived "mistake" in accusing Robbie for the molestation after the second shock in the library. Fantasy and memory again intertwined within little Briony's mind. It was through memory that Briony's fantasy got nourished, while from the other way round, it was through fantasy that Briony's memory got revived and relived. As Deleuze described, "writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience." (1) Briony's writing (fantasy) was constantly refining and redefining her personal experience that lived through memory. It was never formed in a chronological and ontological way.
It was not until the flashback of Robbie saving Briony by the river bank were we able to know the true feeling of little Briony. She has been repressing her love towards Robbie whom she regarded as a "crush" when she was 18. By then, it would make full sense to interpret the accusation as repulsion out of jealousy. That "mistake" made in remembering the assault was to a certain extent quasi-deliberative. As Briony watched the incident, we were immediately flashbacked to the actual scene from the perspective of this "two figures by the fountain", learning the true story behind. With a smooth transition from the previous to the present scene, this part of flashback worked as a holistic structure of the story rather than a distinctive intervention. One might realize that it was a flashback very lately if he or she missed a second of attention to the details. It not only brought us back to the past just a moment ago, but at the same time challenged our conventional way of looking at past events. Was it really past or simply living along with our ongoing memory? When we perceived it as something that followed, it might turn out to have happened before. "Memory is of the past" as historians put it but here we could see the linear temporality of memory being broken down and challenged by cinematic approaches.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Impossibility in memory forgetting: Atonement (Part I)
According to Freud in the Uncanny, the notion of screen memory was defined as one that "owes its value as a memory not to its intrinsic content, but to the relation obtaining between this content and some other, which has been suppressed." (19) When impression of a particular experience is retained in our memory, the content of such an experience may have no meaning to us, yet the content related to it which has been absent so far may be important to us. There are basically two psychical forces involved in producing these memories–one as wanting that experience to be remembered while the other resisting this choice. In this film we shall see how a novelist has been struggling with her memory of the past because of guilt and trying to resist her own forgetfulness of these memories due to physical abnormity conquering her dying body.
The whole story was basically structured into four main parts:
I) England 1935 – The Tallis House
II) North Western France. Four years later – The Retreat of Dunkirk
III) London. Three weeks earlier – The Hospital of London
IV) An interview of truth
Due to the disclosure of part IV, I am tempted to interpret the first three parts of the story as the mind–memory and creation–of the novelist, Briony Tallis and throughout the film sufficient hints were suggested for audiences to associate to such allegory. As Ian McEwan reminded us in the Making-of Atonement, "what you must never lose touch of, is that this is all being reinvented for us by Briony." The opening frames kicked off with "a kind of dynamism in the camera" which showed us the creative energy and confidence of a 13-year-old bourgeois Briony who had been the subject dragging the camera around the big Tallis House. It should be noted that from then on, a particular background music composed of typewriter clacking sound appeared throughout the story, which not only on one hand expressed the unanimous creativity of little Briony, but on the other hand also suggesting consciously to us that we were indeed going through the creation process of 77-year-old Briony's novel, which had in a sense rendered it impossible to differentiate the truthful part of the memory–things that did happen–and the fantasy part–things that did not happen at all. Was the memory working as part of the plot she created for her new novel? The clacking typewriting sound served as an obvious medium to connect this narrative time of the past with the present reality of the novelist who had been doing her best to record what she did and amend what she did not. The truth was unveiled at the last part of the film in form of an interview that largely enhanced the authenticity of the film by suggesting a sense of present established through first person interaction with the character. As Wright mentioned in the Making-of, "the cinematic equivalent of first person is interview. This is as close as one gets to talking directly to an audience, to remove the veil of fiction."
The intertwining or inseparability of memory and fantasy has been discussed further by Freud in his another essay called The Creative Writer and Daydreaming, from which he tried to associate a writer's creativity with his or her childhood memory. When children enter adolescent, they will cease playing to give up the link with real objects and turn their mind to fantasies, or daydreams. How these fantasies are formed relates so much to the one's memory of the past. (28, Uncanny) If this were the case, the first part of the movie, which focused on the childhood of Briony, has been the crucial source for drafting her fantasies over the other parts of the film. The most obvious content was the one in hospital where nurse Tallis were ordered to comfort a dying French soldier. Based on the story from this hallucinated soldier, Briony responded with her own memory of the past–something about the story between Cecilia and Robbie–intertwining with her current fantasies with this soldier that pointed towards their future marriage. This present experience–encounter with the soldier–has evoked Briony's recollection of childhood memory from which she always desired the love of Robbie but unsuccessful, and so she tried to fantasize a future marriage as an implicated way to fulfill such desire.
The whole story was basically structured into four main parts:
I) England 1935 – The Tallis House
II) North Western France. Four years later – The Retreat of Dunkirk
III) London. Three weeks earlier – The Hospital of London
IV) An interview of truth
Due to the disclosure of part IV, I am tempted to interpret the first three parts of the story as the mind–memory and creation–of the novelist, Briony Tallis and throughout the film sufficient hints were suggested for audiences to associate to such allegory. As Ian McEwan reminded us in the Making-of Atonement, "what you must never lose touch of, is that this is all being reinvented for us by Briony." The opening frames kicked off with "a kind of dynamism in the camera" which showed us the creative energy and confidence of a 13-year-old bourgeois Briony who had been the subject dragging the camera around the big Tallis House. It should be noted that from then on, a particular background music composed of typewriter clacking sound appeared throughout the story, which not only on one hand expressed the unanimous creativity of little Briony, but on the other hand also suggesting consciously to us that we were indeed going through the creation process of 77-year-old Briony's novel, which had in a sense rendered it impossible to differentiate the truthful part of the memory–things that did happen–and the fantasy part–things that did not happen at all. Was the memory working as part of the plot she created for her new novel? The clacking typewriting sound served as an obvious medium to connect this narrative time of the past with the present reality of the novelist who had been doing her best to record what she did and amend what she did not. The truth was unveiled at the last part of the film in form of an interview that largely enhanced the authenticity of the film by suggesting a sense of present established through first person interaction with the character. As Wright mentioned in the Making-of, "the cinematic equivalent of first person is interview. This is as close as one gets to talking directly to an audience, to remove the veil of fiction."
The intertwining or inseparability of memory and fantasy has been discussed further by Freud in his another essay called The Creative Writer and Daydreaming, from which he tried to associate a writer's creativity with his or her childhood memory. When children enter adolescent, they will cease playing to give up the link with real objects and turn their mind to fantasies, or daydreams. How these fantasies are formed relates so much to the one's memory of the past. (28, Uncanny) If this were the case, the first part of the movie, which focused on the childhood of Briony, has been the crucial source for drafting her fantasies over the other parts of the film. The most obvious content was the one in hospital where nurse Tallis were ordered to comfort a dying French soldier. Based on the story from this hallucinated soldier, Briony responded with her own memory of the past–something about the story between Cecilia and Robbie–intertwining with her current fantasies with this soldier that pointed towards their future marriage. This present experience–encounter with the soldier–has evoked Briony's recollection of childhood memory from which she always desired the love of Robbie but unsuccessful, and so she tried to fantasize a future marriage as an implicated way to fulfill such desire.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
DON'T YOU FORGET?
友人的畢業習作，覺得很有意思。
他把廢紙再造並聚疊起來，形成了有如木一樣堅硬的質料，然後將其裁成字母，組成"DON'T YOU FORGET?"的凸版印刷，在懷緬已逝的工藝技術之餘，教人思考現代科技所銷毀的生活質感：一樣的字體、一樣的內容、一樣的產品...我們還會記得那份由人手所造而帶來的驚喜與悸動嗎？
記得有日哥從家附近的市場買來兩個久違了的“菠羅包”，不亦樂乎，我還以為是價廉的原故...“你在美心買不到這麼新鮮的，而且每個都不一樣！”令他開懷的原來是那份漸漸被埋沒的人情味，是多少句“謝謝光臨”都比不上的。透過友人親手的製作，作品被賦予感情，獨一無二之餘，更力證時間的考驗，而值得深思的，是整個資本主義社會的麻木不仁。
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
"a woman's whole life in a single day..."
許久沒看過這樣悲的電影，赤祼祼地彰顯了人在面對生命中各種起跌更迭時的無能為力。一本看來平凡不過的小說把三個女人的生命連結在一起，探討的是人與生俱來最根本的問題 — 生命為何？
當付上了一生所愛的人認為你的犧牲微不足道；當註定要跟一個永遠活在自己過去的人共渡餘生；當你再無法與眼前的這個世界溝通時…你，會如何自處？大抵我們都覺得Laura太狠心，也無從理解一個全然活在自己創作世界裡的人的痛苦，但我們或多或少也曾經質疑過自己所做的事情有何意義，這可是花一輩子也想不通的問題，天生的惰性會叫我們把問題擱置一旁，但當其猛然來襲時，卻足以動搖我們生的念頭。
三位女主角分別作了她們的決定，只有一人選擇把生命結束，可說是這部電影至為積極的一環，畢竟我們對生命仍有期盼。很喜歡電影中的氣氛，那一天、那一刻，似是即將來臨，卻又凝結了，並且無限擴張…"a woman's whole life in a single day -- just one day -- and in that day, her whole life." 三個女人的一天，教你思考你的一生。
Thursday, July 3, 2008
旁觀者 II
a piece of sharing in Newsweek which talks about how a youngster looks at his American identity in this "post-Americanism" world. It is not as egoistic as we used to think. And his fleshy cultural experience in Asia could not be more intriguing...
"I've been backpacking through India for the past six months, and one of the most fascinating parts of my travels has been the responses I get when I say I am from America. In villages and smaller towns, people react with either awe or anger. Whether positive or negative, the response is usually so passionate that it is sometimes difficult to answer the barrage of questions about anything from Britney Spears to George W. Bush to Las Vegas. However, when I travel to places like Delhi, Mumbai and Singapore, the response is much different. The jet-setting, speak-five-languages, work-hard, party-hard crowds in these Asian cities are unlike any group of people I've ever met. They're more elegant than the Upper East Side, hipper than Williamsburg and faster than Chelsea. While Americans are disdained for being imperialist consumers in the villages, Americans are simply behind the times in the fancy enclaves of cities. Anti-Americanism is difficult to handle, but apathy toward America might be even more unsettling. As a child of the 1980s, I've never known America to be anything but an unmatched superpower. It's particularly strange to be in the part of the world that is considered the next frontier. Maybe this is why Americans don't travel as much as others around the globe. It's not easy finding out you're not at the center of the universe anymore. That said, it's amazing to be traveling at this moment in history; being out here has given me a humbled perspective to bring home. In the end, that's not such a bad thing."
- Sara Weston at New Delhi, India (Newsweek, Jul 7/ Jul 14, 2008)
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
a bit of life...
read this on John Chris Jones' designing designing some time ago. as i revisited it today i was touched again.
I'm driving along on the road
and I always have a sense of gratitude that the road continues
it was an amazing moment for me in my life
driving across America for the first time and realizing that
I'm driving along on the road
and I always have a sense of gratitude that the road continues
it was an amazing moment for me in my life
driving across America for the first time and realizing that
"I kept going"
that no one
that no one
that the road didn't stop because people went to have dinner or
it didn't stop because people got tired of digging and hauling
and living for other people
it just continued
and i was able to follow that
just like that old image of the king
being walking down the path that is unrolled for him
by the servants
the amazing thing about life is that
when it functions best
each of us is a king for all the other servants
and each of us is a servant for all the other kings
it's one of the reasons that I've gotton very sensitive
to the thought that the only goal worth pursuing is to
love people very much
and that requests for new ideas
it didn't stop because people got tired of digging and hauling
and living for other people
it just continued
and i was able to follow that
just like that old image of the king
being walking down the path that is unrolled for him
by the servants
the amazing thing about life is that
when it functions best
each of us is a king for all the other servants
and each of us is a servant for all the other kings
it's one of the reasons that I've gotton very sensitive
to the thought that the only goal worth pursuing is to
love people very much
and that requests for new ideas
and new ways of thinking
and new things to make
is just part of breathing
part of my biological process
but that
and new things to make
is just part of breathing
part of my biological process
but that
the thing that isn't part of my biological process
which is most human
and the most difficult to ascertain and to attain
is this feeling of being really loved
being in love
by someone else
which is most human
and the most difficult to ascertain and to attain
is this feeling of being really loved
being in love
by someone else
with someone else
that most old idea
seemingly of being in love
probably is the newest idea
that most old idea
seemingly of being in love
probably is the newest idea
and not an idea at all
Thursday, June 5, 2008
又一年六四
-「天安門母親運動」成員徐玨《明報6月5日》
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Conquering the last terrain of analog - Amazon's Kindle (Part II)
No windows persuading me to make all sorts of consumption pop up from my book. And no one knows that I am reading at a particular time in a particular place. But once the device is stuck onto your body, you are constantly under tracking by these big brands. Every body is accessible. They learn about your movement, your next stop and your next encounter. They hold the key to your minds. Readers will only be blinded with the ideological excitement of possessing this so-called freedom of connection to the infinite space of knowledge. You think you are now communicating with many more people around the world at any time any space but on the other side of the coin, you are actually being barred from connecting with groups that are less up-to-date. The immediacy of update widens our information lapse from person to person. Information one possesses easily deteriorates. The common ground for discussions is gradually shrinking due to this temporal difference in information reception.
"Book clubs could meet inside of a book." (Newsweek, 70) To a certain extent, yes, readers are no longer confined to a physical space for book salon or discussions but in turn, they are now confined to that virtual space which is highly manipulated by the space administrator, which is Amazon in this case. Instead of "making the entire works of humankind available to all people", they are now only available to those born in the digital age, more affiliated and knowledgeable mass. The rich poor gap is constantly widening, not only between the analog and digital camp, but also among those in the digital net. It is no longer a fair game. Within a global scale, those living in the third world will never get a taste of such technology. Even they are willing to read, their knowledge simply depreciates compared to other parts of the globe. Capital thus flows from around the world to those knowledgeable elites who are now connecting among themselves and sharing all sorts of information at an ever accelerating speed.
The whole evolution from analog to digital is a coercion that builds upon excessive needs and constantly making one feels that he or she is out-of-date. They will not point a gun at your head to force you to buy the new edition. Yet by gradually limiting and finally ceasing to release that previous edition, buyers had no choice but to switch to the newer one. This will certainly happen to the production of books in the near future. Books will not extinct but perhaps not each and every piece of writings will have the chance to release a book version. As Amazon's database expands, fewer and fewer publishers could resist the entire digitization movement.
"Book clubs could meet inside of a book." (Newsweek, 70) To a certain extent, yes, readers are no longer confined to a physical space for book salon or discussions but in turn, they are now confined to that virtual space which is highly manipulated by the space administrator, which is Amazon in this case. Instead of "making the entire works of humankind available to all people", they are now only available to those born in the digital age, more affiliated and knowledgeable mass. The rich poor gap is constantly widening, not only between the analog and digital camp, but also among those in the digital net. It is no longer a fair game. Within a global scale, those living in the third world will never get a taste of such technology. Even they are willing to read, their knowledge simply depreciates compared to other parts of the globe. Capital thus flows from around the world to those knowledgeable elites who are now connecting among themselves and sharing all sorts of information at an ever accelerating speed.
The whole evolution from analog to digital is a coercion that builds upon excessive needs and constantly making one feels that he or she is out-of-date. They will not point a gun at your head to force you to buy the new edition. Yet by gradually limiting and finally ceasing to release that previous edition, buyers had no choice but to switch to the newer one. This will certainly happen to the production of books in the near future. Books will not extinct but perhaps not each and every piece of writings will have the chance to release a book version. As Amazon's database expands, fewer and fewer publishers could resist the entire digitization movement.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Conquering the last terrain of analog - Amazon's Kindle (Part I)
Last Christmas Amazon has released its first electronic book (e-book) which is already the 2nd generation of its kind into the market. Newsweek has devoted a total of 6 pages to cover this story on November 26, making a sound feature on The Future of Reading that might be shaped by the attempt of this device. How revolutionary is this Kindle? Is it really going to "change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish?"
As claimed by the CEO of this online bookstore giant, Jeff Bezos, their mission is to digitize entire libraries of the world, to create "the world's only book" so as to "make the entire works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages, available to all people, all the time." (Newsweek, 70) What he meant by "all the time" refers to their newly developed wireless connectivity which surpasses all its ancestors including Sony Reader, the pioneer of e-book. With just a glimpse, one can hardly tell what makes the device so different from the PDA or mobile phones from which we read our everyday news and documents in transports. And what makes these big corporations so sure that they will be able to conquer this last terrain of analog, the print media which has been the bedrock of our civilization for centuries, but not another fashionable product that roars in the short run?
We were told that the product is in fact no different from an actual book. It can even lead you into the state of ludic reading – the rabbit hole that heavy readers enter when consuming books for pleasure. (Newsweek, 68) What Bezos was trying to convince readers was that it is not the medium that brings one into that hypnotic state. What have been paramount are in fact the ideas of writers. The aura of a book can be substituted by any medium and this time, this device, this machine. Instead of mingling with papers – static and 3-dimensional, now we were told to mingle with all sorts of screens – interactive and 4-dimensional. With their power in the media (they are in fact the media), they stir up noises and create talking points through platforms like blogs and forums, and thus slowly immerse oneself into the need for change. But how could the two mediums be possibly the same?
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