Resisting the kindle for digital culture

Notas del editor

1. What I want to do in this presentation is give a brief overview of my doctoral research the dissertation for my EdD. But I also want to make a close link between some of the questions I'm exploring and the themes of the module you are studying now on used and digital cultures. My doctorate is provisionally entitled e-reader I married him: readership in late age of print. It's a small-scale ethnographic study of readers and their preferences for and uses of different reading technologies. By reading technologies I mean devices such as the Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iPad mobile phones. But I also mean print books because print books are technologies too - we are just so familiar with them that we forgotten their status as technological artefacts. I became interested in this topic for a number of reasons. Firstly I became a kindle reader a few years ago when is part of moving house my books ended up in storage and I bought a kindle that I could carry on reading. I've never been interested in Kindles before but I had bought one as a present for my mum and helped her to set it up. I was surprisingly impressed at how easy it was to connect to one's Amazon account and Wi-Fi and then download books which were both cheaper and media in the delivery then print copies. As I became a reader of both electronic books as well as print books I found myself tuning into newspaper articles and comments in everyday speech from ordinary readers about the book and its future. There seemed to be a mismatch between what ordinary readers were saying about their preferences for the older technology of print and in emerging media narrative of the death of the book and with it its surrounding infrastructure of libraries and bookshops. 
2. Administrative Area Building 7, Kodak, Canada Toronto. Robert Burley, The Disappearance of darkness: photography at the end of the analog era.
3. media choice is always performative reading technology is a proxy through which readers direct certain values & beliefs
4. Laura Portwood-Stacer, L. (2012). Media refusal and conspicuous non-consumption: The performative and political dimensions of Facebook abstention. New Media & Society, 15(7): 1041–1057 addiction Refusal is offered as a technique for resisting media addiction     Abstinence is presented as an individualized solution to user pathology (like drug use)     Experts can help; don’t stop consuming – consume differently!     asceticism Refusal is offered as an ethical  technique  for  improving the self     Abstinence is a means of personal and cultural purifica#on     Surveil, scrutinize, and control yourself!     productivity Social media participation is framed as a  distraction from productive pursuits     Refusal allows one to make “better” use of one’s time,     engaged     in     remunera#ve     or     creative labour     What kinds of productivity does this frame conceal?     activism Refusal can be a kind of “propaganda by deed” (anarchist tactic)     Anti-consumption as activism relies on a shared understanding of the political and ethical  motivations behind refusal
5. Laura Portwood-Stacer, L. (2012). Media refusal and conspicuous non-consumption: The performative and political dimensions of Facebook abstention. New Media & Society, 15(7): 1041–1057
6. June. Everyday aesthetics. It’s an ordinary object bit one capable of giving pleasure in the same way as a lovely cake or a bunch of flowers.
7. Playing an important role in the narrativisation of life experiences. About memory work.
8. Kate’s bookshelves.
9. I do think paperback books are coming back into popularity and there's a wave towards shopping at independents generally.   "high street giants" "the big boys”
10. The Facebook Kid and the Cloud Lord are serf and king of the new order. Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget: a manifesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
11. so how might this concept relate to your understanding of young people and digital culture? the idea of media preference as performative it’s a lifestyle choice the technologies we use - and those that we refuse to use - all say something about who we are - or how we would like to be perceived to be. If I say, for example, “I can’t stand Twitter, it’s so trivial”