Recently, Amazon announced that they would be making a policy change to Kindle that seems relatively minor on the surface; at least until you start to peel down through the layers of it. Let's obsess over this for a minute because we can all probably use a distraction right now. Here's the deal, as of February 26, Kindle users can no longer download their purchased books to their computer for backup or manual transfer purposes.

But most Kindle users now sync their purchases over wifi, so what's the big deal? (you might say)

The issue is that this further muddies the already murky waters of ownership in the digital age. Or perhaps, from another angle, it makes things clearer. The question of do-you-really-own-it when it comes to purchased digital media has already been a tricky one, with the answer mostly being, "Well, not really." When you buy a digital product like a movie or a song or a book, you never really own it. You just own a license to access it. In reality, this is the way it has always been—even with physical media. When you picked up your limited edition HD DVD Director's Cut of Good Burger from the 2 for $22 bin at Blockbuster, you didn't own the rights to the 1997 masterpiece; you simply had a license to access it via that disc whenever you liked. You weren't allowed to make copies of it or host ticketed screenings in your parent's basement. We all understood this. And while some people did make the odd copy for their cousin Steve, the FBI wasn't coming for them because it wasn't a form of piracy on a scale that mattered much. Also, it was nearly impossible to track down. Even when Steve started selling bootleg copies behind his gym.

Digital changed this. It changed the scale and ability to crack down on piracy, it changed how and where we bought and consumed our media, and it changed our relationship to that license of access entirely. That dynamic that we all understood became cracked wide open, and a whole new slippery and strange entity crawled out. We no longer had something physical to take hold of and move around between the method and location of consumption. Again, I want to highlight that even physical media always represented just a form of access, but the form changed so starkly that everything became up for grabs. Out of this, two clear forms of access emerged that I think are worth highlighting: piracy and walled gardens. One used the slipperiness of the digital form to make the free copying and sharing of that access easier than ever before. The other found a way to use that very form to confine people to a closed (and pricey) system in order to continue to access their purchases. Apple was an early pioneer in this with the way they began introducing not just the media but the tools required to play that media on. This went on to include both software and hardware.

Okay, I wasn't really planning on a history lesson, but I can't avoid giving context to frame my thinking here as I reflect on these changes that Amazon has made. Kindle falls squarely into this messy space as one of the first major players in the digital book market. They sold both the e-books and the e-book readers required to consume them. And while there has always been a policy (and protections) to keep those e-books on Kindle, many savvy users have found ways around that, primarily through the ability to download your purchased files to your computer.

Alright, Amazon has a right to prevent people from exploiting their product. Again, what's the big deal? (You still might say)

The big deal, and this applies to all digital media, is the question of the ownership of that license to access. With physical media, it was easy to understand. As long as I have this physical thing—a tape, a VHS, a DVD, a book—I can access and enjoy this media that I have purchased. Even if the method of access breaks or needs to be replaced (think a Samsung DVD player), I can continue to use it on the replacement. On top of that, I am not forced to purchase another Samsung DVD player. If a Sony DVD player happens to be on sale, I can buy that, and my ability to watch my DVD remains unchanged. Digital media is increasingly locking your access into a closed system. You are forced to read that book on Kindle. You will always be forced to read that book on Kindle.

But let's take this to a few other possibilities. Let's say Amazon decides to change the text of a book because they feel that a certain line no longer fits with their values as a company. Or, what if they decide to ban certain books outright? They can just delete those sentences or books right off your Kindle, and there's nothing you can do about it. Or, and this is something I think is a very high possibility, what happens when Amazon decides that recurring and predictable revenue is better for their profits and moves Kindle to a subscription-only model. What is to prevent them from cutting off access to your purchased books and locking them behind a monthly paywall? And if you think they can't do that, you need to be paying more attention to the shift to the subscription model that has been taking place across the digital landscape over the last 5+ years. If you're a new user, that might not seem like such a bad deal. But let's remember that Amazon was a pioneer in e-books, releasing Kindle way back in 2007. If you've been faithfully purchasing books from them since they began, that becomes a much bigger thing.

This is why it's important for us to remember that our consumption habits are nothing more than an opportunity for profit. Corporations keep finding ways to turn those habits against us in order to maximize those profits. Why settle for selling a book to a customer once when you can force them to pay a recurring membership fee to keep reading within your walled garden? Perhaps the most absurd part of this whole thing is that libraries still exist. We already have FREE access to books whenever we want them, and services like Overdrive have made that access possible in a digital way as well.

I've heard it said that no one would be able to sell the idea of a library today, and I think that is true. It's also why they matter so much. Public goods and services are the few remaining strongholds of resistance to capitalism we have left. We need them as much as they need us. We should be supporting them while they're still around.

** Aside: I left Kindle years ago when I realized they were tracking my reading data and using it to make more profit.

Came across this research paper making the rounds on LinkedIn last week. It's a study looking at the impact of AI usage on our critical thinking and other cognitive functions. The authors note:

"While cognitive offloading can free up cognitive resources, there is concern that it may lead to a reduction in cognitive effort, fostering what some researchers refer to as ‘cognitive laziness’. This condition might diminish the inclination to engage in deep, reflective thinking. The use of AI tools for tasks like memory and decision-making could lead to a decline in individuals’ abilities to perform these tasks independently, potentially reducing cognitive resilience and flexibility over time."

Though I am sure that this is a nuanced topic and a need for some healthy debate around this remains, I am thankful that this is getting attention. Technology, like any tool can be beneficial in the ways it helps us achieve efficiency in tasks we do repeatedly. Yet, there is always a risk that if we become too reliant on that tool we might forget how to do the task without it. Skills can be diminished and lost entirely if not used.

My growing concern with AI has been a fear that it might erode our abilities to learn and think critically about things; and this study certainly lends itself to that theory. Yes, an AI tool might be able to summarize a book, an article, or meeting notes and save me the time of doing it myself; but efficiency should not be our only goal. Being able to critically evaluate something we read or hear and know how to pull out the useful or quality parts is crucial—especially as information online becomes less and less trustworthy.

One of my favourite newsletters shared this really interesting article this week. It's almost hard to define exactly what it's about, as it hits on many different fascinating ideas; but at its core it seems to be looking at our relationship to time and hurry. There's so many great things in this article that I would recommend taking some time to read it in full. But what I want to pause and reflect on here is when he talks about the way certain innovations in time saving or efficiency can move from being a good option to becoming a cultural obligation. He uses something like parking apps or self-checkout lanes as an example.

"We welcome the technology at first because it presents us with a choice. But then everybody else has to adopt the technology, and we suddenly realize we’re worse off than we were when we started... And when behaviours become universal, they affect everybody."

I think this is a great point and I was particularly interested in how he took this idea and applied it to the behaviour of people using their phones to record concerts. I'm not sure if you've been to a concert lately, but this trend has become so big that it has become a normalized part of the experience. The author makes the observation that even if you don't want to participate in this shared behaviour, everyone else doing it can ruin the concert experience for you. He even notes that the people most affected are the performers themselves, who now have to perform for an online audience rather than just the people in attendance. It's no longer an option, it's an obligation.

"When one person does something, it’s an option. It’s something that somebody does. When these things become more widespread, they morph from being alternative options to being social norms, conventions from which you have no escape."

This is something I find myself reflecting on often as it relates to the public realm. Public space lives in this strange middle ground of belonging to no one and everyone simultaneously. As such, it is always vulnerable to the shifting norms and expectations of society. A lack of intentional reflection on those behaviours can result in our public spaces being hijacked by them in a way that actively destroys the value that public space should bring.

Perhaps one of the greatest sins of this modern era is the way we have let technology into our lives without intention or consideration of what we are giving up.

Settling back into my regular reading routine with Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation.' If you haven't heard of this book, you should check it out (especially if you have or work with kids).

My reflection this morning is on a section where Haidt talks about the way our society has increasingly lost any meaningful age milestones for kids as they mature. Where many cultures around the world have historically had rites of passage that would mark a child's transition into adulthood, our modern secularized society has eschewed such practices. He then goes on to say how this has become even more pronounced in the internet age.

"On the internet, everyone is the same age, which is no particular age. This is a major reason why a phone-based adolescence is badly mismatched with the needs of adolescence."

Kids will always try and seek out experiences that are older than they are. Rites of passage and milestones helped keep that in check by providing something to work towards. Online, kids can essentially be any age they choose. They are given access to information and experiences that are beyond their maturity levels. Basic parental controls are not enough to mitigate this problem.

Haidt's suggestion is to reintroduce some form of rites of passage to help kids move at an appropriate pace towards more responsibility, freedom, and maturity. All of this should precede giving them access to online spaces; which he recommends being age 16 (at the earliest).

Humans seem to have a tendency to introduce a new technology and then consider the ethics of it later. This was a theme that Arendt was wrestling with in the Human Condition, the role of the public realm in debating the ethics of progress. Sennett, in the Craftsman, picks up this idea. Throughout the book he is examining the relationship between human craftwork and the machine.

It's hard not to read it with the normalization of AI in the background; which is, admittedly, part of my own interest in reading it at all.

In a chapter on material consciousness, he discusses the tension between natural and artificial materials and the way in which we attach virtue to these concepts. His point was that we endow a certain 'honesty' when natural materials and processes are used to create something. Machines, however, have challenged our ability to know the difference by replicating the look of handmade things. While a creator might know the difference, the average person does not. AI has brought this replication into the realm of language, expression, and thought; mass producing ideas in a way that is getting harder for the average person to discern. This, in turn, puts pressure on all knowledge workers to embrace AI just to keep up.

The question that I am wondering increasingly is what happens when we replace our human ability to think through problems and solutions? Just as we have 'forgotten' the skills and processes of other crafts that embrace the convenience of machines, will our reliance on prompts cause us to lose the capacity to move a thought from inception to conclusion?