Is Literacy the Next Obesity Crisis?

As the popular technology blog Engadget pointed out today, it's kind of ironic that you're reading this since, according to Apple Inc.'s CEO, Steve Jobs, no one reads anymore. Jobs to the New York Times on the reading device Kindle: "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

Notice he says it twice in case those reading have trouble catching it the first time: people don't read anymore. As much as I'd like to call him to task, listing alternative reading materials like blogs and cereal boxes as proof that book consumption is not the only measure of literacy in a society, the truth is I think he's right. People don't read anymore. Not like they used to. Not like they should.

According to an article published January 1st of this still very new year by Misty Harris of the CanWest News Service, 31 percent of adults in Canada did not read a single book last year. Things get slightly less grim when you look at the portion of the population that did read at least one book. Of that group, the average number of books read was 20.

So is this a crisis? To compare, let's look at something that we've all recently agreed is: obesity. According to statcan.ca, 23 percent of adults in Canada fall into the category of obese. To put that in context, there are more Canadians who didn't read a book last year than there are who qualify as grossly overweight.

Obesity is not just the problem of the individual but also that of their society. Obesity can lead to pour poor health, which can render a person less able to contribute and more dependent on public resources such as health care. Pour Poor literacy can have a similar effect, and while a person's disinterest in books is by no means an indication that they are illiterate, it could be considered an indication of how their literacy is valued.

It's been said that some people suffering from obesity do so because they find healthy foods intimidating. It's not that they are incapable of eating healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, but their lack of experience in preparing them keeps them from ever trying. For those who can read but choose not to, they are likely experiencing a similar kind of intimidation.

This intimidation can lead people to develop a dependence on media other than literature to assimilate and consume information and entertainment. The more they do so, the less capable they become of engaging in literary activities. Literature itself then becomes undervalued, and its place in our society diminished. For information to disseminate honestly, it must disseminate diversely. If literacy is lost, so then is our level of assurance and means of testing that the messages we receive are true. In the face of this uncertainty, engagement is replaced with trust, criticism with acceptance. We no longer understand what is said, we simply believe what we're told.

31 percent of Canadian adults didn't read a book last year. I'd call that a crisis. If you read me.

Apple, I love You

Cast your fanboy slurs aside, naysayers! I've a story of true love to tell, and with a happy ending to boot!

In case you weren't aware, I've been having some issues with my MacBook. Some from the start, some quite recent. The basic rundown, in order of appearance, is this:

• Emits infamous high pitched whine unless CPU is tasked.
• iSight microphone always records with static noise interference.
• Piece of palm rest cracks off.
• iSight camera breaks completely, green power indicator light remains on while computer is on.

Through it all I've loved my MacBook for its Mac user experience, namely the joys of OS X, but my patience was starting to wear thin with all these hardware issues. I began to wonder what Steve Jobs would think of all this.

So I wrote him and asked.

Two days later, or 20 minutes ago from the time I'm typing this blog entry, my phone rings and a gentleman named Tajai from Apple's executive relations here in Canada is on the other end going over the contents of my e-mail to Jobs with me and assuring me he is now personally going to see this issue through to resolution.

How do you like them Apples?

The situation is being handled thusly: Tajai understands I need my computer for work and can't afford the downtime a repair would incur, so he's willing to pay up to $300 for a rental Mac while my MacBook goes into the shop. If the issues can't be resolved via the repair attempt, the MacBook will be replaced.

One of my main concerns when writing Steve was whether my MacBook experience was common to all MacBook owners. Tajai assured me my situation is rare, which, along with his personal commitment to seeing my MacBook through all of this, was reassuring.

I was starting to fear Apple had become just another faceless corporate greed machine, having turned its ear away from its customers and towards the ka-ching sound of money bags falling from the sky. That fear has now subsided. Apple is still a company that builds relationships with its customers, as this experience only proves.

Like any great relationship that goes through a hard time and comes out the other end in tact, my love for Apple is now stronger than ever.

Apple, I love you.

The Amazingly Incompatible Apple TV

Apple TV is shipping, and suddenly the latest Apple product that no one really seemed to care about is all anyone can talk about, or blog about anyway. Case in point, here I go. I was perfectly willing to leave Apple TV well enough alone, it never quite looked like anything I'd be interested in but I didn't see anything inherently wrong with it, either, until now.

There are comparisons that can be made to the iPod with Apple TV, in particular with its integration with iTunes. Supposedly, its this tight integration that is going to make yet another tag team knockout in the digital entertainment arena, this time in our living rooms as opposed to, well, wherever the heck we go with our iPods. In terms of music, Apple TV will indeed do just this. It will replace our ear buds with whatever sweet little (nay, large) bass pumping, 'nad dropping sound system we have set up in our homes and get our complete music library, from all of our iTunes purchased DRM'd sing-alongs to our ripped collection of CD's, flowing readily through. That's all fine and dandy, but what about TV? This is, after all, Apple TV we're discussing, right?

Lets assume TV means anything you'd normally watch on your screen; primarily TV shows and movies (the whole photos-on-your-TV thing never really seemed to take off, did it?). Sure, Apple is ramping up the content drive on its iTunes store, so you can buy TV shows and movies which will stream to your HD screen via Apple TV. Similar to what many cable services are now offering; with iTunes and Apple TV you'll have your very own on demand service running, watching what you want, when you want, and that's all you'll ever pay for in terms of content. Apple TV owners, you can kiss your cable bill goodbye. That's swell, for casual viewing, anyway.

Coming back to iTunes music store for a moment, purchases made from there are usually pretty casual. Almost anyone with a real appreciation for a band will still go out and buy the CD if they want the whole album, and with TV and movies you can bet DVD sales will continue to work the same way. TV on iTunes has more of an appeal because each episode is available as its aired, while the complete package of a season won't come out on DVD for some time later, but movies are a tidy package, no staggering there. While with music you can take your purchased CD, rip its contents to your computer and then carry it around in your iPod or stream it to your Apple TV and wake up all your neighbors, TV shows and movies don't rip from DVD's... easily or legally anyway. This is the problem.

Statistically, most of the contents of a person's iPod is music they've purchased on CD that has been ripped to their computer. The iTunes store is a great accessory to the iPod, but its just that. Apple TV is essentially dependent on an accessory for its functionality. Enjoying content on an Apple TV will be like trying to dress yourself while staring at a closet full of clothes but only having access to the scarves, or perhaps more to the point the scarves you bought off the internet from that one store. All those DVD's you lovingly collected and own, and the ones you're still planning on collecting for years to come, will be incompatible with Apple TV.

Unless Steve Jobs has a yet-unveiled plan in place which will suddenly make ripping DVD's easy and legal (another finger pointing letter to be written, perhaps?), I see no real future for Apple TV. A tight integration with the iTunes store is not nearly enough to make this otherwise promising device as necessary and ubiquitous as the iPod so readily became. Which is a shame, because for some reason I still find myself really wanting one.

The Real Six Months of iPhone Bugs?

A friend on Facebook has suggested my pseudo-insider information on the iPhone's toxic release may in fact be another example of Steve Jobs and his spymaster ways, as it has been speculated was the case with Asteroid. The problem with that analysis is that it would seem imprudent for Jobs to be going out on the hunt for his neighbors, particularly when the only information they would ever possess in the first place would be that which he gives them. There's nothing to gain and plenty to lose with that strategy.

Everyone, hold on to your irony hats.

The other possibility is that this is all just a sad example of the telephone game gone international. When I looked a little closer at the details here, I noticed a coincidence. The speculation is that the iPhone will launch roughly six months from the date it was announced. These six months will see the iPhone riddled with bugs, the overwhelming majority of which, one would expect, should be getting squashed as we come up to the launch date. So what gadget-geek's best friend's mom might have heard Steve say was something more like there are still six months of bugs to be worked out before we release the iPhone to the public. Tell that to someone, who tells someone else, and immediately you begin to see the breakdown.

Now if only I'd thought of that last night.

Six Months of iPhone Bugs?

MOAB made a media buzz-fizzling effort of trying to expose Apple for having a month's worth of bugs back in January of this year. In the end, no one really noticed. Its not like they didn't have a captivating product, but an infinitely more captivating product was arriving early that same month, something a lot of people had been anticipating for a long, long time (even if they didn't know it yet.) On January 9th, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. Duh. And MOAB drifted into obscurity.

As it turns out, the iPhone, which muted the Apple bug whistle as it was being blown, may in the end sound its shrillest, loudest squeal. I have it on authority from the guy I spoke to on my last call of my last day of a near two month stint at a call center servicing Sprint PCS customers, that the iPhone is coming out beta. According to my source, a young hipster-gadget-geek with a troublesome Motorola Q, from Orange, CA, his best friend's mother is Steve Job's neighbor. Jobs, it seems, is a pretty generous guy, giving out Nanos and other Apple toys quite frequently, and when he's not dropping product, he's dropping future product knowledge. California hipster-geek claims that Jobs has admitted the iPhone will hit the market with at least six months of bugs to be worked out, and that early adopters will be Apple's unwitting testers.

For the record, this guy didn't just start blabbing all these details to me uninvited; I asked his opinion about the iPhone as we were wrapping up his call since he'd shown himself to be something of a gadget-geek and I was looking to kill the last few minutes of my shift without having to do any more work, and that's when the story came out.

I still have a hard time believing Jobs, who managed to keep the biggest tech secret in history for years before launching the iPhone to a semi-stunned, semi-salivating populous, would so readily boast that this same iPhone was to be released into the eager clutches of the dazed and drooling unfinished. Then again, the first generation MacBooks came out before the clear plastic seals could be peeled off the cooling vent and people had to figure that one out for themselves at first, so I suppose anything is possible.