Kindle + Cloud = Creeps me out
18th March 2011
I am at present reading a Kindle e-book on the PC Kindle app. Every now and then I’ll run across an odd thing: a light grey dotted line under a passage, with the notation, e.g., ‘3 highlighters’. My wife, who owns a Kindle as I do not, informs me that this indicates that X other people who have purchased that title from Amazon have highlighted that passage. That kinda creeps me out.
And yet … Consider a textbook with that sort of indicator. One underline is probably bullshit. Twenty may indicate something significant; getting into the whole ‘wisdom of crowds’ notion. As an unwanted markup in my book, it’s a minor annoyance at worst; but, for those who whom such things are important, it represents a species of real-time involvement in a community, the group of all people who have read this particular title and found something in it worth highlighting. I’m going to have to think about that one.
And the question immediately arises: Who came up with the idea to add that particular ‘feature’ to the Kindle app, and why? And how did it survive the corporate bureaucracy that clots organizations the size of Amazon like kudzu? I’m going to have to think about that one, too.
March 18th, 2011 at 22:52
I would like to have some options on this. Do I have freedom to control which of my highlights are shared? Perhaps I’m willing to share some but not others? Can I restrict which books or categories of books I wish to see other peoples highlights on? Is it selectable so that I can turn it off when I just want to read without any potential distraction? Is it only a highlight or does that lead to an online discussion? On the whole, I’m inclined to believe that if there are enough controls for the user to be able to opt out cleanly and gracefully then it is probably a fine thing.
March 19th, 2011 at 05:43
I have since discovered that one can turn the visibility of ‘Popular Highlights’ on or off, but that appears to be all the control one has over the process. I haven’t read anything about it in the technical infosphere so it would appear to be under most people’s radar at present.
It’s also unclear how many highlights are needed to make them show up; the precise number suggests that each is tracked, yet the smallest number I’ve seen so far is three, so there may be a display threshold involved.
March 19th, 2011 at 12:11
My question is this: how long before some enterprising young soul builds an app to underline his favorite passages (say, everything that praises his favorite celebrity) a thousand times or more?
This feature has a strictly limited useful timespan.