Keepsakes, sharing and wishful thinking in a digital world
I flicked through my iTunes library the other day looking for a Warren Zevon song that I’m pretty sure I have…somewhere. Surely, buried in the 11,825 tracks of my iTunes library it’s bound to be there. But, no.
My head immediately went to thinking about the copious hard drives I have and wondered where that song might be hiding. It made me smile to imagine a miniature Warren Zevon, gradient lenses and a surly, unshaven demeanor, peeking out from behind the old (massive!) 320GB SCSI RAID collecting dust in my office. With a wink, he ducks behind leading me to where it *might* be.
Then, I think about it for a bit. Talisman or not, it’s not likely to be on that drive. In fact, I have no idea where it could possible have gone. Except, gulp, deleted.
Beginnings of a digital packrat
In 2001 I took a trip to the San Diego Apple Store (the closest store at that point to my home in Tennessee) and bought this new thing called an iPod. All 5 glorioius gigabytes of it. That started me on a path toward total music domination. Hard drives couldn’t get big enough for me and I could never have enough music to suit every mood. And since 2001 I have acquired, stored, moved and reacquired a metric assload of music.
But, this recent search got me thinking about how my parents shared music. My family isn’t musical but we had a few records around. When they’d leave home I would find my way to the Creedence, Harry Nilsson or Iron Butterfly records and turn them up very loud on the old Pioneer stereo.
Rebellious? Only sorta. The music was just lying around and begged to be played. And, more importantly, it was accessible. It could be carted off to my room, taken to a friend’s house or left, ready for the next person, in that big wooden entertainment center my dad built*.
Beyond the music
Am I being nostalgic or are we really losing something by not just having a central repository for our media? Of course, it’s not just music, is it? We’re on the cusp of the iPad being released, destined to usher in a new catalog od ebooks and magazines.
I only have a few digital books now but if my, almost non existent, CD-based music library is any indication, I won’t need to remodel the house in order to make room for all those incoming ebooks. The virtual ones will do just fine in the future, I think.
Possibly the biggest thing about real books, for me anyway, lies is the tactile. I’m still a fan of paperback books – being able to break the spine and dog ear pages**. A worn, aged paperback has a great feel and smell but, even I can’t wait for the possibilities of grabbing a small library of books for a trip. No more stuffing an extra bag with various books to satisfy my reading whims. Now I can just purchase one over wifi or 3G. Click, pay, read.
But, cue the scary music, do you feel trouble brewing on the horizon, too?
When I’ve read that great novel, I would really love to be able to share what I’ve purchased (caveat: quickly, easily) with my friends and family. Maybe I want to send a line, a passage, or a whole book –what then?
If entire departments in my office can all share a spreadsheet, surely I can share an ebook file with a friend, right? Right?
When is a library not like a Library?
During our lifetime we will accumulate massive amounts of data. Our hard drives are the resting place of all things media. Those ad hoc libraries may be all-inclusive (pictures, movies, books, music, dissertations, journal entries) but they aren’t very portable.
Put it in the cloud, you say? Yes, that’s what we have been doing and it’s a good solution but not a great one. Our spreadsheets, pictures, backups are all over the world in far flung media centers and back room servers. But, access to that data isn’t simple or intuitive for the average person (read: casual computer user).
Furthermore, the two most basic problems (not friendly user interfaces and clever web x.0 names) in dealing with all this media haven’t been solved by anyone successfully — real world data management during life and after death.
Libraries, customarily, are all about lending materials. A portion of your tax dollars is apportioned to the county for which they build a location, stock it with books, periodicals and other types of physical media. As a tax payer you, and your family, are entitled to borrow from these locations at whim. But a digital library that resides on your laptop can only really be checked out by the person holding it, or, in the case of MP3 players, whichever devices are synchronized with that laptop.
To build a true digital library would cost a massive amount money for infrastructure (servers, bandwidth, technical support, etc) and likely beyond of the skill set for most people. But not if a service, a paid service everyone used, could do all that for you.
A few bytes here, a gigabyte there…sooner or later we’re talking about a lot of data, right? Yes and no.
Ebooks (just pre-formatted text in most cases) are minuscule in size when compared to a music album or movie file. In fact, if you wrapped up all the text on my blog since 2001 I’m sure it would fit neatly onto a couple of 3.5″ floppy discs. Tiny. But, movie files downloaded to your computer are massive (several gigabytes in some cases).
How does a data center get around storing everything for everyone? Logical management of common assets.
Let’s use music as an example, though the same works for movies and books, too. On my laptop I have the Beatles song “Baby You’re A Rich Man” from the album “Magical Mystery Tour”and I’ll bet I’m not the only one who has this track.
It was purposeful that I point out the particular album since that track also appears on the “Yellow Submarine”and “Magical Mystery Tour [2009 Mono Remaster]” albums as well. So, in this case, the data center would hold all three versions because they’re different. And so it would go for live recordings, remastered versions, special box sets, etc. But in the end, only one of each of those versions would be held in the data center. Each song would then be attributed to every library necessary.
Keep in mind we’re not breaking new ground here. iTunes, Amazon and every other digital etailer are already doing this. When you buy a song those services are pushing you a file they’ve already got (selling you and everyone else the same file, ad infinitum) and the main costs are two: data storage and bandwidth.
But, in a real world scenario, how could this work with a personal media library? Well, the same way a real library works, by checking in and out for use. This would be in the background, synchronous and available wherever your devices are used.
Want to read a book? Just open it up in your ebook reader. In the background, the reader app will negotiate with your library and ‘unlock’ it for use. Want to move from your ebook reader to a cafe and use their computers? Log in, check out the book and pick up where you left off.
Share and Share Alike
Now that all of our media is in the main library, how do we share it with others? Sharing media with friends is where the landmines are strewn about (This is where publishers, rights holders and, well, the bean counters get fidgety, btw)
Lets pretend I’m reading the latest Harry Potter, Twilight, Tom Robbins novel. I really enjoyed it and wanted to share it with a friend. Through some menu on my device I would send them a link to the book in my library.
If they decide to pick it out and read it that book now becomes ‘on loan’. As far as I’m concerned it would okay if it were unavailable to me until they’re done. That friend is now in temporary control of the media. They can’t copy or loan it to someone else (I’m still iffy on that last point), but simply borrow it.
How do you get your media back? Well, technically, it never left. I suppose the library would offer a gentle reminder or force the user to relinquish control. Likely, though, something potentially more elegant – a timer, perhaps, would be in order.
For large media Apple, Sony and Amazon are doing this already for time-sensitive downloaded content. When you “rent” a movie from either of their stores the media file is downloaded to your machine and a timer starts when you push PLAY. That timer, depending on the store, gives you no more than 48 hours to view the movie***. For books, it seems only the B&N “Nook” allows you to lend a book for up to 14 days****.
Now, if we’re all sharing media, how the heck are publishers (music and literature) going to make any money beyond that first sale? Well, the Apple method would be for the borrower to be allowed to purchase that media at any point during the lend, or, of course after that time has expired. But, in reality I’m sure music and book publishers would rather the files never be lent. Purchase or move on.
Companies like Barnes & Noble have done some interesting things with lending books using their Nook device. In fact, for those few of you who own one, you’re more than welcome to sit *in* the bookstore and peruse full texts. But, that kinda defeats the point of a having an on-the-go device, doesn’t it?
Till death do us part
We’ll assume that you’re not collecting media you wouldn’t want your family to find (cough *clown porn*) what happens to all this media when we die? If there were a central library then that media should be unlocked for another person you’ve designated. A beneficiary. In my case, my wife would then be the proud owner of every track the Police, U2 and Ace of Base ever recorded.
Won’t she be excited.
Granted, by the time some of us pass who knows what digital format will overtake one another. A litany of acronyms we use daily has changed over the last few years: AVI, JPEG, GIF, MP3, AAC, M4V, MOV, OGG, PDF*****.
We can always hope that our media devices of the future will build in some sort of backward compatibility. In any case, that’s the hope.
Who knows, maybe it’s coming sooner than we think. Apple just built a behemoth of a data center in North Carolina. People, not just me, are going to demand this type of access.
And, if the sweat on my brow from thinking about storage of all this media means anything, it’s gotta be giving the silicon valley guys night terrors. The sound of all those servers whirring to life as people access a book, picture or movie. I can see it now, one server oompah loompah talking to another one, turning in mock terror, and saying “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”.
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* – In the case of the Iron Butterfly record, I left it in the sun…a deed for which I will never hear the end. Right mom?
** – People read in the bathroom, for which paperbacks are perfect. At the same time, I have an aversion to taking technology in there with me. But, I know I won’t be in the majority. The iPad, from a sanitary viewpoint, might be worse than the bubonic plague. All I can say is, if you want to show me something on your personal iPad, you’ll need to hold it. I won’t be touching it.
*** – for music it could be timed (24/48 hours) or by play count. Though I enjoy the minutiae, it’s not really for me to decide. They’re all just suggestions about the future I’d like to see.
**** – Thanks, Dave. I had forgotten all about the Nook.
**** – Happy 17th birthday, PDF! Sorry, I forgot to send you an ecard.
