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Stardate: 20190228.17h53 | |
Location: Lounge @ Work | |
Input Device: Gemini PDA + USB folding keyboard | |
Software: nano | |
Audio: Vending refridgerator, HVAC | |
Visual: Employee lounge with IKEA-esque furniture | |
Energy: 50% | |
Mental: 50% | |
Emotional state: Nothing special | |
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Prompts: | |
What happened today? (Daily journal) | |
Earlier today, I was reading on the Kindle app on my work | |
mobile (iPhone) and I noticed a notification icon that I did | |
not notice before. It was marked with a red dot and | |
basically showed that I had 11 unread notifications. I | |
checked the notification and it had a list of book | |
notifications that I missed out on. There was one with the | |
subject line of, "Revisit your reading journey." I checked | |
this one and it took me to a Reading Streaks section of the | |
app. It basically listed the Kindle books I read in 2018, | |
along with other stats like how many days/weeks I read in a | |
row, book suggestions, etc. It also looks like it is doing | |
some kind of gameification thingy with my reading data, | |
trying to coerce me to read more than last month or whatever. | |
Not too much wrong there...some people might actually benefit | |
from it by reading more or finding other related books that | |
they might not have encountered without the suggestions...but | |
for me, it bothered me. | |
I like the data and how easy they display it...I work with | |
data quite a bit and actually enjoy slicing and dicing data | |
into different perspectives...I just don't like that someone | |
else is harvesting my data, slicing and dicing, and making | |
interpretations of me and what I do based on that data. Then | |
aggregate my data bought from some other data source and make | |
further interpretations. And then sell their findings to | |
someone else ad infinitum. | |
Having this computer hobby since I was little and working in | |
the technology field as an adult, I have been typically a | |
step ahead of the average consumer in regards to concerns | |
like this. The Kindle incident today brought up some red | |
flags and made me look a little further at my personal | |
computing habits...and it looks like I can do better and | |
should read up some more on the state of things. | |
I have known that Amazon keeps track of the stuff I buy since | |
I created my account way back when. I used to be a lot more | |
paranoid about stuff like that back then and would be very | |
selective of my purchases. These days, with raising a family | |
and dealing with life stuff, I have grown lax with those | |
concerns and they seem to have fallen by the wayside. | |
Back in the Palm PDA days, I used to read on my PDA all of | |
the time. Even on the monochrome ones. That is probably | |
where I picked up the habit of reading books on a handheld | |
device. I would download the ebook as a file on my computer | |
and sync it to my device. If the book was purchased from | |
an ebook store, I would buy the book, download the file, | |
and sync with my PDA. End of transaction...the store didn't | |
know if I read the book, bookmarked a page, highlighted a | |
paragraph, took notes, nothing. | |
Back then, there were a selection of ebook stores that I used | |
to frequent, like Fictionwise or that one that Palm had with | |
their Palm Reader. When PDA usage started to go South, all of | |
the ebook stores started to close or get bought out by other | |
companies. They let you download your library before they | |
closed shop. Fortunately, I was able to do that. | |
One of my concerns after having gone through that exercise | |
was the portability of my books. Would I be able to read my | |
books on a future platform? It wasn't too big of an issue | |
since I still had hardware to read them on...and even when I | |
had a Nokia N900 it wasn't really a concern since it had | |
GarnetVM (PalmOS virtual machine)... It was around that time | |
that I found Calibre and was able to convert my books into | |
different formats. So at that point, I found fbreader, which | |
read the epub format, converted my books in Calibre and ran | |
that on the N900 natively. With the devices I have used | |
since the N900, fbreader compatibility was one of the things | |
I looked out for. Eventually, I even learned how to convert | |
Kindle books. | |
Fast forward to now, I have the Kindle app installed on my | |
work mobile. I don't have to read books there, I just do | |
sometimes. I don't usually install personal apps on my work | |
mobile, but Kindle is there...mostly out of convenience. | |
Today's Kindle incident showed me how lax and mindless I have become | |
in regards to how I read ebooks. I used to convert all of my | |
books and read in a pretty much standalone application. Now, | |
Amazon tracks my reading...I don't highlight or keep notes in | |
the Kindle app, but I don't need to let them interpret why I | |
keep referring to certain pages or books in my library, or if | |
those pages or books have any correlation with the aggregated | |
data they bought from Walmart regarding the fertilizer I | |
bought last October or the bleach I bought at the grocery | |
last week with my rewards card.</tinfoil hat> | |
I think it would probably be best for me to stop using the | |
Kindle app and go back to converting my ebooks and reading | |
like I did before. Hopefully, I can still convert my Kindle | |
books. | |
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