Juggling Prosthetics

Three new prosthetics have found their way onto my computer. One of them, I have written about, the smartpen. Soon I will blog about the other, which I have also addressed, DEVONthink. New developments abroad in both. However, this column is about an item that’s been around for a while, but never worked for me, until now.

For the past few weeks, I have been acquainting myself text recognition software, MacSpeech. It’s been a revelation. MacSpeech has enabled me to break the fourth wall, a symbolic space filmmakers refer to. The fourth wall separates the actor from the camera and the camera from the audience. It’s where the suspension of belief takes place. When an actor looks at the camera and directly addresses the audience, he is said to be breaking the fourth wall.

In my world, the fourth wall is a glaring white page. Perhaps not the best analogy, but one that works for me. As intellectual prosthetics go, MacSpeech has allowed me to break the fourth wall of composition. As a result, I write more easily, I am more prolific, and I make fewer mistakes.

The truly incredible thing for me in this experience is the accuracy and speed of MacSpeech. Just as important, is the ability the software gives me to separate myself from the tyranny of the keyboard. With MacSpeech I am able to pace around as I “write,” to speak out loud, as nearly perfect text appears on the screen.

I am struck by the realization that for the first time I am able to translate the words in my mind directly onto the page. One instant there is a thought, the next instant produces the thought on the page. With my cranky cognitive processor, my brain, there is usually many a slip twixt cup and lip or, in this case, between brain and keyboard.

I can remember a time in middle school when I could not understand why it was that the words I had in my mind to write did not translate into the words I wrote. I would be thinking one thing and writing another. What was that? It was an article of faith with me that there should be a direct connection between what I thought and what I penned. There was not. In fact there was many a slip. MacSpeech changes that.

MacSpeech makes thought — intellection — literal. Ideas, instantly evoked. Reflection equals composition. And by combining the varieties of prosthetics available when words atomize into pixels and bytes, I am able to think in new ways. It’s like getting a good massage. By combining different forms of outliners, alternate thought processors (DEVONthink, for instance), and collection tools like Evernote, I gain the freedom to think and compose simultaneously.

The Prosthetic Pen for Less

A surprise from Livescribe smartpen. Maybe more than one… The pen’s been selling at Target, a strange place for sophisticated tech tastes. The other surprise? Until now, smartpen has held its price point — $100/gig. But, yesterday, at Target I discovered at 20 percent price drop. The two-gig pen now sells for $160. While that’s good, I wonder what it means. For a long time, the pen’s price was inviolable. It cost the same at Amazon, Target, name-your-discounter. That gave me confidence in the company, because when a business maintains terms for all comers that signifies strength and stability. Considerable Apple. No one discounts their products. Interestingly, the price at the Livescribe store hasn’t budged. It’s holding at $100 per gig. While there are deals on pre-packs, they are the sort of deals you might see at Amazon, package deals: pen, notes pads, extra refills on sale for $225. Maybe Target realizes they are not the place for leading edge technical prosthetics and they’re clearing out inventory. eBay people might bite on that one.

What’s going on? This pen is hot and evolving. But the pace of innovation can be telling. Look at the growth of apps for the iPhone/iPod. With 25-thousand apps in January, Flurry says that the apps numbered 65-thousand in July. There’s a message in those numbers. Interest. Opportunity. Success! The public is on fire. Not at Livescribe. They need to get the developer community churning.

They could start with notepads. Humble but powerful. The standard notebook that comes with the pen is fine, but a variety of note taking notebooks would be … value added, a little spice in the process. I already break up the page in a modified Cornell Notes style, as I take notes with the smartpen. How about a notebook with no lines, but grids for notes, summaries and questions? The good news is that there’s already buzz among developers about moving to a new line of notepads… But is it real?

A small moleskin-style notebook would be great for the smartpen. A natural. The neat little notebooks on sale now are too thick and clunky for quick-draw writers and note takers.

On the other hand, the pen is not exactly fast on the draw, either. It’s big, which suggests a modified smartpen of the future. A whole new line. How about a smart pen with one flat side to keep it from rolling off the table? In classrooms, many desks are slanted for comfort. That can be dangerous for a delicate $200 writing device.

Or what about microphones. I did an interview the other day in a noisy restaurant. Ambient noise can be a problem for the pen. I got around the loud music and louder clientele by using the smartpen’s earphone/microphones like a lavaliere mic, planting them just next to my subject’s fork. It worked great. But why not a lavaliere mic for the smartpen? Add a little Bluetooth device to the pen and connect it through a Bluetooth mic… Farewell unsightly wires. Professionals like me would pay for add-ons that make work easier and more accurate. There are probably dozens of ways to modify existing pens to employ Bluetooth… But any kind of microphone that plugged into the pen would do.

Users like me want to see energy and stability from brilliant and innovative companies with products like the smartpen… And I’m watching for signs.

Prosthetic Pen?

So which statement is most accurate? A smartpen is an intellectual prosthetic. A smartpen is more flexible than a computer. A smartpen redefines non-linear organization. Roll the tape (and don’t forget to click the back button to read the rest of the blog!): The Livescribe paper-based computing platform

I just bought smartpen number two from livescribe for my son who begins high school in two weeks. Smartpen number one is mine. Bet on that. I use it for teaching and for interviewing.

Here’s the deal. Say you’re in a lecture, and you whip out your smartpen. Naturally, you begin taking notes. Your smartpen uses “special” paper (same price as “regular” paper), which allows the pen to simultaneously capture every word on the page as the pen’s microphone records every word in the lecture. Or, in my case, the interview. Back at your desk, you slip the pen into its “cradle,” and everything flows into a free software package. Now for the magic.

Every word in your funky handwritten notes is searchable! Pulse smartpen from Livescribe

And more, if you don’t understand those inky gobs others call your handwritten notes, there’s remedy. You simply touch the pen to the scrambled words and the pen replays the lecture/interview from the garbled blob of cursive in question. Word! Watch how University of Kansas professor, cool Mike Wesch and his class, use the pen: SmartPen as Digital Ethnography Tool

This is serious stuff with lots of opportunities for those in search of intellectual prosthetics, and we haven’t begun to address the opening questions raised by this blog. Not to mention one or two improvements and a problem-O…

To be continued…

Lost… Without a byte

Driving south on I-147 yesterday, it dawned on me that I could be headed north. Or should have been. After clicking cruise control, I had this inkling that I-147 south might not lead to I-40. And, yes, I had no GPS. I’d loaned it to my daughter. No iPhone, either. I did, however, have an iPod Touch, but roadside wifi isn’t even on the map. Which meant that I was lost, with no directional prosthetic. There was this stubborn overwhelming sense coursing through me that there had to be some digital solution at hand, a button somewhere in the Honda that would help me find my way home. The sensation was palpable and didn’t go away even when I stopped at a gas station for directions. Without sending a message by way of Western Union, something has happened, and there’s no going back: I’ve succomb to technology. Not good. Not bad. Just lost.

The Other Side of the Mirror — Setting Limits

Writing  The Honey Trap: The True Story of Madame Elizabeth Brousse, A/K/A Cynthia has been an awakening, of sorts. Going digital seems to make all the difference in the world to the process of drafting, editing and publishing.

Until now, the idea behind this blog has been to examine the affect of software on the writing process. But now that I’m on the other side of the mirror, which is to say, writing code — in essence, turning the writing into software — I need to reflect on my original aims.

To be brief, coding interferes with writing. It’s just tedious. However, I’m convinced it improves the reading experience, which is crucial, perhaps the whole point. It occurs to me that The History News Network could present a problem (hnn.us/blogs/74.html) because their interface is so limited. It’s really not designed for “digital literary non-fiction.” Comparing The Honey Trap with, say, The Dolly Madison Digital Edition, from UVA can be disheartenting, although it may be missing the point.

Perhaps what I need to do is to set limits, to define what THT can actually achieve digitally.

Here’s one idea: To make the Honey Trap sufficiently interactive that other scholars can employ my links and resources to prove, disprove, augment or even transmute the story of OSS, the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Madame Brousse. Digitizing THT should provide historians with resources to advance the story, beyond what I am able to achieve.

Next up: How using software to produce digital copy changes the art/craft of writing.

Twice failed

Twice now, I’ve tried to coax facebook into working as a writing slate. Once, after two martinis, I pumped out an on-the-run review of a Jonathan Stratham chase-movie, “Transporter III.” I could hardly keep up. The facebook review process failed for a single simple reason: in order to follow a running review, the reader had to continuously update his/her page to see my status(es). Too much dedication from readers required, particularly from a social network site. But, nice try, nonetheless.

More recently, I tried to produce dialogue via facebook status lines, but failed because the continuity was lost, except on my own page (and who reads that?). There was a worse problem, though. One I can’t fix. My dialogue ran in reverse order. Egad. But, nice try, nonetheless.

I have two thoughts about my failures, maybe three. I can’t be the first person to have tried this. Second, it’s not yet possible to create live self-updating contiguous posts via social networks. Too bad. Any developers listening? This should be possible, a value-added feature. Mr. Zuckerman? There’s poetry to be done, songs to be written, short stories…

Second point (or is this the third?), the prosthetic element of Web 2.0 social software played no role in the “creative” process, no symbiosis, no synergy, no ghost in the machine, just chatter and clutter. In fact, the social network software got in the way. (I may try this with a Hash (#) Twitter, we’ll see. It could work.) Worse, no one gave a damn, but what else is new? No difference to me.

Time to make a statement:

Social networking should offer a new twist on publishing, something live and interactive and available to readers — if there are any (left) — to comment and possibly drive the story. See my post below on the Japanese women who write novels on their cell phones. What am I missing? What is social networking missing (a simple, intuitive way to reverse order status lines)? What have those Japanese thumbsters got that I ain’t got?

The Prosthetic Editor

My last blog entry literally ended on the word “editor.” I concluded that I just might need an actual human being with a red pencil to help me through my writing. But wait! How to reconcile intellectual prosthetics with professionals dragging red pencils? Well it’s not easy and, as it turns out, it’s not necessary. Not if you’re a Mac user. Which is the reason that I continue using MS Word on my Mac, instead of switching over to Google.docs. My Editor. On any given day, my editor could be Alex, Bruce, Kathy, Princess, Zorvox. Zorvox?

Who are these characters? They’re the synthesized voices of my Mac.

I’ve actually been using Princess for some time now, but I’ve just discovered Alex, a new voice that comes with Leopard. He’s really pretty good. Unlike other synthesizers, Alex will actually breathe as he reads, which is a nice touch. In some ways (read: my fragile ego), Alex is better than an editor, which is why I parted ways with my most recent red-pencil type. Synthetic Alex. He supplies the electronic prosthetic I most need as a writer.

I’ll be honest, I’ve got a processing defect in the CPU-between-my-ears. It means I not only don’t realize when I’m leaving out words, misspelling them or barfing-up sentences. It’s actually worse than that. I fail completely when it comes to proofing my own copy. I can’t see a word I write, or fail to write.

The difference is Alex. He’ll read everything I write just as I write it. He’s one cold dude. And more, when he speaks I listen. And when I listen, I hear the errors I fail to read.

Good-bye red pencils. Thank you, Alex, you intellectual prosthetic you. And did I mention Alex doesn’t charge for his services?

Small Change

The blog started out as a way to examine a book project — a biography I had been working on about an American woman who spied for the British during World War II — as writing developed though the use of intellectual prosthetics: software.

Then my publisher went belly up. http://tinyurl.com/rdg7k5

That was 18 months ago. Last summer, I got the idea of contacting Rick Shenkman http://home.sprynet.com/~rshenkman/ and asking him if the History News Network would be interested in turning the biography I had been writing into a "digital biography." Rick's quite a guy. He was enthusiastic, and I underestimated the challenge. The project turned into a portmanteau word — part slow plodding, and some occasional progress: plodgress.

Fortunately my friend, Jay Ballenger, was around to help me. He built the solution to the problem, a companion web page that links to HNN and functions like the back matter in a scholarly text, hosting the bibliography, the notes, etc. The page is still under construction, and I hope it will continue to be. In fact, one difference between a digital biography and a book is that while I intend to reach a conclusion, I don't foresee the project really ending. As I learned from my first book, the unfortunate business about traditional publication is that it's over when it's done. Not so on the WWW. There's always time and room for augmentation, elaboration, discovery. A digital (i.e., hyper-linked) writing project is open to others, to some degree. Comments are invited. The curious thing is that HNN project — THE HONEY TRAP: THE TRUE STORY OF MADAME ELIZABETH BROUSSE, A/K/A "CYNTHIA" (http://hnn.us/blogs/74.html) feels like the top tenth of the iceberg, whereas the page Jay helped me create –www.madamebrousse.com — feels like all that underwater mass lurking beneath the iceberg. (No, this is not an allusion to the Titanic, at least I hope it's not.)

Now comes the confession. For all the software I've thrown at this project, over many years, I still can't figure out the first 1,000 words. I simply don't know what the reader needs to know about Madame Brousse, and in what order. Where's the focus? Do I play for hype? Sex? Hell, the woman does a strip tease in the Vichy French embassy located twenty minutes from the White House while Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are smoking in the Map Room trying to figure out whether to invade France's colonies in North Africa.

The one wise adjustment I've made is to limit the scope of the project. Instead of wringing out my character's entire life, I'm focusing on just one eventful period in her career as a spy, a perfect moment — consequential, little examined (how can that be?), revelatory (where are all the graduate students, they should be on this like white on rice), and a historical turning point.

But I'm stuck on the second sentence, which I write and rewrite and then start over again. And again. No, I'm not turning into Jack Torrance. Maybe I need a better intellectual prosthetic. Or an editor.

So I’m not alone…

http://gridskipper.com/343491/keeping-your-laptop-lewdness-safe-from-border-security

Judge Dean D. Pregerson of Federal District Court in Los Angeles threw out evidence that had been seized from a laptop on the grounds that our computers are inside our minds, man:

Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory, they are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound.

Unsurprisingly, Judge Pregerson’s kooky mind-meld ruling is expected to be reversed on appeal.

For better or for worse?