The other day I was in England for, like, 48 hours for work. My fellow traveller Dietrich and I spent some time the afternoon we arrived tromping around Islington. While in England I was running on a data-only 3G 'iPad' sim card from 3 Wireless, which as it turns out is splendidly fast and convenient. in particular because we bought the sim cards from a vending machine at the airport. Neither of us cared particularly about making calls or sending sms, but data was incredibly useful and as we walked up Clerkenwell we were frequently in danger of hitting light poles or cabs as we stared intently at google maps on our phones, tracking down coffee breakfast or whisky.
As we walked, conversation drifted to books, the place-names we were seeing around us and in particular, Neal Stephenson's epic, brilliant and daunting Baroque Cycle. The novels spend an enormous amount of time in London and environs, and we were keenly aware that were walking through these same places we'd only previously read about.
Dietrich off-handedly mentioned Reamde, Stephenson's new book, which I hadn't seen on the shelves yet but had heard good things on the twitters about, and this stuck in my head that I should check it out.
The next day was Amazon Kindle Fire release day and that morning as I was waiting in the hotel lobby shifting through all of that news I saw another mention of Reamde. On impulse I grabbed my phone, opened kindle, searched for the book and clicked one single time to buy it. About 30 seconds the first page opened on the screen and I started reading. This wasn't so much a discovery or an ah-hah moment, just a reminder that, given the right situation I can instantly acquire any number of digital content almost anywhere, as long as I have data.
Flash forward to today, Boris blogged about turning the corner on ebook buying with a link to Reamde at the top. Like him, my interest in ebooks began with my iPhone, and in particular a trip to Asia my wife and I took in which we whiled away many an hour reading ebooks on our iPhones while on planes, trains, buses, cars, etc. I've never thought reading books was a great experience on a computer, but mobile devices are fantastic for it. I read more, in more places. The realization I had is that, wherever I travel ( and with the new gig, I'm travelling a fair bit ) all I really need is data to get around ( and an unlocked 3G-capable GSM device ). Having data is key, in fact. traditional phone service is not.
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