theo|digital

Ready for a (really) long scrolling post with not much more than a minor, un-life-altering rant? Perfect.

Click to Zoom: Amazon.com homepage refresh

Just a note from floating on the web on a Saturday morning.  Today, Amazon seems to be rolling out yet another visual update (beta-tested earlier?); my Amazon home page looks a even more sparse than usual.  It made me think about how much their information hierarchy and resulting customer experience have been sorta both the best and the worst of the web over the years.

A decade ago, Amazon.com used the be the very model of the new, data-driven, intelligently easy-to-use website.  It had perfect “just in time” links and seemed to know where you want to go.  Their tabs interface from the late 90sand into the 2000s was widely copied.

Credit: www.lukew.com | Amazon Tabs in the late 90s

These days, Amazon.com remains one of the top retailers in the US ($18.5 billion), but its website is a glut of chocked together, un-curated information presented in long scrolling pages.  Over the last several years they’ve tried to recover, and definitely have done better work on cleaning up the main page.  Today they did it again, simplifying the top two inches and giving higher preference to a google-like search bar. All other options are hidden back into drop-down menus.

The Real Problem: The Product Page

The problem is that most of their attention has gone to cleaning up their front page, which I spend very little time on. 80% of the time, I google for a book or product I’m looking for, and jump straight through the search results to the Amazon product page.  Then I jump from product to product.

And let’s be honest, the product pages really are pretty bad.  Some key features shine (like “Search Inside” for books) and fortunately the pricing (for book editions at least) is cleanly displayed. But the rest of the page is a disordered, redundant mess of widgets demarcated only by dashed lines and populated by unreliable data.

For instance, I just searched for an iPhone (yep, got one of those now) charger. USB Sync and Charging Cable Compatible with Apple iPhone (White) came up first.  (It’s .78 cents.  I’m guessing because of the price the vendor will make up the cost in shipping charges. I had clicked on it because it was Amazon Prime eligible, but of course, that didn’t come up first:  I’ll have to find the Prime price.  But I digress.)

Is this the charger I want?? Maybe.  Maybe I’ll get help to decide by s c r o l l i n g   d o w n…

 (ps – clicking on screenshots quickly zooms in)

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Here’s the thing. I’m still the same political nerd I’ve always been, and while others are updating their brackets (poor Kansas) between commercial breaks, I’ve got my TV tuned to exciting late-night coverage by: C-SPAN. What could be more exciting than political 3-pointers (“kill this bill!”) tossed in buzzer-beating fashion (“The gentleman’s time is expired!”)?

So, it’s Sunday Night Congress for me… in another sports season it would probably include a theme song by a blonde country diva and maybe some rotating 3-dimensional logos.

And without getting into the real politics of the thing (full disclosure: I tentatively support the majority, especially disbelieving that we are somehow snapping the constitution in half with Marxist hands… but still concerned that the total bill as presented is marred by the process so much that it isn’t close to a great solution)… I have another more basic question.

Where is the part of health care reform bill that promotes and enforces digital health care information?

This was one of my favorite parts of Obama talking about reform as a candidate. He identified the problem with the antiquated information systems used by hospitals, and the lack of a common standard that allowed your medical record to be instantly and seamlessly accessible to any health care organization in the country.

The Recovery Act included money for this, but (and here I’m speaking from memory), not necessarily centralized standards and not tons of regulation.  Honestly, the best solution would be to create a robust central standard equivalent to IEEE anything… and then let private companies hack at that to create software packages that are usable, robust, and can interact with the standard.  This article, however, argues that more stringent oversight is needed because of potential safety issues in data management (“whoops, didn’t know she was taking THAT drug!  Did it just not show up on my screen?”).  Still, I’m a little more economically conservative on this one, thinking that competition between software houses is the best way to go:  you’ll get faster implementation of new features.

The single standard is important, because even if forward thinking doctors offices adopt new technologies now, if they can’t share with the hospital down the street, we’re giving up most of the benefit:  like the Personal Computer vs. the Internet.

But the key barriers are probably the practical ones.  When I did IT consulting for a large health system in Illinois, I discovered exactly what this article points out.

1. Doctors, especially older ones, can be surprisingly curmudgeonly about technology.  I realize this is a general overstatement, but even if it’s true for a few key doctors, it screws the whole thing up.  Plus, I’ve sat personally in doctors office trying to teach them how to use Microsoft Exchange… phew.  That’s tough work.
2. Hospital IT departments have the tendency to be staffed by… well, let’s say the system I worked for was mostly flowered-turtle-neck middle-aged women who didn’t know an API from a power supply.  A whole department of them attempting to support 4,000 employees. This is not a sexist thing, though I might be a little bit age-ist.  Seriously.  Hospitals need to hire some nerdy kids straight out of school, and fast.

Okay, rambling point done.

My train journey is coming to an end. We made it through the heavy snow drifts of the Sierra Nevadas and the first vineyards alight the California landscape. Familiar names to unfamiliar places are slipping by: UC Davis and Mountain View. And as I pack my bag, moving haltingly in the tight space to reach my scattered things, I feel a tinge of jealousy for passengers that arrive on days that are not so wet and grey. The rain has thrown a dim film on the world. The low light mars my pictures from the train-in-motion, and I eventually give up, setting the camera beside my chair and framing pictures with my mind instead. The rain specks remain fixed on the windows.

Pete my official Amtrak Sleeping Car Attendant has been friendly but awkward the entire trip. He pokes his head in occasionally with an offer for bottled water or fresh towels, but he has a little script he says, smiling into the distance. Interrupting him for a question hits a 404 Not Found error—he abruptly stops talking without making eye contact, shakes his head a little and slides your door shut briskly. He’s like an early software model—able to do a few things well, but ready to crash on getting unexpected input (like, “Pete, can you tell me more about the connecting bus service in San Francisco?” = Melt down). Oh well. I’ve decided to have compassion, but I’m a little unsure how much to tip him. I read online that 5 dollars a night is a pretty good tip. I spent two nights, so I decide I’ll go ahead and give him the $10.

Susan, the Dining Car Attendant, walks by my open door and says “bye!” She is carrying a purse and her jacket, and I wonder if she has people in San Francisco she can stay with.

All in all, I’m sad to leave the California Zephyr. Two days is enough time to start to feel at home, and now I know why people take the train. It is the antidote to an information-glut life, running at high-speed. The first goal is to sit and stare out the window; watching the trees and rivers and mesas as they float by. It’s a calming way to travel, nothing to filter or sort or answer or know. And nobody made you take your shoes off to do it.

Goodbye California Zephyr. Let’s do it again some day.

I awoke to white sands and early dawn; our train rushing through a speckled desert, barren and cold. An 18-wheeler was pacing us on the parallel Interstate, his running lights sharp and eager and colored against the grey silhouette of distant mountains.

My Palm Pre refused to respond to the power button, and I realized I had forgotten to plug it in overnight. Unless I wanted to leave my roomette, the time was going to remain a mystery until she got enough juice to wake-up herself. Maybe it was a godsend. I sat on my bunk and stared at the increasing light for thirty minutes, unscheduled and unhurried.

I ate breakfast with Mike and Mike. The elderly father and adult son are traveling together from Denver, cracking jokes about each other. I’ve ordered eggs and turkey sausage and the elderly Mike turns to me and says, “We should be coming up on the Mustang Ranch soon! Do you know about the Mustang Ranch?”
I shake my head.
“It’s a brothel!” Mike winks.
“Dad!” says younger Mike. “How would you know about that?”
“I’ve been there!” announces older Mike, a grin on his face.

–
We stop in Reno right below the Harrah’s Casino. I grab my jacket to head to the platform—if I hurry I may be able to take a picture of a slot machine. I’m stopped before I start: two large men are standing in the hallway blocking my exit. The one on the left wears a Phantom skater skull-cap and a yellow hoodie. The larger guy on the right has rows of earing studs and a ragged gottee. They both move quickly; reaching into their clothes they pull out—badges. “Nevada Police” says Lefty. “We’d like to talk to you.”

Apparently part of the Reno experience is automatic entry into a Western. I learned from the conductor that Birdeye, Nevada is the site of the first ever train robbery. 40,000 gold coins were nabbed from the Overland Express in 1870 by John Chapman and some pals. John was a Sunday School teacher.

Turns out that Left and Right are Narcotics Agents with the Reno Police Force, and every day they search this train, looking for people who are traveling all the way (Chicago to San Fran or back) and who bought tickets on short notice. It’s not actually drugs they’re looking for, they explain apologetically. It’s cash. The drugs flow West -> East, and the cash returns East -> West. Their search of my room takes about 30 seconds, and they are apologetic, wishing me a great trip, and then speeding back down the hall towards Coach.

Welp, okay.

Each time the train pulls out of a station, the initial acceleration so gentle that I barely notice we’ve started moving unless I’m looking carefully.

The Colorado river was frozen over for much of our trip through the mountains—enough so that it was only detectable by being slightly more flat than the surrounding land.  Now that we’ve made it down stream on the other side of the continental divide, we have churning water next to us, silent and wild.  It’s cool.

Ross is the cafe car attendant. I went down there before dinner to see what it was, really. Ross was sitting there alone–nobody apparantly hangs in the cafe car near dinnertime. Turns out he lives in Joliet and he’s reading the Grapes of Wrath and he previously graduated from chef school, but currently microwaves hot dogs for a living. One of those ironies.

The sunset tonight was heartstopping. Jet-red sand cliffs sped past in sheer lines, highlighted with snow and dotted with sage. One couple sat in the viewliner car in the booth next to me and kept trailing off their conversation in favor of the windows.

The dark has fallen again, and my dinner reservation is soon: 7pm. I’m told that once we pass Salt Lake City, the chances of having any kind of signal are null, so my thoughts will probably have to continue in Word instead of WordPress.

20 January 2010
Just west of Denver, CO, in the front range.

Our train is climbing the pine-specked foothills of the front range, swallowing switchbacks and tunnels. The sky is grey but tinged with sun… maybe we’ll see some blue yet. It’s only 9:15am.

“Ladies and Gentlemen: at this time, the Café Car has re-opened.”
That’s the snack shop. It’s different than the dining car, and sells stale coffee and microwaved hot dogs. Since the full-service dining is included in my fare, I’m not likely to spend much time buying snacks.
–

At lunch I’m seated with a couple from Ann Arbor, MI (they are familiar with the campus church in my network, New Life) and an arts entrepreneur who is on her way to host a panel at the Sundance Film Festival. She does this kinda thing all the time. We talk about robotic art (yep) installations and the upcoming popularity of hybrid artists who have engineering training but do artistic works. I think of Vienna Teng, but I don’t bring her up.

We’re about to leave Glenwood Hot Springs, CO. All aboard!

First light was a little confusing.  It came slowly, and I thought I was waking again to a especially hard shake of the train car.  Really, I woke only a few times, and had no trouble returning to sleep.  The bed is made with only a light sheet and blanket, but comfortable regardless.

And then at 7am sharp, the conductor announced that we were 20 minutes from Denver.  It was as good a time as any to wake up, and I was surprised to find there was no wait for the shower down the hall.  Tight quarters (everything is still mini—like an airplane bathroom), but plenty of hot water.

It’s funny to be in Denver… I’m right next to Coors Field.  Oh – here we are pulling out.  Bye Denver!  Hello Rockies!

Princeton, Illinois is our first announced stop, although we stopped in Naperville earlier on the way out of Chicagoland.  It is “not, I repeat, not a smoke stop,” our conductor says.  That will be Galesburg—45 minutes after Princeton.  I have been watching the small towns slip by between the long stretches of dormant fields.  The last one had a pudgy building titled “Feed Store,” a clearly identifiable local bar, and a red church all sitting on main street as if they were waiting at the barber’s for a trim and some local gossip.

A few minutes ago I became aware that I’d been thinking that we had another train near us.  Maybe it was distant, but it had been with us for a while.  The thick dissonance of a train whistle was faint but detectable in echoes and between the clear click and rush of our own noise.  My only question:  how could another train follow us for as long as it had?  Do they let them follow that closely?  There doesn’t seem to be another visible set of tracks.  After about 30 minutes, whistle still with us, the solution occurred to me.  WE’RE a train.  We’ve got our own train whistle.  We don’t have some sorta of train shadow.  We’re the ones making the noise.

Problem solved.

–

Ate dinner with an elderly man named Rich, and a young guy from coach named Nick.  Both were polite in the classic sense.  I guess I was too.  “Pass the pepper, please.”  I thought it would be easier to come up with things to talk about, but the conversation was mostly a bust.  Rich is a regular Amtrak rider, so you had that to talk about for a while.  Nick’s first time on the train too, but he didn’t have a lot to say.  He’s going to Denver to look for work.  He has family there.

I had a steak, which is pretty unusual for me, but among the options (shrimp scampi, buffalo meatloaf, turkey and stuffing) it didn’t seem like there was much of a choice.  Overall, sorta fun doing the dining car thing for the first time, but I hope the experience improves.  I think just having daylight out the windows will make it more fun.  Once it gets fully dark the glass becomes glossy black.

And now I’m laying here in my car made into a bed, wondering if I’m going to be able to sleep with the train rocking back and forth.  They said you could get used to it, but it’s not how I thought it would be—rhythmic and soothing.  More jarring and sudden in unannounced spurts.  We’ll see.

My internet signal has vanished, so this may have to wait until morning.

Car 0531 Room 9 on the California Zephyr.  My first train ride.  1 hour in.

The city has already buzzed past our windows, its glass and industrial center followed by its suburban entourage bricked and tidy and now, just an hour into our ride, we’ve reached the Land.  It is white and quiet and wide.  Rows of cropped wheat remain steady across the landscape, writing contours on the snow like a comb through sand.  Farmhouses and their weathered barns sit like postcards, imaginary and beautiful and far, far away.

The dining car attendant has just made an announcement on the public address system.  She will shortly be by to take dinner reservations.  First class passengers have priority, and can choose a time between 5:30 and 9pm.  I suppose I will ask for 6:30 or 7.

Today I’m doing something I’ve never done before.  The California Zephyr is one of the longest train routes in North America, and I’m about to ride it.  All 2, 438 miles of it—from Chicago’s Union Station to the edge of San Francisco.  The route traces through Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno before arriving in California, and it became famous for its views of the Rocky Mountains and the American West.  Apparently for the car attendants too, who at the height of train travel post-WWII played the role of perky young stewardesses, offering smiles and full-service attention, from coffee to babysitting the kids while you were in the lounge.  Today it’s obviously changed a bit, but you can still ride as a first class passenger in a sleeper Superliner, which includes amenities like the morning paper, fresh towels and sheets, and priority all-you-can-eat reservations in the Dining Car.  As an antique experience that I’ve never had, it felt perfect for a short vacation, offering something novel while providing a chance to be by myself and write and pray and think.

The trip officially takes 50 hours–mine leaves on 2pm Tuesday in Chicago, travels for two overnights, and arrives in San Francisco at 4:05pm.  Although nobody really believes that’s when it’ll get in.  Amtrak trains have the distinction of having “on-time” being a bonus.  I think if it’s up to 3 hours late, Amtrak practically considers that on time.  Past that you can start to complain a little, although it’s not like you’re gonna just get out and walk.  A few weeks ago, this very train route made the news for having a train that was stopped by snow and showed up over 18 hours late.  Ouch.

And while coming in the following day might be cause enough for some attention, what’s funny to me is how uneventful the poor timing is normally.  Nobody cares.  Part of this is that they are simply meeting expectation–there’s nothing new here.  But media ecology’s approach to technological progress in society probably has the best explanation.  People don’t think of trains as transportation.  They’re art.

That’s because newer technologies (i.e. I’m leavin’ on a jet plane) have supplanted the train as the primary means of cross-country movement in the U.S.  And newer technologies often don’t replace previous technologies as much as modify their role in our cultural perceptions.  For Marshall McLuhan, this means that some older technologies remain in place as–but as art!  His most famous observation on this:

The machine turned nature into an art form.  For the first time man began to regard Nature as a source of aesthetic and spiritual values.  They began to marvel that earlier ages had been so unaware of the world of Nature as Art.

Think National Parks as vacation destinations.  This is a result of the assembly line.

And that’s why people don’t care if trains are late.  I’m riding the train because it a novelty item, and I learned about it reading blogs that are devoted to people who do just that.  Newer technologies have modified our perceptions.

ps – can’t wait to see what this is like.  More if I can from the train, but chances are pretty low I’ll have good access as I’d be depending on what flashes of Spring 3G I can catch from the train car.