I’m a reluctant technophile — working for a dotcom in the 90s made me not so much a technophobe as a marketing-phobe — I enjoy new gadgets even as the utopian claims of advertising are an insult to the seriousness with which we regard the English language around here. So I greet the Amazon Kindle, a new e-reader that allows for the inexpensive downloading of books and newspapers, with a mixture of interest and disdain.
On the positive side, newspapers have long seemed to me a place where for both economic and environmental reasons, electronic distribution makes a lot of sense. It’s just that I enjoy the experience of reading the piecemeal, web version of newspapers far less than the actual hardcopy. Something about unfolding all those big long pages is a lot more inviting than staring into my digital screen, which feels too much like sitting at my desk during the workday. From a business standpoint too, the big ole ads in a paper version of a newspaper are a lot more arresting, which is why they sell for a lot more than their digital counterparts.
It’s just that everytime I take our weekly mountain of old newspapers out for recycling, I feel that twinge of Berkeley-induced guilt that this is a waste of paper, which as every environmentalist knows, 
requires a very dirty fabrication process. And I’m sure publishers like David Hiller, the LA Times executive whose entire raison d’etre seems to be downsizing his workforce, would love to cut printing and delivery costs. So a high-quality reader like the Kindle could be a way to combine the logistical advantages of electronic delivery while retaining some of the sensuality of reading a big ole paper, even if it means you have to mouse around a bit to see different sections of it. ( To take things a step further, the Christian Science Monitor has a cool service where for $8/month, you can get a daily "treeless" .pdf of the entire actual paper).
But I really can’t see electronic reading replacing books, particularly given the way I treat my books. Can you imagine taking a $400 Kindle to the beach, or a cafe, or a bar? The possibilities for spillage are somewhat horrifying. And while I would certainly rather pay $10 rather than $35 for a new book, my own experience is that reading digitally is much more tiring than reading something on the page, for reasons that I don’t fully understand. In my first grueling year of graduate school, I read Moby-Dick for literally about 13 hours a day to finish in time for seminar, and it’s hard for me to imagine spending that much time in front of a screen, no matter how good it is.
Then there’s the issue of marginalia, which I don’t believe the Kindle lets you make — but let’s say that in a future version, it would When you’re in a real push like I was that first year, you don’t have the time or energy to make a touchpad register your note — the point of marginalia is a note to yourself as a reader, underscoring a critical point, paraphrasing a tough argument, drawing a connection with something else you read. The last thing you want to do is have to fiddle with the technology.
Anyhow, speaking of marginalia, one of my favorite examples is Herman Melville’s notation on an explication of King Lear, where he wrote: "Hold, hold, thou ass of a commentator!" I think I’ll take his advice. But not before admitting I haven’t tried the Kindle, so maybe it’ll make a believer of me. In his review, Stephen Levy of Newsweek claims that reading books on the Kindle put him in a "trance-like zone," which he considers a good metaphor for intense reading (insert crabby English teacher wisecrack here). But I’d certainly love to hear from anyone else who has used the thing, and other thoughts people have on this.
Accidental Blogger 
8 responses to “The Lengthy Half-Life of the Printing Press (Andrew)”
Reading the comments on desired features in the Kindle on amazon.com were an eye-opener, as were the initial set of reader comments. One person complained of migraines after reading about 30 pages ( a prime concern for me!). That said, I had been having hopes of getting rid of the tremendous book clutter around the house till I read the comments about DRM, or digital rights management. What this means is that the books you purchased from amazon.com now for your Kindle will not be available 10 years from now for you to read. As opposed to a paper copy, which can keep ‘going and going’ till the paper worms eat it through ( probably 100 years from now), your reading pleasure is curtailed to 10 years of your actual lifespan.
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Thanks very much for pointing out the comments, Sujatha. It’s reassuring to known that Amazonians aren’t as infatuated as Stephen Levy. And as you say, who wants to buy a book that will likely be unreadable in 10 years? Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon have all erred in trying to tie people to a device with a format — in this case, particularly, since books with acid-free pages are liable to last 100 years or more…
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A fitting summary, Andrew. One could argue that your particular hypothetical application of the new device—to support graduate level study—is so unusual as to be negligibly relevant to ordinary readers. But one of the device’s selling points also would seem to apply to very few readers, really. I mean, who needs to tote around 200 books at one time? (Well, graduate students, for one.)
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My big concern with it is readability. It’s a lot harder on your eyes to read off of a computer screen for a long time than to read off of a printed piece of paper (and this coming from someone who’s only 24; presumably eyes are even more easily strained as we get older). If they can solve that problem– and I’m skeptical that they have– then I’m all for it. I like physical books, but I could see collecting paper volumes becoming something akin to collecting stamps.
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I think students ( high school through graduate studies or further) would jump at this option if their textbooks were readily available and could all fit into the device. The DRM clause would be less of an issue for them, since they usually need the latest and greatest revised edition of their reading material. A similar market could exist in the IT sector, where ‘most recent’ trumps the need to preserve outdated editions of software manuals.
I just don’t see this product as sounding a death-knell for the traditional book. There are too many situations when those are still more convenient than the features offered by Kindle.
I think that there is some loss of privacy in that Amazon gets to track/store your choice of books. Right now, it may not seem like an issue, but if the Feds get nosier and requisition those records from Amazon, with legislation to back them pushed through Congress, it will be another nail in the coffin of personal privacy.
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Sujatha:
Amazon already tracks your “library.”
If I search for a book that I purchased from them previously, the book shows up with a message that says:
“Instant Order Update for Ruchira Paul. You purchased this item on June 14, 2004…” etc.
I can track all my purchases as far back as 1998. I don’t know if I can delete the order history or not. I haven’t looked closely.
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Ruchira,
I don’t think Amazon allows you to delete your order history, though you can turn off the customized browser recommendations that come up whenever you visit their site.
The broader implications of the security/privacy aspect come into play when items like Kindle start to become a more widely adopted form of book storage, as opposed to paper books (which could be purchased more anonymously, second, third or nth hand). We have already lost some privacy, as you point out, by moving book purchases online and hence trackable electronically. The question is: Will we lose more privacy by allowing amazon/Kindle to keep track of our e-book purchases and police our digital usage of them.
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Courtesy of slashdot, a wry juxtaposition of comments by Bezos and others (Orwell, for instance) with passages from the Newsweek article.
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