I've been away from the new media maelstrom for a week and in that time, the Kindle 2 was introduced. This NY Times article about it lists all the wonderful features of the Kindle 2 and even made me interested in purchasing one--though I'm such a lover of the traditional book that such a purchase would feel like blasphemy. When I first heard about the Kindle, I immediately wondered about the death of the book, which according to many has been dying a slow death for years. But in actuality, the Kindle has the potential to help the book, albeit in e-form. But so what? Well, according to writer Roy Blount, Jr. in his NY Times op-ed piece "The Kindle Swindle," the Kindle is gypping writers out of their well-deserved audio rights. The Kindle can read books to its owner. With a CD audio book, the writer gets paid for that iteration of his/her work. Not so with the Kindle 2. This is problematic, but I'm choosing to see the growing popularity of the Kindle in a positive light. After all, as the NY Times article points out "in Technoland, nothing ever replaces anything. E-book readers won’t replace books. The iPhone won’t replace e-book readers. Everything just splinters. They will all thrive, serving their respective audiences." I'm inclined to agree with this assertion.And as Dave Slusher points out in his blog Evil Genius Chronicles, Kindle reading is for books we don't want hard copies of. "I will not cease to buy paper copies of books, I’ll just refine the choices to the ones I know I want to keep continuing to own for a long time." The Kindle makes readers more deliberate in their choice of whether to read an electronic text or a hard copy text. Nothing wrong with that. The question then becomes for me, should I ever invest in a Kindle: what books would I read electronically? I can highlight and underline with a Kindle. So would I do my academic reading electronically but still curl up on the couch with a hard copy novel? Or am I so married to the pen and my love of scrawling marginalia that I would stick to hard copies for in-depth reading and leave my pleasure reading to the Kindle? Guess I'll have to experiment to figure out which form of reading is best accomplished with this adaptation of the book.
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The Kindle 1 and 2 are the biggest pieces of crap I have ever seen from the popular electronics category.
ReplyDeleteComing from me, that's huge since I've seen the Sony Rolly.
The Kindle is just so ridiculous from my point of view because it doesn't do "anything."
Display e-books and *ooooh!* read them to you now?
How boring is that?
I can see that they're catering to an audience who doesn't really want to have all the bells and whistles on a regular computer but this thing isn't doing them any favors.
Why would someone who enjoys reading an actual newspaper or a book want to switch to the Kindle?
For the Wikipedia access maybe?
Are they extremely fast readers who can read multiple books and newspapers at once that they couldn't just take a single book and one day's newspaper?
Why would someone who has a laptop suddenly want a redundant device?
It's not a touch screen
DRM is a pain because once you buy an ebook it's yours forever; no reselling it and no donating it (unless you sell your whole Kindle).
If you're going to shell out $350, then why not buy a Netbook (Google it) that does everything a regular laptop can do but it's tiny and *gasp!* in color!
What about an iPhone or a SmartPhone that has hundreds of other uses and fits in your pocket for something that truly goes wherever you go.
Or why not buy a UMPC (Google it) which is 5 times better than a Kindle for twice the price.