Kindling

Perhaps you have already encountered Amazon's Kindle. I have, and I'm distinctly ambivalent about it. While I read a tremendous amount on the internet, I like books as physical objects, and the experience of reading a book is one that I doubt I could do without.

My ideal use of the kindle would be as a research tool. I think that there are very few academics who would turn down a small device that contained up to 200 different books relevant to their work. It would certainly make it easier to go to the coffee shop to write a paper, if you don't have to carry 15 books with you, let alone 200.

I don't like the idea of reading for fun on the thing. There was an article, ages ago now, about how the Kindle will only succeed when it can do all the things a book can do, including survive being ripped in half or accidentally dipped in the bathtub. Books can survive that, but the pages will get a little wrinkly, and it's best if you get at them with a hair dryer almost immediately. No, of course I'm not speaking from experience. I would add a few other problems. I like to read on the subway, and occasionally walking down the street. This is easy to do with a book. Few people are liable to attempt to grab the book out of my hand and run off. Books rarely have particularly high resale values. On the other hand, grabbing a Kindle would approach the profit margin of grabbing an iPhone.

But now there's an additional host of things to worry about the Kindle thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I remember the early days of the MP3 revolution, and while I am content to purchase music in CD form and upload it, or purchase the odd track from iTunes, I certainly agree that the music industry did not, and still has not, handled the whole thing well.

Should the eBook movement takes over, I'll probably stick with real books. Even if it means I become like those guys who still buy their music on vinyl. "It just sounds better," they say. "It just looks better," I'll say. And kids everywhere will think we're all crazy.