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November 26, 2007
About the Kindle
The first day back to work after a week off is always going to be rough. Today was no exception.
Remember that driving test comic I linked to a while back, because sometimes life just keeps throwing you curve balls? Here's today's metaphorical web comic version of a similar phenomenon, courtesy of the always-phenomenal xkcd:
(Hint: click on the link or on the image to see the rest of the comic.)
I've been meaning to write about Amazon.com's latest thing: the Kindle "wireless reading device" for a while now, which means that everyone you should be reading has already written about it. C'est la vie. You're here, so you're stuck with my ideas. I'll try to be brief.
Colin Brooke announced his intention to blog about the Kindle with this observation: "Kindle rhymes with swindle."
He then followed-up with a thoughtful examination of why he won't be buying one. You should read his post, it's excellent.
To all of that (especially the storage program -- 200 books is all you can ever have on the device at one time -- and adding more means you have delete the ones you already have and paid for? Get real!) here's my list of reasons why I won't be buying a first-generation Kindle:
- It's ugly
- It won't let me play with books the way I want and need to play with them
That's it. It's simple.
Matt Kirschenbaum lays down the law on the online discourse surrounding the Kindle: "On most of the blogs that I read the overwhelming reaction to Amazon’s new Kindle has been snark, ennui, and carping about the DRM. [...] Sigh. Aren’t us smart kids allowed to get even a little excited about tech anymore?"
So rather than carp on the negative, here's my list of the features that the e-book reader that I would buy possesses:
- It would be attractive (I won't apologize for my finely-tuned aesthetic sensibilities)
- It would hold at least 100 books at a time*
- The books it would read would be storable off the device when not on the device
- It would have no problem displaying embedded images and video
- It would have a headphone jack, and would be able to play embedded audio
- It would give me the capability to annotate books through highlighting and text notes*
- It would connect wirelessly to the internet to access new/different books*
- It would connect via Bluetooth (or some other wireless mode) to my computer to upload/download/swap books from my hard drive
- It would feature a screen that's easy on my strained eyes*
- It would be lighter and smaller than a hardcover book*
- It would give me the ability to insert hyperlinked notes into one book about another
And that's really about all there is to it. All of the starred items are already features of the Kindle. For this device to be useful (and not merely a toy) to me, it would have to include these features. The good news is that these features are all possible today. The bad news is that there's really no industry incentive to do this. Yet.
Sigh.
And I think there's an important distinction to be made between harping on the DRM issue (that the Kindle restricts you to 200 e-books at any given time, which cannot be transferred to another device for storage, or otherwise retained once you've exceeded your 200-book limit -- I mean, who has more than 200 books, anyway? Right Mr. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, the world's "biggest bookstore"?) and thinking through the issues of how we actually use books. That's the premise of Brooke's blog post, and it's at the heart of my list of features I want and need in an e-book reader. Yes, DRM is evil and horrible and nasty on principle. But it's also a deal-breaker when its implementation on a book reader breaks my relationship with books.
But goodness - If I could digitize my library and annotate and cross-reference and mark up my books in all the ways I do now, and if I could carry that library around with me in a nifty-looking lozenge of literariness... hell yeah! Sign me up. That would be new technology the smart kids should feel good about getting all excited for. Right now, however, the Kindle is just another way to carry around a novel I'm not going to care about. Or write about. Or think about, really. And as a junior faculty member, I don't really have the time or money for those. So, no Kindle for me.
Posted by reparent at November 26, 2007 6:33 PM
Comments
Don't forget a battery that lasts longer than a trans continental airplane flight. That's key too.
Posted by: bill simmon at November 27, 2007 10:50 AM
Bit of a digression, but this does have to do with literature and the fuuuuuuture. Sort of. The future as imagined by Proust, anyway.
Posted by: Liam at November 27, 2007 2:16 PM