Using the Kindle is somewhat less transformative. These days, everything from your keychain to your coffee mug boasts online access, and the Kindle is no different. It uses Sprint’s national wireless network and lets you link into Amazon, where you can browse, preview, and purchase books, magazines, and other types of content (the Kindle also has a beta version of a Web browser, but for now, it’s quite bad). Blogs cost up to $1.99 a month to subscribe to, which is a rip-off given that they’re free through your computer, but most books are only $9.99, a fair discount off what you’d pay for a hardback. It’s not just that the technology is cool, however. The Kindle is credible. As a product of Amazon, it’s intertwined with the world’s largest online bookstore, legitimized by the one company that can lay some claim to having already changed the way we use, or at least acquire, books. The real question, though, is what took so long? Though Amazon has transformed the way we purchase content, its business model has always contained a crucial inefficiency: Amazon gives you unlimited, free, instant access to text about books, so long as you read it on your computer screen. Then, when you’re ready, they’ll also sell you some text, only it won’t be unlimited or instant. Instead, it will be printed on mashed-up tree, put in a box, and sent across the country to you. What’s in that box is simply more text, no different from what you read on your computer, save for the wasteful, inefficient, and costly method of production. For all that we rebel against the idea, examined rationally, the death of the book would be no surprise.
I’m not sure exactly what I expected from my month with the Kindle. Maybe for some inquisitive older gentleman, possibly wearing wire glasses and a tweed blazer, to sidle up and say, “Excuse me, I hate to bother you while you’re reading, but do you really think that can replace the book?” Or possibly for a librarian to berate me. In any case, it didn’t happen. In fact, nobody noticed at all. Though reading the Kindle felt like a courageous betrayal of every word written since the moment papyrus gave way to paper, it turns out that looking at words on tiny screens in public places is far too common to attract attention. Indeed, the only person who demonstrated a heightened awareness of nearby reading habits was me. Suddenly everyone seemed to be staring at a laptop or scrolling through a BlackBerry or searching for songs on an iPod or texting on a flip phone. The Kindle is far less the start of a revolution than the codification of one. It’s a declaration of war long after most of the contested lands have been conquered.
Pessimists have been predicting the death of books for what seems like forever. In 1894, Scribner’s Magazine published an article lamenting their destruction at the hands of audio. “Printing,” the author wailed,
which Rivarol so judiciously called the artillery of thought, and of which Luther said that it is the last and best gift by which God advances the things of the Gospel—printing, which has changed the destiny of Europe, and which, especially during the last two centuries, has governed opinion through the book, the pamphlet, and the newspaper—printing, which since 1436 has reigned despotically over the mind of man, is, in my opinion, threatened with death by the various devices for registering sound which have lately been invented, and which little by little will go on to perfection.
I must take exception to Klein's declaration that paper is a "wasteful, inefficient, and costly method of production". This is valid only if you view reading a book to be a singular, individual event. In contrast, paper still excels when books are treated as communal or archival objects -- in other words, as objects to be shared or preserved instead of read once and then discarded (or ignored).
For example, while helping my parents pack for a move, I uncovered a tattered and worn copy of "The Mad Scientists' Club", which I had enjoyed immensely as a child. As it turned out, my sons also enjoyed that book when I brought it home and shared it with them 35 years after it was printed. I somehow find it difficult to believe that electronic versions of old favorites will be as easy to preserve as the childrens' favorites which will still be just as readable when that box in the garage gets cracked open in a decade or two (or longer). Whether it be a dead battery or a "dead" format, I see it as all too likely that the content saved would be unreadable in too few years, much less shared with children or grandchildren.
Similarly, paper books excel at sharing. Like many readers, I have no compunctions about wanting to introduce friends to good books (and good authors). How would I casually loan my sole electronic copy of a good book to a friend? Would I have to resort to buying a copy for myself and a copy to loan out? Will the e-publishers even allow their customers to loan out that precious content, or will it be treated like other software?
I'm sorry, but paper editions are still very efficient and very effective the moment you start looking at the content beyond the constraints of "my convenience, now".
Posted by William Clardy
on Sun 11 May 2008 at 11:46 AM
Thank you for this insightful article. Kindle is definitely not going to kill off print books any time soon for many reasons including that the later less expensive to replace and much more ubiquitous.
Klein's ideas about extending the idea of a book into a continually-updating text is a good idea that publishers need to embrace also. Of course, this will depend on writers who are willing to do the updates and finding suitable substitutes (if any) for deceased authors.
Posted by Jason Gross
on Fri 16 May 2008 at 11:48 AM
The New York Times Doesn't Think We Need a New Word for Reading on Screens In Order to Differentiate It From Reading On Paper, But ....
....BUT.....there is a spirited discussion about all this now online in hundreds of blogs and websites, and a recent interview with Dr Anne Mangen in Norway sheds more light on the issues invovled.
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR ANNE MANGEN IN NORWAY ON READING ON PAPER AND
READING ON SCREENS
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-dr-anne-mangen-in-norway.html
conducted by reporter/blogger Danny Bloom in Taiwan (August 15, 2009)
Anne Mangen is a reading specialst in Norway,
and a paper she published in late 2008 in the UK on the differences
betweem reading on paper and reading on screens has catapulted her to
the forefront of the debate on this controverisal topic. Even the New York Times has taken notice.
In a recent email interview, I asked Dr Mangen to go over some of the
issues involved here. As some readers might know, I have been
advocating that society adopt a new word for reading on screens, since
I feel screen reading is so different from reading on paper, and I
feel that with a new word we can study the differences better -- and
point out the differences better, too -- and I have gently, quietly
suggested the word "screening" to mean "reading text on a screen". Of
course, not everyone agrees with me; and even Dr Mangen does not agree
with me, even though it was her 2008 academic paper that got me
started on this quixotic quest. But that's okay. I respect Dr Mangen
highly, and I still consider her my mentor on all this.
When I asked her that since reading on paper is very different from
reading on screens, does she think that at some point we might need a
new word in English for "reading on screens", she replied: "Not
really, because I doubt that one single word is able to denote the
complexity of the process in any accurate and useful way."
MORE.....
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-dr-anne-mangen-in-norway.html
Posted by bloomingidiot
on Tue 18 Aug 2009 at 11:44 AM