I’m a big reader. It’s what I love to do. There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t give to spend a cold day wrapped up in a blanket with a book and a cup of hot cocoa. Today, however, I heard about a new wave of technology that is attempting to change the traditional style of reading forever.

It’s called “The Kindle.” A 10.3 ounce electronic device, much like an iPod, that Amazon.com has introduced to revolutionize the way people read. “Lighter and thinner than the typical paper back,” Kindle is completely mobile and convenient.   With the ability to store up to 200 hundred books on the device, (and with an upgrade users can store hundreds more,) Kindle is virtually the equivalent of carrying a personal library with you.  

With wireless technology, the Kindle allows you to buy and download the books that you want in less than 60 seconds and without syncing your device to a computer.  Furthermore, Kindle uses the EVDO network that many high-powered cell phones utilize so users will never have to locate an internet hotspot. 

Although this innovation is hardly brand new, my initial reaction to the idea was not favorable.  Though I do believe that some of the technology involved in creating this apparatus is truly amazing, I'm not at all in favor of the idea.  Among the myriad of qualms I have concerning this "modernization of the way people read," is that fact that printing books, magazines, newspapers etc. is the final form of mass media that has not yet been digitized.  I know this is a ridiculous stance to take, especially considering the fact even newspapers and magazines are making their way into the online world just to keep the attention span of their target markets, but come on. Why is it so difficult for anyone today to spend any significant amount of time with anything that isn’t on a computer screen. 

To me, there is something cold and distant about technology that I feel is not conducive to the personal nature that is inherent in the act of writing and reading books.  Books are comforting; there is some distinct quality to holding a book that I don't have when I'm holding a cell phone, or an iPod or a laptop. This feeling, I fear, would be lost while trying to read Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre,” on a computer screen. Part of me just has a hard time accepting the idea that books are suddenly going to be turned into files written in binary code rather than words printed on a physical page. 

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, stated in an interview that "part of the magic of the book is it's ability to disappear while you're reading it."  He goes on to say that it is this key quality of the physical book that the creators wanted to channel in developing the Kindle.  The creators do not want the device to be a distraction to the reader, so they invented technology called "Electronic Ink," to create a display that is crisper than paper and does not strain a person's eyes like a typical computer screen. There are other “enhancements,” that the creators of Kindle have included to facilitate your reading pleasure. For instance, instead of book marking pages, the Kindle remembers for you which page you read last. Also Kindle has a built in dictionary, so if you don’t know the meaning of a word, you can simply type it in and Kindle will give you the definition.

Not only that, but the Kindle has the ability to allow a person to make notes in the margins of their “books” and then search for them (much like a person can do on Google) at any time. The whole idea just sounds so lazy to me. Instead of making a person use his or her brain when taking notes on something that they’re reading, the computer will just do it for you and then, later on, show you where every little thing you wrote is. Not only that, but people are incapable of carrying around any reading material that weighs more than a pound, so the solution is to carry around everything you could ever want to read in a compact carrier that weighs less than a regular paperback book. 

Among the simple problem I have with the Kindle interfering with my traditionalist view on reading there are other problems that bother me as well.  One being that unlike the iPod where one can simply upload the cd's they already own to the device, The Kindle is incapable of acquiring the physical books a person already owns.  So if someone who owns a Kindle wants the books they already have to be in the database of their library they would have to buy the electronic version of the text from Amazon.com.  This, to me, seems like a scam. 

And as long as we're talking about the monetary issues of the Kindle, I feel it is necessary to note that if this technology is to become "the new book," Amazon.com will have an unfair advantage in the market.  As far as I know, (and I admit I have not done a ton of research on this subject,) there are no other devices on which a person is capable of downloading and reading entire books.  Given this fact, Amazon can charge whatever amount they want for these books to be downloaded, they have no competition as far as digital books are concerned.  Unfair, I think so.

Also, if you look at the list prices for books on the Kindle compared to the prices for the physical books, you’re paying less than half the regular retail prices. Though some may fail to see this as a bad thing, as a budding writer this greatly concerns me. With the price of books dropping so much, one has to wonder how the writers will be faring in all of this. As it is currently, writers make a surprisingly small cut for the intellectual property that they print for people to read. With this drastic cut in prices, the effect has to be somewhat detrimental to the writer as well as the entire publishing empire. Given the choice between paying $9.00 for a digital book and paying $23.00 for a physical book, what person will honestly take the effort to go to the book store to spend more than twice the amount of money on a book than they would if they just downloaded the book onto the Kindle. 

Another issue I have with the Kindle is that I like to share books with other people.  If I read a book that I think is particularly good, I'm apt to whore that book out to every person that I know. (Ex. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.)  With the Kindle, it will be impossible to share a book that I think is fantastic outside the realm of telling someone that they “need to go buy this book!” This is another way I think that the Kindle will be hurting the literary community. Instead of encouraging people to talk about what they read and the ideas that spring out of these narratives, literature will become less of a forum for discussing viewpoints and opinions and more of a cheap form of entertainment dominated by the books most capable of holding a person’s attention.

Finally, this technology threatens to make the library, as it is now, completely obsolete. With physical books seen as clunky and heavy, there is a good chance that people in general will be disinclined to spend time physically looking for a book when they can simply click, pay for and download it directly onto their Kindle. 

Despite all my misgivings, if I'm being fair, there are some distinct advantages to this device as well.  The first of which obviously being the fact that a person is capable of carrying every book they could ever want to read with them everywhere.  That would be nice, especially if you’re traveling somewhere and you can’t take a ton of reading material with you. Second, let's face it, I can see today's kids being more open to reading a book if its on a computer screen because everything they’re well acquainted with is pixilated. In all honesty, if something like this can get kids to read, then it’s not 100% negative. Third, and finally, the environmental impact of the kindle will be huge if it does indeed become the most popular way to read books. Think of all the trees that will not need to be cut down in order to mass-produce literature. So for these reasons, among others, the idea of the Kindle may seem attractive a large number of people, myself not included.