At home for the Thanksgiving holiday, I plucked the latest Newsweek off of my mother's coffee table and sat down to reacquaint myself with the news of the world. Apparently, the book, in all of its page-turning, tree-killing glory, is about to go up in smoke. I found Steve Levy's cover story on Amazon's Kindle, The Future of Reading a thought-provoking read, that touches on much of what we've discussed in class. I still can't decide if I'd want to curl up on the couch with the new Kindle instead of that stack of Bill Bryson books I've been waiting months to savour in my precious time away from the computer screen, but it's a development with consequences I find easy to imagine. Will we someday find ourselves anticipating real-time edits from the author of the novel in our hands? Is the Kindle the new book? Or are we so tired of looking at screens all day long, we'll give up recreational reading all-together unless its on large-print, bound and artfully covered stack of pages? Will we someday dissect all of this in a class called "Writing and Editing for the Kindle?"
As I ponder all of this, and what it means for the future of my reading, writing and editing, Levy's interpretation of a rant by Microsoft's Bill Hill runs through my mind: "We chop down trees, transport them to plants, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to another factory to press into sheets, ship the sheets to a plant to put dirty marks on them, then cut the sheets and bind them and ship the thing around the world...'do you really believe that we'll be doing that in 50 years?'"
I wonder. Any thoughts?
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
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6 comments:
Good article, Shona. Thanks for writing about it.
The phrase "more is not better" constantly weaves through my brain in between all these promises of more, more, more: more access to information, more available books, more journals. Technology roars "forward" but human evolution saunters behind. We're barely able to make good use of the "limited" information we have available to ourselves in these luddite times.
"More is not better" first presented itself as an antidote to the rapacious consumerism which has irrevocably twisted the equilibrium of the natural world.
There may be a difference between more stuff and more "information" and there may not. Could a superficial focus on either be a diversion which prevents us from making the best possible use of what is already at hand? Instead of focusing on the moment and improving on it, we escape into a purchase or a google search of Britney's latest debacle. Or a book.
I love books - the feel of them, the weight of them, the texture of the page between my fingers and the anticipation of what the next page will bring me. I read them. But fewer Americans do as that National Endowment for the Humanities study demonstrated. Will the very cool Kindle change that? It's hard NOT to get excited by these new gadgets and the promises of what they can deliver. But what really do they deliver besides more?
There's a lot to be said for a change in production that can ease the use of limited resources for the manufacture of goods. But there is always an opportunity cost.
For all the trees saved, how many mines need to be developed to accumulate the raw materials for the Kindle? How dirty is mining compared to pulp manufacture? What does the production process of the Kindle require? Like books they'll have to be transported to market. And ultimately, unlike a book, the Kindle will be ever dependent on the generation of electricity to keep them going. Global warming anyone?
These are heady times on the technology front but we do ourselves a gross disservice if we accept starry-eyed all the Utopia they purport to sell us. Technology is easy and its evolution and change can be expected for as long as humans are inquisitive and eager for more.
Human nature is a different beast. Murder and mayhem nip at the walls of Technology Paradise. Will the Kindle tame the beast? I doubt it. But it is already providing an interesting diversion.
I'm not excited about the Kindle on a few fronts. I don't agree with what Bill Huff's quote alludes to--that an eReader is environmentally superior than a book. I agree with the points Michelle made about this above. Plus, there's the fact that I own books I plan to keep for the rest of my life. Long term use of a single item is better for the environment than the short term uses imposed by technology. A Kindle purchased today will likely be in the garbage in the next 5 years because a newer, better, cheaper Kindle will come out, and the owner will upgrade.
I try to stay away from technology that applies more limits on the user than the device it is replacing. I share books with friends and family. You can't do that with ebooks purchased for the Kindle even if your loved one owns one, too. DRM is applied to the files so that you are unable to share them.
I'm one of the twenty-somethings the entire business world thinks can spend 18 hours a day looking at a screen, but I absolutely cannot. I avoid reading from screens outside of necessary time on the computer--work, class, and my internet errands. Online reading gives me headaches, and I find I'm awfully distracted while completing tasks. I need time each day with the written word on paper to maintain my ability to focus and fully absorb information.
And finally, the suggestion that they'll one day include ads with books...I think English majors everywhere should protest.
Summer, I agree with the whole reading online headache thing. And also the DRM limitations.
It's just REALLY healthy to not be wired ALL the time.
You give me hope because the media tends to divide these technologies along generational lines. As a 40-something woman, any criticism I might offer of technology is dismissed as an inability to grasp it. And people of your age, having grown up online, are supposed to insist on nothing else.
Here's a Kindle protestation, "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper Is Eternal". While I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, I heard an interview with Powers on NPR this weekend.
The hinge, he says, is the perfect example of something the demise of which, for centuries, has been predicted. And it's still with us. As will paper continue to be - and by paper, I like to think of the book, specifically. He also said that he got loads of emails from people thanking him for the essay and making a point of noting that they downloaded and PRINTED the PDF.
(P.S. My two previous comments were deleted because I wasn't able to edit all the typos once they were inadvertently published. Damned technology!)
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