The Kindle versus the Book: room for both

Printed words and eletronic words are both welcome in my office.

One of Newsweek’s November cover stories was titled “Books Aren’t Dead.” Author Stephen Levy took a close look at “The Future of Reading,” examining the printed word, the electronic word, and Amazon’s new reading device called the Kindle. To keep things in perspective, early printed books were highly technological products of the new-fangled Gutenberg press. Books have always been user-friendly, portable and don’t need batteries. Like most technology, books were expensive at first and the price has come down.

The Kindle is still costly and does require batteries. However, it provides not only the books, but also serves as an interface for searching the Web, interaction between reader and book, and offers a new concept: subscribing to a book, where you get updates as the author changes the story. The device is named “Kindle” to imply the lighting of knowledge.

Hmmmm. My opinion: for those of us who love the feel of a book in our hands and the texture of paper and the scent of ink, we won’t entirely switch, even if the Kindle’s price does go down. We may, however, add the Kindle to our collections. One of the many interesting comments in Levy’s article was that studies show that people who use the Internet a lot also read more books than those who don’t use the Internet as much. Apparently if you love to read, you’ll read—whether it’s web pages, blogs or books. Or on the Kindle.

For Newsweek’s 11/26/07 cover story, see http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983 To check out the Kindle, visit http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA