amazon kindle - books or bytes?
pardon the pithy title. i couldn't help it.
i like reading. books specifically, because there are lots of them, and there are lots on the topics i like. blogs, newspaper articles, journal articles. all that crap. words basically.
so naturally, one of my favorite places in the real world is barnes and noble. in the digital world, bn's bigger, 500 lb. gorilla cousin amazon.com is a frequent stop. so on a trip to amazon in november of last year, i was piqued by amazon's new wireless device, the kindle. all this crap about how it would change the world, all the books they had on it, all the cool features (some new way of displaying the words so that they look like newspaper letters), and its particularly cool way of downloading the books onto the kindle (it uses sprints whispernet, downloads books in about a minute). not that bad. but too expensive ($400) and not enough books. besides, e-readers are notorious for having iffy selections, being prohibitively expensive and flopping miserably. but if anyone can pull it off, the gorilla that is amazon can.
and pull it off they have, at least so far. 7 months later the kindle is making an impact on amazon's bottom line, its selection of books has ballooned to over 140,000, and the things are cheaper and selling well. it appears that the ability to hold 200 of your favorite books in a tiny little reader, along with getting your newspapers and other periodicals delivered for a charge is enticing.
but i still have reservations.
amazon makes a big deal about the kindle; and a report i read a while back (the pleasures of reading at work; i get access to cool stock reports) suggested that the kindle could be for digital books what the iPod was for digital music. the start of a new age. all that crap. i disagree.
i think that its a poor comparison; music and the written word arent the same in many ways. if you have 1000 cds, you are either a) messy. i've never seen that many cds stored properly, where anyone but the owner can find anything in the collection or b) a serious music person. with youre serious music tastes. that none of us can really understand. and you're still probably messy. on the other hand, someone with many books (well displayed or not) is learned. they have read things, seen the world, experienced the world through reading. in this way, music and the written word in their old forms, cds and books respectively, are very differently in how we view massive collections of them, and in how we view massive knowledge of them.
music and this written word also differ in how we interact with them. very few people will read a book more than once. on the otherside, very few people will listen to a song (that they like) only once. it makes sense that music be something you want to carry with you. but a book? i've finished reading it. i no longer need it. i can put it on my shelf. it looks nice there. it joins my other books. they say alot about me; where i've been, where i am, and perhaps where i am going intellectually, spiritually, physically, personally.
so my question to you people is, whats better? books or bytes?
would you rather have the feel of a book in your hands, the weight of the pages and the smell of the old glue and leather and dust? or the feel and convenience of a nifty gadget? books for the kindle cost less than $10. i spent $60 on four books today at bn. they would've cost me a third less with the kindle.
so whats better? the ability to physically display your library, to show off, to put up a book on a shelf and think to yourself, i am done, i have finished. or the convenience of the kindle?
personally, i like looking over the books i have read very much. seeing the stacks of them in my room here and at home are comforting. when i graduated from ib, i took my stack of books that we'd read, and put them in my sisters room. some 30 or 40 books. novels, biographies, studies, histories. great books. it was an accomplishment to have read them. they looked good. they were a public testament to my knowledge, my training, my ability. i'll take my books over the kindle for a time yet.