Dear E-Books
Both are good reads. Only one has a place in my backpack...
via The New York Times:
With a growing number of people turning to Kindles and other electronic readers, and with the Apple iPad arriving on Saturday, it is not always possible to see what others are reading or to project your own literary tastes. You can’t tell a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one.
“There’s something about having a beautiful book that looks intellectually weighty and yummy,” said Ms. Wiles, who recalled that when she was rereading “Anna Karenina” recently, she liked that people could see the cover on the subway. “You feel kind of proud to be reading it.” With a Kindle or Nook, she said, “people would never know.”
Okay, one of my taglines for Dear Whoever is that 'reading is fundamental'. I love to read. Whether it be newspapers, magazines, blogs, nutritional labels or what have you. In the past 2 years, though, reading has taken up residence in a new venue. You, e-books, are what the iPod did to CD's. You're slowly changing us from a society of page turners, to button pushers. While people still are reading, the modus in which we read is now swiftly changing. Because of you, there isn't a use for the delineation between paperbacks and hardcovers. It's the Kindle versus whatever other e-readers there are. Because of you, there won't be any such thing as a book weathering generations or being handed down through those said generations. We can just as easily point and click that same book to whomever we want, and save it on our hard drives. Because of you, the time-honored traditions of bookmarks, pages folded over, and writing little notes in the margins will wither. No longer will there be people like myself perusing book stores for hours looking at interesting covers to see which book they want. In fact, if you continue at this pace, I'd be surprised if there even are bookstores anymore in 20 years.
E-books, it's not that I'm against the whims of technology overtaking the physical presence of ideas laid out on paper. It's just that after one of you gets purchased, hundreds of books are essentially deemed obsolete. Maybe your use will cut down on deforestation and other side-effects of book production. Even so, is that worth trading in a technology that revolutionized religion, science, philosophy and pretty much every other facet of humanity? The printing press might very well be the most important invention of the past millenium (#shoutout to Johan Gutenberg; bet he's rolling in his grave). It took Europe about 200 years to fully embrace it. It took you about 6 months to seriously catch on. Is that indicative of the change in society or just technology at work?? Whatever the case, e-books, I probably won't be buying any of you any time soon. Though I gladly rock MP3s and DVDs, I think I'll wear my papercuts with pride as I lug a backpack full of books around. You might be convenient, but convenience shouldn't always override principle, especially when you have to pay $260 plus each book to enjoy it...