…a bleepin’ KINDLE. As Susan McWilliams observes, it amounts to a techno-surrender of “readerly independence” with no obvious benefit. I’m glad I don’t live on some agrarian frontier where all I have around the house are Shakespeare and the Bible (both very good!) in expensive, irreplaceable editions. I’m all for the technology that has made books really, really cheap–so cheap that I typically buy these days rather than mess with interlibrary loan. If they’re almost giving real books away, why mess with the machine? (Of course–I said similar bad things about my GPS machine, which turns out to have been a wonderful gift that actually makes me, the traveler, more bold and sort of self-reliant, if also stupider. It keeps MEN from having to do what they most hate–asking a real person for directions.)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 12:23 PM
Peter Lawler
December 16th, 2009 | 6:04 pm
Wagh! If I had never had the opportunity to get out in three separate business establishments in some little obscure town in upstate New York and attempt to divine the mysterious rustic pidgin they spouted in directions, I would have never made the connection between them and the sign at the outskirts of town that crowed “Birthplace of Oliver North”.
December 16th, 2009 | 8:20 pm
The Kindle’s utility lies in its ability to download multiple periodicals. As a young man without a permanent residence, subscriptions to hard-copy magazines and newspapers are out of the question. I would have to change my address frequently, and they are too expensive for someone who has not started his career. The Kindle can download the NY Times, the WSJ and the Washington Post – along with the Economist, the New Yorker, etc. – to a single device, one that’s much more congenial to reading than a laptop monitor. Being able to take such a device on the Chicago El train every morning would be fabulous.
I don’t have one yet, but I want one. I won’t use it to read books. I prefer the real thing, as you do. But the device has some real utility.
December 17th, 2009 | 2:32 am
What’s up with this? The device gives you the ability to download the entire Western canon for free (or almost, depending how you defined the canon), put it on your device, carry it around anywhere in the world, and that’s a problem? I’m going to make the wild guess that you don’t spend much time on airplanes.
December 17th, 2009 | 9:29 am
Adam, Your wild guess is, unfortunately, wrong. I find I can’t get through the whole canon on a single flight, and one or two real books is enough to entertain me. But in general I hinted I’m willing to be talked into this thing… It took me years to get reconciled to taking a laptop on trips, and even now I only have one of those real tiny and cheap ones.
December 17th, 2009 | 12:30 pm
Here’s one of several emails I’ve gotten (another promised me a Kindle under my tree–and that was my secret goal):
First, I can’t use e-readers.
I have to have the heft of a book in my hand, and I don’t travel enough to NEED to use one to keep up on things.
That being said, for the modern commuter — which includes many of my friends — if they didn’t have an e-reader or Kindle, they’d never read books, and the books they read would be far more limited. They could only read magazines or newspapers. The utility of the Kindle is really only going to be fully realized when one can use it in lieu of ever buying textbooks, going through college without carrying anything heavier than a few ounces. My fiancee has a sleek Sony e-reader loaded with classics, and I doubt she’d ever have slogged around trains and buses carrying the Fagles translation of the Iliad.
December 17th, 2009 | 12:48 pm
Part of me likes the minimalism idea of the Kindle. Then the reality sets in as I realize you can’t buy used books for it, that most of the sorts of books I buy (often technical philosophy or physics) aren’t available and that for fiction I can’t take it for a soak in the tube after a hard workout. Plus, there’s something about having 5 books open as you take notes that can’t quite be realized with the Kindle.
December 18th, 2009 | 10:52 am
I like Susan’s article but all her criticisms assume the Kindle will decisively replace the book rather than provide another instrument of convenience among others. I don’t have one myself but I like the idea of having access to multiple news sources and books as I travel about.Likewise, I really enjoy the convenience of internet shopping but still, like the social being that I am, like going to the mall seeing all the folks out and about. Susan’s article is actually pretty instructive since its a good example of a mistake Porchers often make: to see new technology as only destructive of opportunities for natural human sociability missing the resiliance of our natures to suppression and even the possibility that new technology might even improve some of those opportunities, revealing something new and interesting about human freedom, or what the Pope calls its technological dimension
December 18th, 2009 | 11:19 am
So Ivan’s view seems measured, and I’m all for internet shopping (because I dislike store clerks and all that). So it’s not too late (and easy to get free shipping) to buy me a kindle on-line. My new moral principle is not to spend my own money on one.
December 18th, 2009 | 3:18 pm
I think what is likely to happen in the future is that fewer paperbacks (like stephen king novels) will be made and bought but folks will print them out on their own at palces like lulu.com. Its already very easy to print out your own paperback book with sufficient quality binding and its cheaper than buying it. So rather than the death of the paperback in its entirety you’ll have new means for its production. Some of this might produce some of the less than attractive consequences Susan describes but it might also make it easier for people who like to read to do more of it.
December 19th, 2009 | 5:16 am
Brilliant move. Get a Kindle without paying for it by speaking of the vice of Kindle. For that move alone, I’d be willing to buy you one if I weren’t already buying one for my brother-in-law who in a half-assed manner already spoke of the vices of kindle (he’s a man who travels much, reads too many newspapers and magazines).
I say read too much. If I could never again read the NYT, WST, WaPo, FT, New Yorker, New Republic, National Review, Commentary, Weekly Standard, etc. I would be happy, but my curiosity would keep me coming back. Of course, none of this has anything to do with First Things or even better Perspectives of Political Science!
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