I'm being slightly bitchy.

[rocknload]

I'd love to have a Kindle. I'd love to have like hundreds of books with me at all times and my choice of which to read. It's like an iPod. But for books. And who hates iPods? I mean I love my records but they take up so much space, and I can't take them everywhere, and CDs were fun but also quite a bit limiting, but now my 15 GB-sized music collection goes everywhere with me. Sure, a Kindle would require batteries, that I don't refute, but so does my cell phone and I don't think anyone would argue that the old rotary phone wired to my mother's office wall is more convenient because of this. I could wirelessly download things for cheap, or free, without going to the one bookstore we have across town. Bonus, it's way better for the environment than regular books, where do you think paper comes from? And how do you think they get boxes of books from place to place? I would use the shit out of that thing and probably love it forever, and I'd almost certainly read a lot more.

Dude. Amazing. Why does everyone get so snooty about these things?

... God, I really do want one now. Amazon has a deal with Sprint which lets you connect to their network anywhere for free. Maybe if I send Amazon ten dollars a month they'll let me have one in ... three years.

Comments

[maxiboom.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything here. Except I could never get one because they do not exist in Canada. Aside from also never being able to afford one.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll never have one because I can't at all imagine being in a position to go, "Wow, I have four hundred dollars and nothing to spend it on. Wait, I know!" It's lame that they don't exist in Canada, though, I wonder if they couldn't strike a deal with any wireless providers up there?

[maxiboom.livejournal.com]

It's okay, within a decade the technology will mature and then they will be overflowing out of garbage cans! Hooray for the inevitability of cheap access due to disposable culture!

They could, and for all I really know they already have. But I do know the business practices of Canadian phone and internet providers piss the hell off of American product distributors (as well as everyone else, generally speaking), so there's always that barrier to overcome.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the Canadian providers do, since American providers are also freaking obnoxious but they still manage to muddle through, but maybe they have no choice.

But yeah, I bet the readers and ebooks and other digitally formatted stuff will become extremely widely available really quick, if only for the advantages of cheapness and the fact that it doesn't cost anything to transport it. I don't think books are going to die out or anything but the convenience of this sort of thing can't be discounted.

[maxiboom.livejournal.com]

This is where I don't really know much about it, but mainly I gather it's their willingness to gouge the public with glee. Also, the incredible degree to which Canada is not upgrading it's networks.

I'd really like to hear an argument against the rise of screen-distributed literature that didn't rely on "people don't like reading from screens", because that it so incredibly obviously an argument from the other side of the generation gap. So I wonder if there is a real one. As well, while physical books aren't going to disappear, I am curious what distribution is going to look like in the future. I gather writing, as much as it always was, is essentially a non-paying career now, and book sales continue to slide ever downward. Plus there's those machines I can't remember the name of right now, that print and bind a book for you right there. I gather that's still got a ways to go, but the technology already exists, in practice.