The Kindle is a relatively new technology; it is a device on which people read e-books. While most people see only the positives of e-reading devices, there are more than a few negatives. Some of the more basic problems with the Kindle include cost and durability. An average paperback novel from a bookstore costs between ten and fifteen dollars. The price of a single e-book may be the same, if not less, than the real book; but this price must be added to the seventy-nine dollars that the Kindle itself costs. Durability is another issue to think about. A Kindle is nowhere near as durable as a book. As Nicholas Carr says in his The Shallows, you don’t have to worry about a book falling off of your bed, whereas a Kindle would most likely break if dropped.
One problem with the Kindle involves Communities and Connections. Many people lend books that they enjoy to their friends. With a kindle, a person can only lend “eligible” books to friends. Eligible books can be lent once for a period of fourteen days. If this person does not finish the book within the fourteen days, or if another friend would like to borrow the book, the whole Kindle would have to be borrowed.
There are many more negative consequences of the Kindle, and these are less trivial. In Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, he quotes Jacob Weisberg, who said that, “printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence.” This is a problem related to Human Development. Historians have learned invaluable information about the past from the records that past peoples left behind. If written books become obsolete, this will rob future generations of the important artifacts that can show how people today live their
lives.
Another problem arises from the use of the Kindle, and this one falls under the Education and Learning category. This problem is also addressed in Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. He mentions that it is very easy to become restless and distracted when reading an e-book on the Kindle. Many e-reading devices can now hold hyperlinks, making it easy to forget the task at hand. With the increasing popularity of buying textbooks and other class materials on the e-reader, serious problems arise. Students today have an increasing problem with ADD and ADHD, which may make it hard to focus on things like reading a chapter of the textbook. Partner ADD or ADHD with the increased restlessness and difficulty concentrating that comes with reading on a Kindle or other e-reader, and many students will have a huge problem.
So I have a few problems with your contentions. Your first argument is price. The original Kindle released at $399 in 2007. Now, just four years later, a Kindle can be had for only $79. By comparison, the average price for a hardcover copy of a New York Times Bestseller in 2007 was $23.87, compared to the average price of $28.57 in 2012. So, as the price of the Kindle reduced by 80% in four years, the price of a New York Times Bestseller actually increased by almost 20%. Factor in the fact that the Kindle edition of a NYT Bestseller sells for an average of $13.99, and you'll quite clearly see that the Kindle is actually much, much cheaper.
ReplyDeleteYour argument that we cannot share our Kindle books like their physical counterparts is merely the facade of a much larger intellectual property agreement. The traditional way of thinking about books as physical property and digital books as intellectual property is what prevents us from sharing our digital assets. You're allowed to share a book because the item in and of itself belongs to you. However, my eBook is still the property of the publisher, and I'm merely being extended certain "rights" to use it in certain ways. Thus, your argument is not a fault of the Kindle, but a fault of the way our society recognizes intellectual property as related to digital renditions.
Also, your assertion that books provide a more permanent record of human history is preposterous. There are only 39 extant Greek plays. Due to the fact they were contained on physical materials that cannot be quickly copied and distributed, we've actually lost more cultural knowledge due to the physical limitations of books. Digital books, on the other hand, will survive as long as we have computers to hold the information. And I do not believe we will see the end of computing anytime soon.
Finally, you present Carr's argument that eBooks can be distracting because of their containing extra-contextual materials. If anything, this actually increases a person's ability to absorb the information contained within, especially when rich media (video, audio, photos, etc) is embedded within the text. Imagine reading a book about cellular reproduction, and being able to watch a cell undergo the process of mitosis. Who can argue that this inhibits a person's ability to learn? Also, the assertion that it's "easy to become restless and distracted when reading an eBook" is absurd considering that reading on a Kindle is almost exactly like reading a book. The entire purpose of the Kindle is to simulate the reading experience of a real book.
Dylan had some good points, but I must disagree with the last. I cannot for the life of me read more than a page of text on a Kindle or a computer screen without feeling like I have to look at something else.
ReplyDeleteAnna mentioned Carr's book The Shallows; That first chapter pretty much described everything that I've experienced in the last few years. While I can still read several chapters of a good book in one sitting, I do catch myself getting distracted more easily or thinking about what else I could be doing. And with the new Kindle Fire that acts pretty much like a small computer, I don't think it would take me very long to stop reading and switch to a different app.
Luckily for my GPA, Angry Birds doesn't work on a real book.
First, I want to say that I'm basing my opinions on my experience with my Kindle Fire (which does not use e-ink but a screen).
ReplyDeleteI actually find that reading on my Kindle less distracting than when I'm reading a hard copy book. I think I read better on my Kindle than I do an actual book. I think this is because people nowadays excel at reading websites or online articles quickly while still absorbing the information. Being able to read a book the same way allows me to read it quicker and to see the big picture better. And if I wanted to go back and read into detail, I could always do that. I'm not saying that I don't still love reading hard copy books, but the Kindle gives another way to read books that still lends you the same benefits.
You bring up that books are great artifacts for the future, and I do think that's true. However, I think having a digital book would actually be easier to find and than having a hard copy--especially in the future. All kinds of books are online, and everyone has access to them. And in the future, things will probably be advanced enough so that they could trace the memory in your database on your kindle or even get it from the Cloud that it's been uploaded on.