Already as it is, tooling around on a laptop all the time has given me unmistakable "computer-posture." The neck jutting forward, the head out of alignment with the rest of the spine. This mal-aligned posture is just one symptom of the (literal) forward-thinking of contemporary culture. We are so enamoured with what is in front of our faces (T.V.'s, laptops, ipods and mp3s, e-readers...) that it seems as if we have forgotten the rest of our body in the jump into the digital.
I want an e-reader that has extendable arms that fold out from the main frame. They delicately reach out and wrap around the base of my skull. Every so often the device gently reminds me to breath deeply, re-align, and rest my eyes. I am not sure yet if my e-reader will have a robotic or human voice.
Also, I think e-readers should come in different colors.
See Nicholson Baker's excellent ruminations on the "physical implications" of e-readers: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker
ReplyDeleteThat is a great review and summation, including quite a bit of stuff I didn't know about the Kindle 2. It can (sort of) read books out-loud? That's crazy. Nor did I even know there was a Kindle DX.
ReplyDeleteWhat surprised me the most, though, are his lining up of physical book and e-book prices. It seems you save little more than a couple of dollars when buying an e-book from Amazon. Frankly, this is not worth it in my opinion. If I have a choice of ordering 3 of 4 paperbacks for $25(with free shipping anyway) or $20 digitally, I will always go with a physical book. I had a similar problem with digital music until it got rid of the copy restrictions (which Amazon has on books) and became noticeably cheaper - $10 dollars for an album instead of $15. I sure hope it comes around, but it seems like the trend with digital media anyway; they try to lock down to earn profits but end up getting trampled anyway.
I also love the quote about the 'flow' of reading that books provide, which I think is part of what many of us have been trying to describe in the differences that may exist.
I like both of the points you bring up Andrew. I particularly have been turned off by the slow upload time of pages on the Kindle and Kindle 2. I don't know about other people but I have a real tendency to flip back and forth when I turn a page because I often forget how a sentence or paragraph began before I reach the end of it. It would be incredibly aggravating for me to have to load the pages of a book.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I had terrible memories of the screen from the original Nintendo Gameboy when Baker mentions that "The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray." That is hardly a selling point for me.
It is interesting that he mentions the pleasure of reading on an ipod. I have very limited experience with the iphone/ipod touch but given my nearsightedness I cannot imagine it would satisfy my reading wants. Because of his positive review of these diminutive Apple products as readers, I am interested to see what Nicholson Baker has to say about the ipad.
I agree with Andrew and Jeffrey. One other thing I have difficulties with on the Kindle is the fact that it has more smut that lit on the list of available titles. That makes me cringe. And since the driving force behind the kindle is to make money, the list will always be lighter on the heavier reading as fewer people will be buying from those genres. And of course, the big problem: "Kindle books aren’t transferrable. You can’t give them away or lend them or sell them. You can’t print them. They are closed clumps of digital code that only one purchaser can own. A copy of a Kindle book dies with its possessor."
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