With Amazon unveiling yet another digital device, the Kindle Fire, I took a break to ponder where are we headed with all this.
Cheaper, but not better than the Apple iPad, the Kindle Fire is a tablet aimed at the “reading crowd“.
I’m not sure what that means, exactly.
I’m a reader, and as such I’m more specifically a book reader. Book reading is becoming a lost art and pleasure, that battery-operated gizmos attempt to steal and imitate.
I read my books on good old-fashioned printed paper; some say the Amazon forests are thus slowly chopped away. What a load of bullshit.
When millions of obsolete iPads and Kindle Fires are dumped along with other digital trash two years from now, the deadly chemicals released into the soil polluting the water horizon and the crops, or fumigated into the air we breathe will be far more devastating than the tree loss alleged by the pushers of those devices.
Sorry Jeff Bezos, your “reading crowd” will not include me.
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I love books too, but my house is filled with them, so I have my eye on the upcoming version of ipad.
Still, I like that there’s a bit of “old fashion” in you. New fangle is cool, but so are some of the old ways.
🙂
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Yes, I still prefer paper. I just purchased a CPE course in PDF format for the first time and despite the fact I may spend a considerable amount of time in front of a PC, I prefer being able to step away from the computer to read anything more extensive than an article. However, a Kindle or Nook might come in handy as my five bookcases are already full.
Ms Domainer – True, I’m both old & old fashioned 😛
Leonard – I understand the constraints of having to deal with space for books, trust me. I just can’t find anything “live” in a gadget that mimics a book. To me, that’s browsing, not reading.