Media in the New Millennium

Nate Warren

I admit that I’m not always the best person to evaluate a new technology: I was the last among my friends to get a cellphone; I was late among my professional and social circles into the Facebook and Twitter pools. I can’t look at features and functionality a priori and make a bit of sense from them. I adopt new technologies once they have a near-ineluctable social momentum. I don’t see this happening with the Kindle. I’m pretty confident I’ll never own one. As a writer and a bibliophile, I find the device abhorrent on several levels.

• Reading a book is my conscious break from devices, scrolling and screens. The feel of paper in one’s hand, the warm light of a nightstand lamp on printed type, is what it’s all about. I don’t want another device in my hand at this point.

• It’s already happened with music: our personal experience with art is more and more a tableau of disembodied files. Dust jacket art is cool. Album cover art is cool. The physicality of the artifact matters. I want something on my bookshelf, the rows of colored spines a kind of journal and a mark of my role as a curator of written culture. What about the bookshelf?

• If I lose my copy of Journey to the End of the Night at the airport, I can still read my other books. Having dozens of my favorite titles on one device does not appeal. Neither do I want my ability to read to be dependent on batteries.

Those are just a few of my objections. In the interests of testing this stance in the crucible of friendly debate, I’m calling out my esteemed colleague and new technology enthusiast Doyle Albee. Doyle, you’ve got a Kindle. For God’s sake, why?

Doyle Albee

Unlike Nate, I’m the first kid on my block to get the new toys. I’ve often said that if the Apple Store served beer and had a TV to watch sports, I’d never go anywhere else!

So of course, I have a first-generation Kindle. I purchased one almost as soon as they were introduced. Here’s why:

Like Nate, I love to read, but I’m a schizophrenic reader — I jump from book to book and have several going at once. My behavior doesn’t change on an airplane, but I have no desire to carry four or five books with me wherever I go. My Kindle (since I put in a memory chip) will hold more than 1,000 books. I can read whatever, wherever.

If I lose my Kindle halfway through Journey to the End of the Night, I can finish it on my iPhone until I replace the Kindle. And when I replace it, I can download all my books again (no need to buy another copy) and Amazon will even remember the last page I read — whether on my Kindle or the iPhone. Not only didn’t I lose the book, I didn’t even lose my place!

One time, I was sitting on the plane and realized I only had a few pages left in my book and was facing a three-hour flight. Ninety seconds and $10 later (much less than I would have paid at the airport bookstore), I had a new book on my Kindle, thanks to the cellular connection to Amazon.

Reading is a wonderful break from my computer, but I’m in love with words, not the container in which they live. To me, a Kindle compares to a book much like the pages from Gutenberg’s first presses compared to the previously handmade copies of books done by monks. The printing press just made the words more accessible to more people in more places.

Nate Warren

I certainly differ with you regarding content trumping format: the delivery system does matter, all the way down to how our brains are able to process it. Words read on a wall from a passing car are different than words read on a screen, which in turn are different than words read in a book — particularly when the delivery systems means that you have six or seven other books in your hand, all competing for your attention. But you bring up an important point: the value of a Kindle really depends on what kind of reader you want to be.

Although a late adopter, I’m not a Luddite: I spend hours every day combing the blogosphere, jumping article to article, link to link on everything from SEO to foreign policy to college hockey. This is what I’m going to call “web reading” for purposes of this debate: reading in a shifting tapestry where all works are permeated by references to other sources and media. You’re not just reading an essay, you’re reading the whole culture. Whether you see this as a nuisance or an enrichment is very subjective. While you can get a quicker view of context and the cultural ecosystem of what you’re reading, the potential for interruptions are huge and you can fritter away hours in goldfish fashion. I think really getting something out of this kind of reading takes a particular focus. If I have to juggle six books, at least four of them better be filled with pictures of animals.

For me, picking up a hardback means it’s time to shut out extra-textual streams and engage deeply with the author’s idea, language and sound — the “singlemindedness” that David Weinberger of Harvard’s Beckman Center spoke of in this great post. When I finished F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night earlier this year, I couldn’t wait to jump on the Web and find critical works and learn some of the back story from Fitzgerald’s life that influenced the novel. But I don’t want that served alongside (and to the detriment of) my engagement with the primary text, best served on the printed page in big, uninterrupted chunks.

I guess it all depends on what kind of reader you are. And Doyle, if you truly were the schizophrenic reader you claim to be, then at least one of your personalities should have finished the copy of James Salter’s Burning the Days that I lent you months ago. Try it sometime. Books are awesome.

Doyle Albee

And that, my friend, is why I carry a Kindle — a technology one-trick pony if there ever was one. For me, maybe the word “carry” is the key difference. Since my reading time tends to be catch as catch can, I read what’s in my bag — and that means I read the Kindle.

Could I read all these books on my computer screen, or even my iPhone, and carry one less device? I could. But the experience is as you describe — too schizophrenic for even me. Sometimes I feel like a monkey jumping from branch to branch, even while I’m trying to work. (Bonus hint: writers, check out the full-screen mode in Pages 09 for Mac — it really helps me focus when I need to knock down some serious words).

So for me, the one-trick Kindle is the best of both worlds:

When I select the book I want to read at that moment, that’s all I get — one page of that book at a time, just like a book. No messages, no distractions, no pop-ups. Yet, in the physical space of one book, I can carry hundreds with me. If, after an hour of fiction I decide I’d like to take a break and read a business book for a while, which I often do, it’s as easy as turning a page. At home, that’s not so important — and I still have a stack of books on my nightstand. On a plane (where I spend too much time), it’s critical.

The e-ink technology mimics a book page like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s so much like a paper experience for me that I’ve become engrossed enough to actually reach for the device to try to physically turn the page.

And, honestly, carrying books is the reason I’m behind on the piece you loaned me. I like it, but it’s never there when I have some time to read (airplane, break in a coffee shop, etc.). If it was on my Kindle, I would have devoured it already. Since I’ve had that book, I’ve burned through 10 books on the Kindle.

Another recent discovery while reading a paperback is another nod for the Kindle — ergonomics. When I’m reading while in a plane seat, or trying to eat a bowl of cereal, a book is kind of a pain. I have to hold it open, and if I need to do something for a moment with two hands, the book flops closed. Not my Kindle. I just set it on a table or a seat-back tray and keep reading. Time for a new page? One quick push of a button.

Now, if I could just get the stewardesses to stop telling me to turn it off for takeoff and landing…but that’s another blog post.

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