In "Rekindling Reading" Matthew Felling discusses the issues surrounding the much-anticipated "Kindle," a wireless reading device released by Amazon for $400. He lists some obvious pros of the invention, such as the compact convenience of a small device that can hold all of your current reading: books, newspapers, etc. He puts the Kindle advantage concisely as "it could do for literature what the iPod did for music."
The Kindle could perhaps inspire or "rekindle" reading for our technology-savvy generation, but I worry about differing reading habits for print and online text. Traditional reading, flipping the pages of a book, allows readers to get lost in the world between the pages. Most people read the entire book; it is a whole experience. Most online text is not read as wholistically, but skimmed or browsed through. Since the Kindle will feature online text, will the same reading habits transfer for the device, even when the text is supposed to be a "book"??
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2 comments:
I have to say, that I don't really like this idea of "the kindle." When I read, I like to sit down with a book and enjoy it. Also, I have a hard enough time reading a book because of my poor eye sight and reading off the computer is even worse. Now I'm not sure if "the kindle" is similar to the look of an ipod, but if it is a small device, that would be even harder to read from.
Also, I think that if students had this device, they probably wouldn't focus on their work as much. It seems like it would be more of a toy that will allow students to read through things quicker because they won't have to read the entire thing. I just don't think this device is necessary when books work perfectly fine.
Technology has brought about the condensation of virtually everything we know, television sets, cellphones, and ovens. Why not books? I think anything that takes literacy ad books to the forefront is a good idea, even if its as implausible as reading from a microscopic screen.
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