I love my Kindle. I've loved it since the moment I un-boxed it and have loved it ever since. I feel virtuous in an eco-friendly way for owning it. For me there has been no downside.
Last weekend I walked into fantastic, historic, famous Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, and the downside hit me like a ton of, well, books. If everyone carried a Kindle (or any other sort of e-reader) what would happen to bookstores? What about libraries? As a great lover of both I began to ponder their disappearance. I love books. I love everything about them. When the Kindle first came out I, like a lot of people, didn't want to give up the feel of a book in my hands. In my current life as a nomad the Kindle makes sense and I'm thrilled to have it but no bookstores and no libraries? Could that be borne?
I'm absolutely, positively certain that the future will see the end of the printed word. It may not be my generation's future and possibly not even my son's generation but I believe it is at hand. I picture bookstores becoming sterile places with computer terminals for perusing choices. You'd plug your reader into a handy cable, download your selection, pay with stored credit card information and walk away. No human contact necessary. Then I realized that this scenario would more likely be played out at home from personal computer terminals and online catalogs, just like we e-reader people do it now. Bookstores might become small convenience kiosks in airports or other gathering places. A single computer terminal for those on the go. No brick and mortar location, however futuristic, needed.
What about libraries? A lot of libraries already have their collections online. We love the convenience of reserving and renewing our selections from home. How about the ability to check out your book, download it to your e-reader for a limited time and then have it magically clear away? Many libraries already offer the ability to download audio books, which expire and are deleted after a week or so. Can e-reader versions of printed books be far behind? I remember how much I disliked it when the card catalog was replaced by a computer terminal. What would it be like to have the whole library reduced to one?
My hometown of Alpine, Texas, is currently in the process of building a new library. It's an exciting project that the whole town is getting behind and the walls are going up. The theme of the new library is "the community's living room", which I love. To me it's the vision of a perfect library. Big overstuffed chairs, small tables around which to gather and discuss, toddler time and free movies on Tuesday nights. That's a library (and a bookstore). I love the idea of less trees being needed for all those books, magazines and newspapers and don't think, ultimately, that we'll have much choice in the matter but it makes me sad.
Will remembering a time when bookstores and libraries were places to go to choose a book and sit down for a read amongst other book lovers become something that dates us in the way that remembering 45's and soda fountains do?
I still love my Kindle but the future that it reflects is one for which I am not so sure I'm ready.
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4 comments:
I love books too. But when my library doesn't have a copy of the one I want to read, but don't necessarily want to buy, reading that book on a Kindle sure would be convenient.
My kids download all their music. I miss album cover art. They grew up without it.
btw - I'm a single dad with a daughter heading to college next year.
Noooooo!
Wow, you just scared me, because I think you may be on to something.
Just yesterday I bought three out of print books at a collectibles/antique store. The tactile experience of holding the book, feeling the different textures of paper, carrying one out to the porch to read, finding just the right spot on the bookshelf...what a loss if everything becomes electronic. I can't picture snuggling up with a toddler and reading on a Kindle, and then letting the child take the Kindle to bed to mull over the pictures. OMG.
Well, I comfort myself with the thought that people still ride bikes, plant vegetable gardens, cut flowers to put into vases, light candles...things that are basically done the same as they ever were....surely we won't let books slip through our fingers forever.
I hope.
I'm all for anything that keeps people reading and learning.
But I still love books. And magazines. The feel of them, the smell of them, their heft, their permanence.
I gave my husband a Kindle for his birthday. It's great for trips, etc. However, another downside is that if he downloads a book that he thinks I or one of his friends, etc. would enjoy (which happens a lot), he can't just pass it along to them when he's finished it. He'd have to loan whoever it is the Kindle.
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