With the announcement of the Kindle 2, it seems like digital prognosticators everywhere are forecasting imminent death for magazines, newspapers, and printed books. Well, okay, maybe not everywhere. But one thing is clear: the cost of producing print media on paper is making digital ink more and more attractive to publishers who are not weathering the recession well. A recent post to The Business Insider calculates that printing the New York Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a Kindle.I'm a technology enthusiast, and while I love the idea of a digital book reader, I get really concerned when I hear about transformations in the way we access media. It's not so much the device itself that I'm concerned about--I've seen the Kindle display, and it literally is just like reading a page of newsprint. What concerns me is that we may be reducing the number of options available for the casual reader who isn't interested in investing in an expensive piece of hardware. There's also a sense of grandeur and beauty embodied by a hundred books sitting on shelves, which is somehow lost when stuffed into digital files. Call me a romantic if you must.
How do you read books? Do you read online? Do you prefer old-fashioned newspapers, magazines, paperbacks, or hard-bound volumes? Do you think the Kindle (or other e-books), will one day lead to the death of printed media?
1 comments:
I myself haven't read a book or newspaper in almost ten years. Okay, so I am an exception since I have that whole vision problem, but I think that in a lot of ways, e-ink will ultimately bring media to more people not less. I actually get to read my local newspaper everyday and I wouldn't be able to if it wasn't online. I think that if companies plan right they'll make the transistion to online. I don't think that books will ever stop being printed, but I think that having alternatives is a good thing. It does save trees after all.
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