/whois Dialogue

“My book won’t run out of batteries, har har!”
Neither will mine. One charge of the Kindle lasts the better part of a week. Unless you read books for over 96 hours straight, there’s no way you won’t have the downtime to plug your Kindle in for recharge on your bedside table. Print is dead.

“It’s too expensive!”
Completely agree. At the moment this is a toy for people that can afford luxuries. In 5 years something like a Kindle is going to be less than a hundred bucks. In 10 years something like a Kindle will cost twenty bucks. 20 years from now digital paper is going to be ubiquitous and as expensive as a paperback.

“I like the feel/smell/taste of a book.”
Books are information. Nothing more. The pulp, the smell, the binding, the whatever, is nice. Trust me, I have nice memories of the smell of Shadowrun books all throughout the 90s. But I’m past it. All I need is the words to be good. If you’re willing to give up convenience and portability for tactile concerns I’m not going to be able to talk you down.

The bottom line is that the Kindle is the first ‘real’ eReader that’s hit market penetration. People are online in record numbers, they’re using the internet more than broadcast television, and the time for this kind of tech is now. If you want to actively avoid digital reading, that’s totally fine. In my estimation, though, that’s a kind of reactive intellectual snobbery.