just kindling, folks
As you may have heard, Amazon just dropped Kindle: a wireless e-book, e-paper, and blog reading device. I, obviously, have never used one, and I am loath to disagree with luminaries like Mr. Gaiman when he says it’s wonderful…but I certainly won’t be using one when they cost $400, are ass-end ugly, and aren’t solar powered.
Kindle is a nice idea, and is probably a good implementation of that idea. (Again: it could not be ugly and it really must be solar-powered.) But it’s an idea that has not yet arrived, and that won’t arrive until books are traded like music was before the iPod hit. Napster peaked in February 2001 – the iPod launched in October of that same year. Until e-books are that ubiquitous, Kindle is so much kindling.
There’s also the classic argument about why books will never stop being made, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Unrelated: a great post from Test Industries about Amato going out of business. Ah,vinyl. I’ll miss you.