That said, Amazon is shooting itself in the foot with their restrictions. Talk about Luddite; haven’t they learned anything from the music industry or their own Internet business? They seem to think people will accept buying proprietary, constrained files to as the price of admission for their reader; I suspect the reality is people will avoid their reader in droves and use another devices to read less restrictive files — they’re certainly not the only game in town.

Plus, they seem to want to make this thing as non-versatile as possible. So in a world where technology is making every device more versatile and user-friendly, Amazon is introducing a $400 one-use block of near obsolesence, and that one use has strings attached — and costs you. Brilliant.

In the next year or two, when the next generation of $99, 100-function cell phones will let you download any book you want for free and then, who knows, broadcast it to your car radio or something, the Kindle (seriously, Kindle?) will seem like a GREAT idea.

So I’ll pass.

I checked out the link. $200 of your $400 is tax deductible. From the description of the XO laptop:

Thanks to its flexible design and “transformer” hinge, it can easily configure from a standard laptop to an e-book reader and a hand-held video game player.

For half the money, you get a fully functional laptop with free T-Mobile hotspot access (1 yr) that also works as an e-book reader. It won’t read Amazon’s proprietary e-book files though.

Spend your $400 on the XO Laptop program…
Give 1, Get 1

Now that is good use of technology.

I also like the idea of being able to annotate and look things up in the OED and WikiPedia.

I’m sticking to the books for now.

Second, I think the analogy with the iPod is inapt. The beauty of the iPod (and I admit to having come to that particular party late) is that you can listen to your music while walking or running or exercising in some manner or other. By removing the CD or tape component, it made those listening experiences more reliable and easier. When would having Kindle be easier than having a book? The answer is simple. Never.

Listening to music has always been a one sense aesthetic. Reading, however, involves sight, sound, touch, and even, on occasion, smell. Books are durable, portable, and can be searched with a flip of the thumb.

Charging for blog subscriptions is idiocy, but remember what H.L. Mencken said: “Nobody ever went broke from underestimating the American public.”

And, as far as writers participating in “wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead of being the sole authority, is a ‘superuser,’ the lead wolf of a creative pack,” goes, these are the same things that were said about the CD back in the early ’90s, and it never developed. The whole point of being entertained is that the reader/audience member doesn’t have to do the work. Also, the role of the artist in our society is similar to the role of the shaman in other societies. People don’t go to shaman to interact; they go to absorb.

Electrifying something doesn’t always make it better. And, as long as I can drop my book off a balcony and find it still working when I retrieve it, the book will be superior to its electronic brethren.