Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Kindle

To whom it may concern:

This is in response to your recently advertised 30-day trial for Kindles.

I am a teacher and have used Kindles in class in conjunction with book studies. They have not been at all conducive to the classroom. Students cannot take them home (since purchased at such high cost), so I cannot assign reading at home and must therefore rely on class time for students to complete all reading. It has tripled the normal time it would take my classes to read a book.

Inconvenience aside (ironic, considering the device's touted convenience), I also will not purchase or promote Kindle, or any other reading/ book application, regardless of platform because the popularity of such technology could very well lead to the elimination of physical books in the near future, which a corporation's demand for limitless growth must necessitate.

Physical books possess the innate capacity to survive decades without a reliable power source. If the electricity goes out, physical books retain all usefulness. Kindles (and the like), on the other hand, would quickly consign themselves to no more than expensive plastic paperweights in such an event.

What will a paperless world do in the event of an EMP attack or solar storm sufficient to collapse "The Grid"? H.G. Wells imagines such a scenario in The Time Machine, in which mankind's malignant addiction to technology leads to its utter collapse (I would offer to let you borrow my copy of the book, but sharing has become nearly as outdated as paper-based text. So, for the sake of modernity and progress, I'll #KeepItForMyself).

I recognize that I represent what is likely an overwhelming minority. The masses, no doubt, perpetually swing from swoon to climax at the release of each successive, highly addictive gadget, contraption, iThis, iThat, and Smartwhatever. Their acutely addictive nature is, no doubt, the reason for such ostensibly benevolent invitations to Free 30-Day Kindle Trials.

The name Kindle itself stands in a blaze of irony. And I wonder if it isn't intentional. What, precisely, do they hope to kindle? A love for reading or, perhaps, the pyres of book burning? If your people intend the former, is it the device that excites interest, or the content of the literature? Has the populace become so dull as to mistake packaging for substance? No doubt your quarterly earnings statement would suffice to answer.

Or is the Kindle popularity due to the increasingly warped and superficial nature of human sexuality in our society? I suppose books are too fat to be loved and cherished, when skinnier, sleeker, sexier (which is to say, more technological) substitutes can be purchased at irresistibly attractive rates.

Yes, I am likely a minority. Give me slow food cooked at home over McAnything, hand-written letters rather than text messages, time with a person not FaceTime.

And yes, give me a library holding a finite number of physical volumes over an electrified contraption loaded with hypermegaterrabytes of compressed files.