Academic

Do you Kindle?

By firstamendmentblogger

Green Apple Books in San Francisco touts the benefit of books over The Kindle in a couple of videos you can link to here.  I'm sure The Kindle will continue to increase in market share, especially once its hefty price tag comes down, and fear that books may one day go the way of the soon-to-be bygone newspaper.  

That's bad news for us visual, tactile learners.  There's something about the simple arrangement of printed words on a page without the flickering illuminated background that helps us process information.  And being able to leaf though the pages of a book helps us scan information in less time than it takes to navigate virtual pages on a computer screen. 

Still, I'm willing to concede a few points to The Kindle, which,  in the interest of full disclosure, I have used but don't own.  On a couple of considerations, here's how I'd rank the two:

• Readability:  Its harder for me to read from a Kindle than a book, but easier than a computer screen.  I suspect this has something to do with pixels, or LEDS, or program codes I have no interest in understanding, but maybe it's simply what I'm used to.  If kids today learn to read on a Kindle, will they have an easier time than someone like me as an adult?  I don't know.  For now, it's books over Kindle.

• Chiropractics:  Could you really put a dollar amount on the pain and suffering that came with carting around a semester's worth of text books as a law student?  The Kindle weighs about as much as a paper clip.  My Con Law book alone - more than an iron cannon ball.  Kindle over books, easy. 

• Green factor:  Downloading books saves a forest worth of trees, but I suspect Kindle's full of cancer-causing component parts mined from somewhere in central Africa by kids themselves too young to read.  And what to do with a Kindle that breaks?  Well, like the rest of our e-junk, send it to China where a different set of kids can get led poisoning 'recycling' our gadgets.  Sigh.  I can drop a book or tear a page and still make use of it.  Books over Kindle.

So what say you, readers . . . do you Kindle?

-Kathleen Bergin

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 04, 2009 (boomark / email).