Shirley Curran
Thirty years ago Grandpa Curran announced prophetically, "The days of books made out of trees are numbered." I couldn’t believe him.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com is proving him right. The advantages of the e-book reader, ‘Kindle’, are obviously legion. Environmentalists preach about the vast saving of trees. Oldies can enlarge the print size. Never again will I find my library book annotated or fouled by an ignorant student. No Vatican hacker will be able to cut out and market irreplaceable pages. It’s light and resembles my beloved books. Web links provide instant vast research facilities.
BUT. What sort of carbon footprint went into the making of my e-book device and its ultimate disposal? Will it really benefit the environment when it gently dozes in sleep mode, or continues to consume power when I’ve fallen asleep from boredom over the text it is showing? Will the rechargeable battery be of the polluting chemical type?
Do I want to pay $399 when a better, cheaper version is certain to supersede this one? Do I really want my suspension of disbelief to be interrupted by Web links to clever critics and parallel universes?
Beyond all that, am I ready to adapt to an electric book and abandon all those lovely mouldy-smelling wads of paper that stock the basement shelves? The answer is probably "Yes".
- Editor’s events, GenevaLunch community November 20, 2007
- The Future of Reading by Steven levy, Newsweek, November 26, 2007
GenevaLunch, 10 December 2007.
Filed under: Society
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