1) You read slower on a Kindle. A recent study by digital design guru Jakob Nielsen showed that people reading a short story read more than 10% slower on the Kindle, compared to reading on paper. And that was just for a short story. How much slower might it be reading a whole book? See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/08/print-ipad-kindle-books
2) You almost certainly read stupider on a Kindle. There is a large body of peer-reviewed research which shows that people reading from screens don’t understand as much and don’t remember as much, compared to reading from paper. The differences have been significant. The Kindle’s display is somewhat different from the screens these studies tested, but it is still a screen…(Amazingly, no one has yet to submit the Kindle to these kind of tests. Maybe we should ask Jeff Bezos to fund the research?!). See http://www.ebookskeptic.net
3) The Kindle flunked out of Princeton. Last year, Princeton gave free Kindles to students in three undergraduate courses, pre-loaded with the required reading. The response of the students was pretty much universally negative. “Many students and faculty in the three courses said they found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use,” reported the Daily Princetonian. At the end of the semester 2/3 of the students said that if their Kindles broke they wouldn’t replace them. Slower and stupider doesn’t make the grade at Princeton. See http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/09/28/23918/ and http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/02/22/25262/
4) Amazon can play Big Brother with your books. You may think you own the books you buy for your Kindle, but Jeff Bezos has shown that he can-and will-do anything he wants with the text that you’ve loaded on your device. Amazon has already remotely deleted digital editions of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 from the Kindles of readers who had bought them. George Orwell would not be amused—and he would not be a fan of this technology.
5) Governments can play Big Brother with your books. If you’re doing your reading on a Kindle, you’re making it really easy for governments to play Big Brother as well. You can tell a whole lot about a person from what they read. Read on a Kindle, and everything you’ve read is listed in one place on one computer system. As Orwell would tell us, authoritarian governments everywhere are going to love this technology. (Of course government snooping like this would never happen here…)
8 comments:
great post. passing it on!
As a fellow independent bookseller (Diesel Bookstore in California!), I thank you for this post and will certainly pass it along! -Geo
Thanks for the post, I will be sharing it with all my Kindle loving friends and customers.
Excellent post!
The reading speed disparity was pretty minimal, given the margin of error, and the iPad came within that margin for parity.
ISBNs show up in your credit record when you use a credit card to purchase a book. And your shelf can be scanned quickly.
George Orwell might not be impressed, but his family was, when they sued to regain the rights to those books so they might continue to benefit from his writings.
Not a Kindle or e-reader fan, I feel that the lack of notation and flex is worse. What WILL be dynamite is when you can throw a switch and it will READ it to you in a voice of your choosing!
ISBN's show up on your credit card when you buy a book? Maybe when you buy one at amazon, but not at my store or any independent bookstore that I know of.
And for the government to scan your bookshelves, they first have to get into your house--a much more invasive procedure than getting data from a computer.
Good post. I'd repost it except that I'm a little confused. You have people like Madeline Albright and Jimmy Carter give talks at the Regulator.
1) How does that square with the Regulators themselves? They were American colonists executed for refusing to pay taxes to the government (GB). They were revolutionaries.
Does the name mean nothing to the current owners?
2). You mentioned that owning a Kindle meant censorship and government / corporate spying.
Probably correct. Then why do you as supposedly independent booksellers continue
to pamper government bigwigs?
Just curious.
Thanks for the post! I have an iPad and the Barnes & Noble Nook, and I think reading from paper beats both. It's interesting to see this confirmed in an actual study.
Post a Comment