

Kindle and the Future of Reading - rob_rasmussen
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker

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Mintz
I bought a Kindle for my technologically-inept mom, and she loves it. Things
like the font, screen color, etc. don't bother her, because she focuses on the
bigger picture: thousands of books on a portable device that's supported by
the world's largest internet book retailer. That is, she says, the next
logical step for books to take.

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dlevine
I think that for the Kindle to become something more than a high-end toy,
Amazon is going to have to drop the price to about $99. Then they would sell
millions.

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onreact-com
The Kindle or any other reader should be free. They should earn the money by
selling books.

I still cringe at the thought of paying money for a device that solely allows
me to read. It's like building a device that allows me to breathe and sell it
as the next big thing.

We already can read books without a "gadget" so forcing us to buy an expensive
one in order to do the same thing we've always done for free sees bizarre at
the core.

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gjm11
You can buy (and some people do buy) a device that solely allows you to
breathe. For instance, a snorkel. Of course, it's more accurate to say that
it's a device that allows you to breathe _underwater_ ; likewise, it's more
accurate to say that a Kindle is a device that allows you to read _without
carrying around so many heavy books_. Similarly, some people pay for cutlery
and crockery to allow them to eat (more pleasantly), or telephones to allow
them to talk (even when the person they're talking to isn't nearby), even
though eating and talking aren't much less fundamental than breathing.

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neilc
_Everybody was saying that the new Kindle was terribly important—that it was
an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorization._

Ugh, what terrible writing.

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onreact-com
At least now you can remotely delete books! Or rather get them deleted.

