Kindles quench the flame
Pete sent me this link and asked for my thoughts on the Amazon kindle coming to Australia. Since my opinion on technological advances is a highly sought after and coveted thing, I thought I would share it with all of you.
So, when it comes to the Kindle, I'm with Glen Hansard. (I do have something of a crush on Glen Hansard - but hey, I have a male friend who has a "mancrush" on Glen Hansard, and it's his first mancrush, so he's in a worse place than I am. If you don't have any sort of crush on Glen Hansard you should cultivate one - he's good crush fodder.) This is what he says, when he is waxing lyrical about compilation tapes in comparison to iPod play lists while introducing a song at a concert:
The problem I have with modern technology is that you can't see it, you can't tear it out and rip it up. It's not tactile enough. Letters, emails - letters are beautiful, because they're licked and touched, they're signed, they're real. You know, you'll never be able to - I don't mean to be sort of revisionist - but you'll never be able to better that. When you get a letter and it says something deep to you you can tear it up, or you can frame it, or you can put it under your pillow, or you can smell it or you can kiss it. It's something. You can't kiss emails, no matter how beautiful they are. You know, you'll get an electric shock on your lips. So ... where, what was my point?, compilation tapes ...
Maybe there's a way you can make margin notes on a Kindle, or underline the moving bits, then photocopy them and stick them on the wall, or lend your thumbed copy to someone else with a note about which part they might especially like. I don't know. But it's not the same. And your library with the spiral staircase going up to a reading loft won't smell of old books and look so inviting.
I'm a technological fossil anyway. If I do get a Kindle it will be about 20 years after everybody else gets one. But you never know, I might end up as one of those kindle converts in the article, the "book lovers who went from shunning to embracing digital works" (it's just not looking likely).