Journal 7

We discussed the Kindle a number of times in class. It's like an iPod, but instead of music it holds books. It sounds impressive and all, but its uses seem limited. Some of the benefits we talked about were its possible uses for education. It would seem like a dream come true to have all my textbooks in one compact device, rather than have to carry four or five heavy books in your book bag. It could also save a lot of paper (should there be a complete transition). The Kindle also has a highlighting feature you can use to aid you in your studies. It truly is an amazing device, but there are so many problems with it. And no, I'm not talking about embodiment or the sensory pleasures of holding and reading a book; smelling it, touching it, or feeling the wind from the pages blow in your face. All of that is completely irrelevant. I've never heard of anyone reading a book because they like the way it smelled. The fact is, books are not embodied. They are nothing more than pieces of paper with text on them. The kindle, with a little work, could probably produce a fairly similar experience. So why is it that I don't support it? The answer is that it's just an unnecessary luxury with very few benefits and a lot of problems. What's the purpose of carrying an entire library with you at all times? There is no purpose for such a device to exist, even if it is pretty amazing. It's just another result of the "compact fad" that our current generation is consumed by. Also, they'd probably have to work out a few bugs over the first few years so you should expect various upgraded versions to come out. That's reason enough not to buy it because when you think about it, keeping up with the most recent versions just costs you more in the end. Another problem discussed was related to its educational uses. You can't sell software back to the bookstore, but you can return a book. There's no such thing as "new" or "used" data files so don't expect to find discounts on any books. Books are a big part of college education so when you factor that in, you might actually end up paying more. There’s also the issue over technical support. Not everyone's good with technology so you can expect some people to somehow break it or lose all of their files. I'm sure there are ways of backing up your files and storing them elsewhere, but you wouldn't expect someone who's not good with technology to know how to do that. Some people are going to lose all of their files and it would be a shame if they had to pay for them again. Plus, they might make you buy accessories to even be able to back up files or use other features, which is just more money taken our of your wallet. Basically, my point is that there are most likely some hidden costs. Many technologies aren't even built to last. They do that so that you'll keep buying their products over and over again and I believe that will be the case for the Kindle as well. Don't waste your money.