It’s a cold and rainy January day — perfect for curling up on the couch with a good book.
But this book isn’t a tattered paperback or a well-loved hardback. It comes in the form of electronic paper — which reads and looks like real paper — on the screen of an Amazon Kindle, a wireless reading device released in November.
The Kindle, which is on back order, comes at a price of $399.
Holding up to 200 books, the product’s page boasts that no syncing or cables are required — users can purchase books for about $9.99 over the Internet with wireless connectivity that is transmitted over cell phone networks.
The device weighs 10.3 ounces and is as tall and almost as thin as a pencil. A Kindle owner can subscribe to newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which will be wirelessly delivered to the device daily.
And I could go on and on about the long battery life and the speed of the book downloads. Kindle needs just two hours to fully recharge, and with the wireless turned off that charge enables you to read for a week or more.
The Kindle isn’t the only one of its kind. The Sony Reader, a similar device, sells for $299.99 and holds 160 books.
Can you imagine how these devices will literally change the world? Libraries and bookstores could become obsolete, or at least used less frequently. Think of all the trees that will be saved when thousands of copies of books are sold electronically instead of in paper form.
And, consider textbooks. What if students paid $9.99 to have entire textbooks sent to the devices? Or if the bookstore purchased one electronic copy of each textbook that was available to all students that needed it? Libraries could do so as well, eliminating long waiting lists for new books.
Also, these devices will be of great help to travelers who want to bring books on trips, freeing up tons of suitcase space.
On the flip side though, there could be drawbacks to these innovations. Could book publishers and printers lose their jobs? What about bookstore owners and employees? It seems possible, but it’s safe to say it will take a while for that to happen.
For now, the devices may be like the Apple iPhone — popular, but not widespread.
And for (e)book lovers, there is always the hope of prices dropping in the coming months or a year.
These electronic books are definitely devices that could revolutionize how people read for enjoyment, as well as acquire important information and conduct research.
Keep an eye out for the Kindle, as well as similar devices. They just might change the world.
