I bought an Amazon Kindle with our government's stimulous payment (I'm not one to look a gift stimulous payment in the mouth even if it is a return of my own money) in part because there's a 30-day return period. The collecting impulse is strong; I promiscuously want every book I could ever want on the thing. It has the fatal flaw of so many gadgets in creating more desire to play with it than use it as intended - in this case to actually READ anything.
But it's great fun just to figure out which books to add, to find something great for $2 or $3 on the Kindle store. It's sort of like Fantasy Football; you don't have to ever watch a pro football game to enjoy the thrill of aiming for the perfect roster.
I’m intoxicated by the idea of having a library of great books in a device the size of a paperback. I think it goes to that hoarding instinct. Hoarding is the opposite of consumption; to actually read something is to consume it, consume as if by flames for it can be difficult to re-read things. To re-read something feels wrong somehow, given that there are so many things unread. It’s a large hurdle for the finished book to leap: it must be better than the perception of ANY unread book. So I am too tempted to assemble a Kindle collection just so I admire it, than actually read it.
I’m still not sure if I’ll keep Kindle. It seems perfect for travel, but I don't travel that much. And I miss the physicality, the smell of pages and binding. The ease of getting around of, say, a newspaper. The NY Times in print has pictures and an attractive layout and quicker access to the sections. I’ve talked myself into thinking that Kindle is different from reading off a screen but I don’t know...
One difference is the page is so small. You have to constantly hit the ‘next screen’ button. Kindle also seems a small further step away from nature, from trees in the form of paper, from the smell of ink and glue. We are alienated enough from nature.
Perhaps it seems to be more exciting for what it represents than for what it actually offers. It represents the potential of hundreds of books consolidated into the size of paperback. It appeals to the security-conscious; it allievates the vexing question of which book to take to a desert island – why you’d take your Kindle of course, and thus not have to choose among children. But what is more hypothetical than a desert island?!
Kindle highlights the difference between a superficial piety and love. I can easily fixate on the miraculous quality of Kindle – how it can store so many books, how it can instantly download another – while missing the whole point, that is to use it to READ.
Similarly I can fixate on the miraculous nature of Christianity – how there are so many miracles and answers to prayer while missing the whole point, that is to love. God first and then neighbor with the overflow. Just as Jesus did.
Speaking of the miraculous, I read something by G.K. Chesterton concerning the telephone in the latest Gilbert Magazine. He wrote in favor of the telephone as a source of wonder because he was in favor of fostering wonder:
“I am not attacking inventions; I am attacking indifference to inventions…I am not objecting to the statement that the science of the modern world is wonderful; I am only objecting to the modern world because it does not wonder at it.”Chesterton warns against a deluge of wonders that would destroy wonder.
A quick Google search reveals the following: “I have often thanked God for the telephone,” he says in says in What’s Wrong With the World and yet a Christianity Today article opines: “He never came to terms with the telephone.”
I'm not sure if I'll come to terms with Kindle but I do wonder at it.
“You can telephone with a telephone; you cannot do anything else with it. And though this is one of the wildest joys of life, it falls by one degree from its full delirium when there is nobody to answer you.” - G. K. Chesterton
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