Kindle concerns
John H April 28th, 2009
The Kindle hasn’t been launched in the UK yet, but I’m already ambivalent-to-negative about it. On the one hand, it’s clearly a very nifty bit of kit. On the other, I share many of the misgivings expressed in this article on the Adbusters site, particularly regarding the effect of the Kindle (and its DRM system) on “the community of readers which books engender”:
The Kindle has been devised by a society that wants to make profit each time a text is read rather than each time a book is purchased. In the old system, once I bought a book I owned it as an object. I could read it as many times as I liked and give it to friends who may give it to their friends. [...] This creates a community of readers who circulate books amongst themselves for the benefit of all. The Kindle is the end of that, no more sharing books, no more public libraries, no more sitting in a bookstore and reading a book without buying it. The Kindle is a prison for words.
Yesterday, I came across a fascinating list of 76 reasonable questions to ask about any technology, by our old friend, Jacques Ellul. It is an illuminating (though depressing) process to go through those questions in relation to the bright, shiny future of DRM-encumbered e-books which we are now entering; a world of books that cannot be shared or passed on to others.
I don’t propose to answer these questions in detail, but (after the fold) these are the questions from Ellul’s list which are the most troubling when applied to the Kindle:
