A thought...

I was recently spending time at the Philadelphia airport, sipping coffee and watching the world in transit go by, while waiting out an unnecessarily long layover (even now the irony of waiting 5 hours for a connecting Philly-NY flight amuses me). There was something oddly calming about watching businessmen in finely pressed suits speaking desperately on cell phones and parents hustling around strollers filled with whining bundles of childhood; calming solely, I suppose, for the fact that it wasn’t me. While others may find an extended layover excruciating I saw these hours as a peaceful way to waste the day away: sitting at a café, entertained by a newly purchased paperback, spine still yearning to be cracked, and the circus unfolding around me.
It was only after an hour had passed, after I slowly waded my way through a few chapters that I was thrown from my Buddha-like trance as abruptly as a car crash. It wasn’t anything I heard from the traveling throng of passengers passing by—their conversations and squabbles became white noise with enough concentration. Instead, it started with a moment, one we all know oddly well enough: the moment where, for no specific or logical reason, a person happens to divert their attention from whatever task at hand and look up. Not at anything in particular, mind you, just an involuntary action with no apparent rhyme or reason. I could have seen nearly anything in that one moment my eyes glanced up from my book and have returned back down completely at peace and undisturbed. Anything, that is, except the Kindle.
The Kindle, for the uninitiated, is a device developed and marketed by online shopping kingpin Amazon.com within the past few years. To call the Kindle an iPod for books would be a blunt yet rather appropriate description for this slick, silver slate of technology. The Kindle is intended for the reader on the go, capable of storing hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers all available to users capable of scrolling, selecting and pressing buttons, an e-book for the e-generation. The Kindle has undergone a number of upgrades, the most recent being a sleek model smaller than the comparatively bulky original, capable of storing 1500 books alone. The Kindle was exactly what I saw that day in the airport in the hands of a pretty brunette with polite green eyes that devoured the futuristic tablet in her hands.
The Kindle must be stopped.
Let me digress for a moment to relate my appreciation for modern technology. True, I’m not always savvy with the latest updates in contemporary electronics. It’s not that I turn completely inept when something shiny and new with an internal motherboard crosses my path (are there any external motherboards?). I’m just not the type to see something cutting edge on the market and feel some innate desire to have it in my possession as soon as humanly possible. To buy accessories for it. To name it. To buy another one when the offer it in green. I mean, hell, I love my iPod (silver), my computer (silver, again) and my cell phone (a ha, green!) to the point of being a little too attached to them at times for my own taste. (Actually, scratch that with the iPod. I’m cool with loving that little bastard to death. I needs my jams.) Technology is fine, necessary, even. It’s a vital part of the human condition that helps gauge how far we’ve come as a culture. The Kindle, however, hides a secret ulterior motive.
My initial opinion of the Kindle was that an invention like this was inevitable. Mankind has already devised a portable music library the size of a stick of chewing gum, high-quality cameras installed as standard components in cell phones and handheld videogame systems that double as hi-res DVD players. Really, shouldn’t we have had a way to read and store the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a young child’s knapsack long before these miraculous little devices? After some inquiry I began to wonder if the Kindle would ever really be considered a hip bit of technology to bear in public places like subways and airports. Would this invention ever be as socially acceptable as an iPod? (Seemingly, yes, but given the chance I’d still snatch one from someone’s hands and show passers by how to turn it into the world’s first Frisbee that recites Hemingway. That’s right—the new models can talk.) After more pondering of this beast’s existence I realized that the download—only nature of the Kindle, a brilliant yet sadistic marketing play on Amazon’s behalf, would play out in a similar fashion to the way music did with the digital age: Dick and Jane buy books. One day, Dick and Jane buy a Kindle. Now, Dick and Jane only download their reading material, thereby making their necessity to purchase paper-based reading material obsolete. Bookstores slowly creep towards the way of the dinosaur. With society’s habit of craving commodities on an instant gratification basis it doesn’t seem illogical to assume that the habits of downloading daily newspapers, serialized novels and monthly publications with the aid of a few buttons will soon overtake our habits of pursuing newsstands and bookstores for the same material in tangible form.
Therefore: fuck the Kindle.
I’m not interested in spewing propaganda on the social and economic consequences of the Kindle (bookstore theory aside). I don’t see a purpose in ruminating how the Kindle has the potential to drive nails through the heart and nature of the printed word, how print shops will lose business and publishing houses will face grave financial losses in the wake of these pixilated-text bastards. Really, why contemplate how the ink industry will suffer when the powers that be realize virtually anything—textbooks, office memos, pamphlets, brochures—can essentially be distributed to consumers digitally. Never mind the initially subtle yet eventually catastrophic damage industries around the world will suffer once the concept of the page gets driven to extinction at the feet of this digital behemoth disguised as a family-friendly implement, no more sinister in deceptive appearance than a dinner plate. Seriously, it’s cool. Don’t worry.
Yet.
What really gets me is the fact that books will inevitably suffer. Not “books” as in the authors themselves or publishing companies, since the material needs to originate somewhere. I mean “books” as in the object themselves. A cover gently yet snugly embracing a set of pages telling stories, giving instructions, teaching life lessons to yearning, impassioned readers looking for a direction in life, inspiration to get through the day or simply just a humorous anecdote as they pass the time during a lunch break. Leave it to the Kindle to damn the idea of an innocent, inanimate object to a fiery demise.
That’s right, friends. Let’s not forget the hellish name itself: Kindle. Look into your hearts and tell me the word itself doesn’t inspire thoughts of a raging, devastating inferno. Just say the word itself and try not to taste the cackle of flames on your tongue. Rumors are amiss that owners attempting to download Fahrenheit 451 on their Kindle receive only heavily doctored versions of the first two chapters and a revised ending where those with the books drink blood and avoid daylight only to be foiled by those branding fire to exterminate the literary spirit as they ride in on chariots made of baseball and apple pie. Don’t even try to deny that the heads back at Amazon chose the name out of a domineering sense of irony. Sick, sick bastards.
The enemy is on the horizon, charging with their weapons drawn and drunk on bloodlust, but the fight can be won. The Kindle may be a soulless entity the creators of the Terminator franchise have only dreamed of, but we can rise up and seize the opportunity to deliver mankind from such a bleak future. Resist the Kindle. Realize and embrace the feel of a book, how each soft page read is another page conquered and each chapter finished is another step towards the brilliant light detailing the truth of the human spirit.
Plus, hey, if the book sucks, you can throw it at someone you don’t like. Bonus if it’s hardcover.



Let it be known that this is what I chose to do while I should be working on grad school applications.