In This Post I Will Reveal My Level of Nerdiness And Then Try To Talk About Something Interesting But May Reveal My Level of Unlearned Ignorance

Here's something I've been thinking about recently. I've been anticipating the creation of Amazon's Kindle for a while. I once saw a documentary called "How William Shatner Changed the World" hosted by William Shatner. It was about how scientists and inventors who were treckies used Star Trek to come up with new inventions that are now a part of every day society. The communicator/cell phone is the most obvious. Another case is Bones' tricorder being a model for noninvasive medical diagnosis. And when personal computers started showing up there wasn't a whole lot they could do. So one computer technician guy thought of a Star Trek episode where Data was listening to music on the ship's computer, and now we have Windows Media Player and i-tunes.

Whenever someone walked into Captain Jean Luc Picard's ready room he was always reading something on a small hand held computer device (Captain P. was no doubt brushing up on his Shakespeare and 19th century poetry to quote to the crew). Now, the electronic device that Captain Picard was often reading looks suspiciously like Amazon's Kindle in both design and function.

Now, I have not yet read anything on a Kindle. I haven't actually seen one in real life. It's been out for a while now so I'm sure I'm not saying anything new, and I must admit from the descriptions I've read about it, it does have a lot of really cool features. I'll probably end up owning one or some other similar kind of device in the future. Yet, I hope the Kindle doesn't replace paperback books. Here is why:

The very act of reading a book is an act of defying technology, of declaring independence from electric power. It's like sticking it to the technological Man. I'll try to explain better. Most media that we use is entirely dependent upon electricity. A DVD is just a shiny disk unless you put into a box, which is just a box unless it's connected by some special wires to another box, which is just a heavier box unless it's plugged into the wall. And voila! All the components come together to present to you, for your own enjoyment, a movie. You could watch something else on TV, but unless your TV has electricity feeding it, and the person that is broadcasting the show has like power, than the TV is just a very heavy box. The same is true with the computer, I-pods, cell phones, and laptops. They only last as long as the battery inside them does before they need to be recharged with electricity.

I'm not saying that this technology isn't great because it most definitely is! I'm just making the observation that books don't require such power to use them. And that is (one reason) what makes them great. It takes electricity to make them, sure, but to use them only requires opening them with your hands and using imagination. You don't need to plug a book into the wall, nor do you need a battery in it to enjoy one.

Until the Kindle!

Books probably wont go away. And, like I said, I will probably end up owning a kindle sometime down the road, just like when I resisted the idea of having a cell phone and now here I am. But the thought of me having to hand over my reading enjoyment to the availability of electricity in a battery makes me sad.

I also like the smell of books, of the pages as you flip them, of old libraries and bookstores. I have not had the opportunity to smell a Kindle, but I imagine it smells just like an i-pod. That is, it probably doesn't smell at all. Do you know what also you do not smell? What you do not smell is called iocane powder, which is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is one of the more deadly poisons know to man.

Sorry, couldn't resist.