Amazon Kindle: Pointless Technology

The Amazon Kindle really makes me mad. It is, without a doubt, the epitome of senseless, pointless technology - the kind of technology that people only develop because they can. There is no reason to own a Kindle. None. The printed book has served its purpose quite efficiently for 400 years, and there's no reason to discard it.

I'm a fair person, so Here's a description of the Kindle so that Amazon can present its argument. The first thing they say is that the machine "looks and reads like real paper." Well, if having paper-like qualities is so good, then why don't I just read a printed book with real paper? If you ask me, that point alone shoots the Kindle down. But then they go on to talk about the wireless nature of the Kindle.

Let's talk about wireless. The only way you can use a wireless device is if you are in the vicinity of a wireless router. That's just basic radio-wave technology: if you want to receive a signal, you have to be near a transmitter that actually sends out the signal. So, if you want to download a book at home, you need a wireless router. And you also need an internet connection for the router itself. So now you're not just buying a Kindle: now, if you don't have them, you have to buy a wireless router, and you have to pay for high-speed internet access. It has to be high-speed because, seriously, would they really make the machine compatible with 56K modems?

Then they laud their product by saying that it uses "the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones." Yet interestingly enough they don't cite a specific "advanced cell phone": AT&T's 3G phones? How about Verizon's phones? And you want to know how reliable "advanced cell phones" are? My mobile service is AT&T's "3G" network. I tried to send a text message to a friend of mine in a 4-year-old building on campus. It didn't go through. However, a guy sitting 4 seats down from me was texting away just fine. So Amazon, pray tell: which "advanced cell phone network" does the Kindle utilize? Is it the AT&T network that doesn't work in all places?

I'll leave you with a couple of my own observations. Obviously, the printed book can be damaged/destroyed by only two means: water and fire. Think about it: water will wash off the ink of the text, and...well, I won't insult your intelligence by telling you what fire will do to a book. If you put a book in your backpack, the most that can happen is a few pages getting wrinkled or bent. If you drop a book from any height, it will only make a "plop" sound; you pick it up, dust it off, and it's good as new. But think about the Kindle. Water and fire will damage it as well. But what if you put it in your backpack? Lean up against a wall absentmindedly, and it could easily get damaged. Put down your backpack just a little too hard, and, again, it could easily get damaged. What about dropping it? Try dropping a Kindle from 10 feet and see what happens. Heck, drop it from 5 feet and see what happens. Bottom line is: the Kindle is made out of parts that can break easily. Save for the glue in the spine, the printed book has no parts that can break. (And even if the spine breaks, you can still read the book if you hold on to all the pages.)

The Kindle is pointless and a waste of money. It's time for companies to stop messing about and making these products simply because they can. And it's time for consumers to use theirs heads and realize that the simple products in life - like the printed book - are just fine as they are.

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Analyst estimates Amazon sold 500K Kindles in 2008

Associated Press

Tue Feb 3

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