Setting fire to books is
the most heinous crime in civilised cultures
One of my 'favourite' scenes in the Indiana Jones series is in the Kristallnacht section in the Holy Grail where the Nazis are burning books (selectively I believe but that's beside the point) - the baddie femme fatale cries even though she's a fully paid up member of the party because she too abhors what's going on. First time I saw that I almost couldn't breathe for a combination of horror and outrage because it wasn't a story - it really happened.
So Kindle - not a great choice of name and the whole idea of having a book/magazine/newspaper that will only display one 'page' at a time is to me an utterly horrible idea. Much is made of these displaying in an scaleable typesize so it's takes into account people's myopia or whatever - lovely idea except you presumably have to be scrolling or clicking to another screen every ten seconds or so if you're particularly short-sighted, as the handheld screen can't physically display that much text - boring and also impractical to the point on non-functionality.
15 - 20 years ago we were told to expect the 'paperless' office any day -
load of cobblers! people NEED to hold something that isn't going to strain their eyes, heat up or vibrate slightly in their hand or hum, v. quietly maybe, but still
annoyingly all the time - you certainly wouldn't want to take it to bed with you (where I do all my reading now)
So I wouldn't have one of these silly things even if I was paid to take it off their hands. Just another stupid gadget and another nail in the coffin of a tangible and diverse pleasure. And that's not even touching on the issue the editing of someone's thoughts and creativity - it's just so wrong I can barely form words to describe how ugly and horrific that is.
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