There’s been no lack of commentary in the blogs this past week about Amazon’s new Kindle reader, the new incarnation of the “e-book” (a device that lets you read books or Internet content like blogs wherever you go, and with a distinctly different feeling than a portable computer.)
Surprisingly, almost all the commentary missed the point, focusing on the Kindle’s flaws (apparently Amazon did not spread the kind of usability love that Apple slathered all over the iPhone). OK, fair enough, most of the posts started as product reviews. But what about the real story? This paperback-sized reader could just change the way we read and write the digital word.
“Madness!” you cry. “Impossible.” Hang on, hear me out.
The big leap here is that the Kindle doesn’t use a traditional computer screen. As mentioned in another post, computer screens typically are low-resolution and flash at you some 80 times per second, all of which makes for a much more jarring reading experience than we all realize.
The Kindle, however, uses “electronic ink” technology where the screen you read is actually made of teenyweeny little balls that show up black or white (see http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/e-ink1.htm) — MUCH more like reading on paper than the screens you’re used to.
So what’s the revolution here? Simple: you can read much longer things. You can focus on text. You can read outdoors. You can even read a whole book on it. The more the world of the blogosphere and the Web moves to devices with non-light-emitting screens, the more chance that the written Web will allow for longer articles.
And in a world of bite-sized tiny info-tidbits, and Web pages that people scan instead of read, I for one think this will be a small revolution and a boon to writers. (Combined with more and more video for subjects that work well in that medium.)
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