Currently Reading

November 19th, 2007Blog1 comment

Currently Reading: (Because it’s about time I got around to it)

More on this soon.

On Kindle, Amazon.com’s new electronic book device: An ominous paragraph exists in Kindle’s Terms of Use:

Information Received: The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device).

In other words, the device will tell Amazon.com what you’re reading off of it. Are you kidding?!

I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with letting a giant corporation know what I’m reading. You could say, “Hey don’t be paranoid, they have to know what you’re reading if you’re buying stuff from their service.” Fair enough. But this thing’s also supposed to read uploaded files, newspaper articles, blogs, websites. Does Amazon get that wonderful demographic data out of you too? And the books I do buy off the service — it seems pretty clear that they’re going to be keeping a paper trail of your usage of them. What you bookmark, how fast you read, etc..

Sure, I let you all know what I’m reading right here, but these are book recommendations that I want to share with you. There are certain items on my reading list that I want to keep hidden. Like this book I have that’s bound with human skin and filled with evil incantations.

I’m a gadget freak, but this one paragraph is a deal killer for me. Also, I feel like books shouldn’t be electronic. They should have a physical form unto themselves. They should outlive their original owners. Ideas should transcend time, and I think when you make them so disposable it cheapens the , well, idea of them.

For a long time I thought that electronic books would be great because you could do instant searches. But now I think that’s not such a hot idea. If you’ve read something and want to find an idea in it, maybe you should revisit the whole thing. And if you haven’t read it first, you damn well should.

Kindle: For now, thumbs way down.