Nicholson Baker on the Kindle
Say what you will about Nicholson Baker (of Above the Fold fame/infamy). The man can write. Persuasively and well. In the most recent edition of the New Yorker, Baker takes on the Kindle, writing a humorous and thought-provoking first-hand account of his recent purchase of a Kindle 2.
As an author, lover of literature, and a man concerned with the aesthetic qualities of books, Baker provides a detailed review of his experience using the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Highlights include:
The lack of contrast on its screen:
“The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.”
An elegant and effective description of the rights you have (and the ones you sign away) to your digital content:
“Here’s what you buy when you buy a Kindle book. You buy the right to display a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon. …Kindle books aren’t transferrable. You can’t give them away or lend them or sell them. You can’t print them. They are closed clumps of digital code that only one purchaser can own. A copy of a Kindle book dies with its possessor.”
And a hilarious accounting of the ecological ramifications of the device:
“Yes, it’s made of exotic materials that are shipped all over the world’s oceans; yes, it requires electricity to operate and air-conditioned server farms to feed it; yes, it’s fragile and it duplicates what other machines do; yes, it’s difficult to recycle; yes, it will probably take a last boat ride to a Nigerian landfill in five years. But no tree farms are harvested to make a Kindle book; no ten-ton presses turn, no ink is spilled.”
Ultimately, Baker concludes that while Amazon “is very good at selling things,” it hasn’t yet designed an ebook reader that can truly replace the utility and aesthetic joy of books and newspapers. For books, Baker recommends reading on an iPod Touch or an iPhone over the Kindle.
As a book lover, librarian, and student of art and design, I’m stuck ruminating on Baker’s descriptions of the Kindle’s many failings when it comes to replicating the aesthetic experience of books and newspapers. But I get paid to care about books, to understand and evaluate their properties as both objects and containers for information. Will the average reader care about any of this? Will he or she notice the lack of contrast between creamy paper and crisp, black letters in a beautiful and (readable!) font? What about the lack of typographical design, illustrations, color, or other features? At first, no, they might not. But I think they will eventually.
Beautiful and functional design often has the ability to be transparent if not invisible, especially to those unfamiliar with kerning, gutters, serifs, paper quality, binding methods, or other features of the books that occupy our shelves, coffee tables, and nightstands. But I’m confident that readers will eventually notice they’re being sold an inferior product, and I look forward to widespread demand for higher-quality ebooks and readers. If the Kindle is a terrible device, then the solution isn’t to reject the whole idea of ebooks and machines for reading. Instead, I believe that readers, librarians, book lovers, and everyone else should be making lots of noise about the kind of ebooks and devices we’d like to see–their features, licensing and rights schemes, and overall user experience.
What do you think?
I think these e-book readers are pretty useless in general. I can see a small market for them maybe for people who are both voracious readers and constant travellers. It seems they figured they had the technology to make them, therefore it was a good idea. I think they were trying to base their business model on the iPod, which is a flawed analogy. Lots of people like to have various music at their fingertips at a given moment, but most people don’t read that way. Most read one book at a time then move to the next, rather than rotating reading single chapters of several books or something. It’s also disturbing that after spending a lot of money on the device and then more on the book, you don’t really own the book. Really, you own the right to access it (until Amazon decides to revoke that right, see a previous post about that).
I think your point about design is very interesting, and applies to more than just books. Good design is something people really don’t notice until it’s missing, isn’t it?
I think you’re right: What do we, as libri lovers, want from ebooks? Kindle has thus far missed a HUGE interactivity opportunity with its design: why is it grey on grey? Where are the recorded (zeebra) sounds, or the textures, or the scratch and sniff or amazing illustrations, or pop ups or font changes or all of those interactive things that printed books incorporate into their designs? This doesn’t have to be seen as a replacement but an evolution of reading but Kindle and Amazon and XYZ companies aren’t quite there yet. The most shocking and poignant point of this article is the sense of ownership (or lack thereof) with (the current generation of) ebooks: “A copy of a Kindle book dies with its possessor.†Wow. Another missed opportunity. The transmigratory lives of printed material is what has spread education, enlightenment and enjoyment across the globe.
And a lingering question: can Kindles electrocute you if you drop them into the bathtub while you’re reading?
I realized recently that I’m very sensitive to format, and I’ve also come to better understand my very deep love of paper as one of our most enduring communication technologies.
One of the reasons I don’t read a lot of books these days is that I am spoiled by the books I read growing up — only the good ones, selected by my parents or my schools to teach me something specific. It took me until I was 21 to realize that there are bad books out there, getting published all the time. The medium of bound paper is intensely personal, highly adaptable, can be readily archived (read: shelved within view of your thinking space), and has been perfected by its makers and tradesmen over centuries. Why should we expect that the Kindle, barely a toddler, could compete with that?
I was raised with a great respect for books, their contents, and their shelves — my parents are both bookish, and I grew up at the detroit public library. My dad reads 1969’s encyclopaedia brittanica and I read 2009’s wikipedia. We both have the same expectations for our encylopedia’s content — it will be fascinating, it will give us a glimpse into human knowledge, but it will not necessarily represent reality.
The internet is my bookshelf because I have reasonable expectations for it — that I will have to filter what I read and find my own truths. I love and admire bookish people for their ability to filter words written on a page and discover their own truths. I am internetish because I can’t help but expect perfection on paper. That is the only reason I would want a Kindle — so I could read trashy books quickly and not care if Amazon takes their bits back.