Kindle

Kindle is a digital device that works much like apple's ipod, but it's for books instead of music.
The inevitable gripe follows:
How could anyone be satisfied reading a book on a computer screen? I mean really. One of the best things about sitting down to read is the tangibility of the pages and the smell, whether it be from use, or from the lack of it; It is the stimulation of these senses that trap a story in our memory, that make it mean something to us in a personal way. The particular cover of a certain copy may change through reprints, but it's your cover that means something to you and represents the memory of the impact a story had. On the pages, your underlines, your dog ears, your coffee stains...these are the traces of information recieved and the proof of it. And when you finish something that spoke to you it is the act of being able to put it on a shelf and leaf through those underlines and notes years later that brings you back to a certain time in your life, or even compels you forward with understanding forgotten, but again newly found.

Socrates lamented the invention of books and the common use of the written word. He thought it would diminish the capacity of our brains to retain information, undoubtedly destory the motivation for it. As important as this development has been to further human productivity and as immensly enjoyable as some people find it, he was right to the extent that never again would people memorize the imense store of information that the ancients were able to. What further devolution of our intellectual capacity will be presented with the Kindle? How easily will we now be able to forget the stories we read and the value retained with them? No underlines, no highlights, no notes. There is nothing to help us remember, but data stored on a "memory" card.