E-reader Evangelism

While I’m a big fan of technology and the opposite of a Luddite, I mostly hate trendy gadgets. I can’t bring myself to own a smart phone — to the point where I turned down a potential free one because I didn’t want to be one of Those Guys at the bus stop. Elitist wanker I know, but the appalling working conditions of people making the smartphones (Apple manufacturer Foxconn in Taiwan had 9 suicides in 2010 prompting the company to make workers sign letters promising not to commit suicide). And yet as soon as I got my Kindle I’ve become an instant evangelist.

First, the basic stuff. I get a *lot* more reading done. It’s not just being able to take your reader anywhere but for lots of other reasons:

• I find that it’s easier to read in more places because it’s easier to hold. A flat screen is easier to angle towards your eyes — if you’re reading in bed or on public transport some books are a real struggle to contort in the right way and keep holding.
• After reading the same thing for a while your brain might become tired. An e-reader makes it very easy to switch between texts, minimising fatigue. For those who read several things at a time juggling several tomes and bookmarks is a nightmare.
• When you turn over a new page in a book it signals a commitment to reading what’s often a large chunk of text. Especially for academic papers or detailed non-fiction books. Because an e-reader displays it on a small screen in smaller chunks it’s much easier to just keep pressing next a few times, meaning it’s easier to get through.
• By making selection so easy, it’s much more seamless to switch to say lighter stuff when you’re tired. In the end, I’ve ended up reading more while wasting far less time on overheads.

But I also see e-readers (especially once they spread a lot more) to be more important than that. You might think it’s an exaggeration but to me they’re a revolution on par with the internet and the Gutenberg printing press. And here’s why: they complete one of the last links in the chain of giving everyone unrestricted access to read any text.

People might hail say the Gutenberg printing press as one such revolution. And it was important but of course only a small percentage of people could afford one of the earlier books. By the time we get to mass-market printing, the biggest problem are still availability of the text. The number of titles with small print runs or that are out of print is staggering. And even if you can track one down, you need to go on a magical quest to actually get it.

The internet has been hailed as solving many of those problems. And it’s true: you can now get millions of public domain works for free. And the number of non-free titles has skyrocketed. But I still think it’s missing something. Most people aren’t going to read an entire book on a screen. So unless you’re going to print something out, you still don’t have true access if you’re not in a position to read the things you want cover to cover. On the paid side, the number of print titles you can order is impressive but it still depends on the print business. Finally, the internet itself has generated a lot of content worthy of reading. But since most people skim when they’re online, it’s only put up another barrier. And a bad one too: the most thought-provoking stuff that’s published online is often too involved to be read in detail on the screen.

The ereader solves many of those problems. For the first time I feel like I can actually read any public domain text on Project Gutenberg — like choose one today and then read the whole thing immediately. I can also download any online discussion, any blogpost or newspaper article and read them with the same kind of attention I’d normally give a book. The world of text is finally approaching the kind of freedom people have been talking about for centuries.

Of course the vast majority of the world still can’t afford an ereader. But it’s still cheaper to buy a Kindle than to build a library. So I’d expect in a while even the poorest countries will have libraries of ereaders. And if someone can attempt (and fail at) a one-laptop-per-child campaign, a one-ereader-per-child should do just as well. If not better since ereaders are much cheaper than laptops and will only become cheaper.

There are now three more hurdles before we can say most people have truly open access to the world’s information. The first is digitising the millions of works that are currently only in print. The second is bringing the price of paid books down a bit. (Major publishers charging the same for an ebook as the print version?!) The third is making our copyright laws a little saner, so that the public domain is no longer virtually frozen by the endless extension to copyright terms. Until then, if you can afford one, I recommend it.