The Luddite and Magpie
The Luddite and Magpie could be the name of a British pub but it’s also how I’d describe myself when it comes to e-readers. Like a lot of aspects of my life, I find myself straddling two worlds – I was school-kid excited on Christmas Day as I unwrapped my new Kindle but I’m also deeply suspicious of the long-term, eagerly seeking out the cons as well as the pros.
My magpie heart is drawn to new and shiny things, takes them back to her nest and shows them off to other birds. ‘Look!’ she says, ‘I can prop up my Kindle on its new leather stand and continue reading my book even though I’m eating a two-hand-sandwich.’ (NB. not a sandwich consisting of human hands; beetroot and salad – very messy.) ‘Look!’ she says again, ‘I can pop onto Amazon at 2am and buy the new Cat Clarke novel with one click, and it’s there in an instant.’ (NB. not a dramatisation. This actually happened at 2am this morning. My magpie heart has jet lag.)
‘Pfft,’ says my Luddite soul. ‘What about the time you were on the plane about to take off and you were distracting yourself from your flying phobia by reading the latest Liane Moriarty, hey? What happened then?’
My magpie heart sinks. ‘The flight attendant told me to turn off my electronic device,’ she says, sadly. ‘I experienced turbulence with no buffer.’
Girl Out Loud, Scholastic June 2012
Willkommen In Meinem Leben "Welcome To My Life"
UKYA
I’ll avoid pressing the matter too much. I’m one of those that think ebooks will do to the printed book what the mp3 did to the CD. I am also quite worried for the local neighbourhood book store that enriched my life so much over the years and now seems heading the way of the horse and carriage. I have no doubts that in five years time we will all have the iPad 42 glued to us or something. Think about it another way: five years ago, we didn’t know what a smartphone is.
What I really want to say is that looking at the last year and a half since my sceptic self got its Kindle, I doubled my reading throughput. As far as I am concerned, that is the best stamp of approval ebooks could ever strive for.
And one last comment about switching the Kindle off before take-off:
It is incredibly clear that the magnetic interruptions caused by a Kindle are nowhere near interruptive. The problem the airlines face is that of the “discontinuous mind”, to borrow a Richard Dawkins term. As in, they prefer to avoid making a decision on where the interruptive electronic device lies and where the non interruptive ones lie.
In the mean time, aviation experts will gladly tell it’s good to switch thy Kindle off and stash it before take-off for two reasons: if things do go wrong, there will be less clutter flying around, and you will be more attentive. Both sound like good arguments to me; the only problem is, why do the airlines let me read a book but not a Kindle? Which brings us back to the discontinuous mind.
Oh Emily! I love my Kindle, but you must always have a ‘real’ book too, just in case!
But I wanted to read THAT book; it could only be that book at the time – it was a grand three-day love affair. I also had a sense of loss when I’d finished it because there was no moment of putting the finished book on a shelf with other loved stories. Hmm, need to think of some more pros…
Sorry Moshe, your comment got filed away in an Unspeakable Place for some reason and I’ve only just retrieved it. I’m definitely as interested in the pros as I am in my own petty cons, as well as the more serious ones you mention…bookstores are the equivalent of a church for me; I can’t imagine life without my weekly visit. My partner had the same comment to make about magnetic interruptions while I sat there fuming about having to stop reading (and clutching the armrests as the grim reality of take-off set in) – it’s not something I’d campaign against or anything