Stupid should not be proud.
Three things that seem to keep coming up on this thread SERIOUSLY annoy me.
Firstly, if you don't read books -- neither physical paper and binding nor ebooks -- then you'd best shut up. I mean, if you don't read books then... you're probably ignorant, since books contain knowledge. And you're probably stupid, since if you were intellectually curious, you would've been inclined to pick up a book to see what it was about. So, basically, if you proudly declare that you don't read books, you're basically declaring that you're a moron. I guess it figures that those people aren't smart enough to know not to do that. So, as a favor, I'll just tell you "non-readers" out there that you'd be well advised to shut up about not-reading. In fact, given the likely intelligence of someone who doesn't read books (I mean, seriously... what planet do these people live on?), you'd probably be well advised to shut up about damn near every subject that comes to your feeble, illiterate minds.
Secondly, to those people who say that book-lovers are old-fashioned. Give me a break. Maybe in 100 years books will be old-fashioned. But are you really comparing every person that walks into a Barnes and Noble to some Cro-Magnon trying to start fire by rubbing two sticks together? If you think that books are old-fashioned, you live in some star trek fantasy land. Books are the primary form of whereby serious knowledge is communicated. And there's a good reason for that. Physical books are fantastic. I like the way they smell, the way they feel, the way they read. I like turning each crisp page. And I don't have to pay $350 for reflected light. They just come that way. Whether you think they should have that central role is another question, but it is simply preposterous (dare I say "imbecilic") to claim that books are obsolete.
Thirdly, while books may be king now, devices like the Kindle may eventually replace them. I'm not so sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. The only real down-side to books that I can see is that they don't really make very efficient use of space. If you own several thousand books, that will take a considerable amount of shelf-space. I'm not so sure that's such a down-side if you can afford it, since I like the feeling of being ensconced in a room where every wall is covered in books. In any case, I think a lot of the criticism of Kindle is just Apple fanaticism gone awry. I love Apple as much as the next guy (I wouldn't be here if I didn't). But other companies out there make decent products, and blindly knocking a product just because Steve Jobs says that nobody reads anymore is unreasonable. I like Steve Jobs a heck-of-a-lot, but he's not a friggin' prophet, and I think that "nobody reads anymore" comment reflected a pretty dim view of the general population. If it's true, then there's no end to the pity and contempt I feel for "people" generally. That said, I think it's not true, and I think Steve was talking out of his arse.
Kindle looks like a very good product. The criticism about that dinky looking keyboard seems spot-on to me. I wish they got rid of it, or replaced it with something less... dinky. Still, the general tone of this thread has me rather upset with the abnormally large number of abnormally small-minded posts.
