Imagine if you had one small device that weighed under 12 ounces that could potentially have all your class textbooks, your New York Times subscription and 24-7 access to Wikipedia? Anyone who has visited Amazon.com lately has seen the new device called a Kindle. The Kindle is touted as the “electronic paper” that supposedly mimics paper in look with many powerful features built in. It weighs about as much as an average book (about 10 ounces). It operates on the same technology as your cell phone and you can purchase books, magazines and newspapers for your Kindle-reading pleasure. There are some other neat bells and whistles like free Wikipedia access and the ability to instantly look up unknown words, a feature I admit might be the best part. At $399, it’s the price of a low-end desktop computer, and you have to purchase the books individually.
There are currently more than 120,000 titles available and the Kindle can store about 200 of them, though rest assured, Amazon will find a way to double that in a year. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, is convinced this is not a fad, and Amazon has several famous authors offering praise to the device. Would your typical college student buy one of these, or is this yet another technological fad?
It depends. From a cost-benefit perspective, the Kindle might likely prove worthwhile over a four-year period if you estimate the average collegian grudgingly forks out $300 bucks per quarter for books. If you could get your books for, say, $50 a quarter through Kindle and not have to worry about losing them, it might be a good deal over the course of one’s academic career. Of course, the notion of your Kindle getting stolen or lost comes into play. To my knowledge, there does not seem to be a backup plan here on some central server where you can access your books again.
The second consideration is the transformation of having a book in your hand versus having a small electronic device to use as a reader. Excluding textbook prices, I like having hard copies of books in my hand. I can write notes and highlight. I just like the physical feel of paper. I like that I can loan out books to others or pick up something cheap for the flight home. Kindle does not advertise itself as the book replacement, yet if it is successful, I do believe it will contribute to an increasing number of people reading, which is always a good thing. So my question to you is: Will the Kindle (and its inevitable knock-offs) revolutionize reading for college students?
Seth Fishman can be reached at [email protected].
