Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Reading blogs and newspapers on the Kindle felt strange to me, whereas — after some initial trepidation — reading a book did not. Maybe it’s because the Kindle really does feel like the next step in the evolution of reading: words started out on the page, and now they’re migrating to the screen. Whereas reading a blog on a Kindle felt like a distinct step backwards. Because blogs are constantly updated, hyperlinked, are in color, and — more and more these days — feature video and audio. So while blogs, and certainly newspapers, began as just words, increasingly they consist of a variety of media, none of which make it to your Kindle (even photos really don’t look very good).

In fact, to me it felt like the reverse of the page/screen evolution; sort of like taking something 3D and turning it into 2D. That being said, when I was on a recent trip I was more glad than not to being able to download a few of my favorite blogs. Reading The Huffington Post on an airplane was a pretty cool experience, but it was also frustrating not to be able to hop from link to link, or to be able to click through to original stories the blog posts were sometimes commenting on.

Also, something that frustrated me about the blog process, and that again seems like a step backwards rather than forward, is that the Kindle seems to treat a blog like it’s a newspaper. It seems that, once a day, it “publishes” the blog, and sends it out to devices the same way a copy of The New York Times lands on your front door courtesy of the paperboy. As someone who reads a dozen blogs, and checks his RSS reader for updates throughout the day, the idea of a blog being a static thing makes no sense.

Instead of being pushed out to subscribers once a day, I don’t know why the Kindle version of a blog can’t constantly refresh and update itself (as long as the wireless signal is on, of course). Also, it’s jarring if you’re keeping track of the blog using both the Kindle and a computer. While I was traveling I would wake up and read my blogs and websites and then later, when I was on a plane, I would get out the Kindle and sync it up and want to read what I’d missed since packing my computer away. Instead, what I got on my Kindle was literally yesterday’s news. I had the same experience with reading a newspaper on the Kindle.

Even though newspapers have traditionally been thought of as static objects, something that’s delivered once a day, in the Internet age newspapers have become more like constantly updating stock tickers that deliver news and events as they happen. In fact, I check The New York Times website several times a day, the same way I check Daily Kos, because I know that the Times — online, anyway — will have fresh content throughout the day. But on the Kindle, the same as blogs, you get a static edition of a newspaper (presumably the same content that’s in the printed edition). And rather than the Kindle searching out the latest stories every time you turn on the wireless signal, what you get are day-by-day editions. And I don’t want to read newspapers on a Kindle; I want to read news.

The Kindle’s digital menu listing the dates of different editions of The New York Times is just a digital version of the clutter that I find in my living room after a few days of collecting the real thing. Instead of this, the blogs and newspapers I subscribe to should be singular entities that constantly update and change, the same as their online counterparts. The fact that this isn’t the case betrays the notion of the Kindle being a never-ending source of always and instantly replenished content; instead of the screen being a true portal, the device itself is just a vault.

However, I will say that reading the newspaper on a Kindle is a better experience than reading it online. For instance, it was really easy to navigate through a Sunday edition of The New York Times on the Kindle (if you know what sections you like; browsing through ALL of the stories is a chore), whereas I find that poking around on the website on a Sunday is a bit difficult. And while I still read the physical edition of the Times on the weekends (mainly because it’s too difficult to sit on a couch with a laptop while eating bagels), now that I have a Kindle I may finally cancel that subscription once and for all.