GoreGooglezon
Our conversation before bed last night:
P: Have you heard about Amazon's new Kindle?
Me: Yes.
P: Pretty cool, huh?
Me: I guess.
P: I read about it in Newsweek today. Where did you hear about it?
Me: Librarian listserv.
P: Oh.
[silence]
P: It costs something like $400.
[silence]
P: Can we get one?
Me: [roll over and close eyes]
One of the librarians on the listserv reacted to news of Kindle by linking to Epic 2015, yet another scary-and-amazing-future-of-technology movie. After watching the movie, though, I began to question its hype about the world in which Googlezon (yes, that's right - they spent all night thinking that up...) takes over, well, the world.
I've been thinking about 1984 lately (so I can booktalk it in a few months, not just out of the blue or anything), and anyone who's read any good sci-fi knows how this works. You predict a scary, unbelievable future that's just believable enough to freak everyone out but not believable enough to do much more than provide fodder for great essay questions in a high school English class. And that's exactly what these movies do (they just lack any kind of interesting romance or survival story).
But the funny thing is that - as I carefully taught my 7th graders - good sci-fi writers really do predict something of the future. After all, H.G. Wells gave us tanks and lasers way before anyone else. And I really needn't go into how Big Brother has arrived in today's world. But in retrospect, we are able to see the evolution of the ideas and inventions and social structures; and somehow, when they aren't born spontaneously out of Orwell's mind, they don't seem as frightening. We know how we got here. And it hasn't killed us yet.
But Kindle is something new. In fact, it's an issue in which you simply can't just slowly turn up the heat to boil the frog, to use my favorite worn-out analogy. The electronic vs. print controversy really is a controversy, and it really will take sides. I know, I know, the World Without Print Armageddon is pretty unlikely. But then again... what if we threw in the environmentalists? GoreGooglezon? Buy Kindle - save the trees? I mean, it could happen...
P: Have you heard about Amazon's new Kindle?
Me: Yes.
P: Pretty cool, huh?
Me: I guess.
P: I read about it in Newsweek today. Where did you hear about it?
Me: Librarian listserv.
P: Oh.
[silence]
P: It costs something like $400.
[silence]
P: Can we get one?
Me: [roll over and close eyes]
One of the librarians on the listserv reacted to news of Kindle by linking to Epic 2015, yet another scary-and-amazing-future-of-technology movie. After watching the movie, though, I began to question its hype about the world in which Googlezon (yes, that's right - they spent all night thinking that up...) takes over, well, the world.
I've been thinking about 1984 lately (so I can booktalk it in a few months, not just out of the blue or anything), and anyone who's read any good sci-fi knows how this works. You predict a scary, unbelievable future that's just believable enough to freak everyone out but not believable enough to do much more than provide fodder for great essay questions in a high school English class. And that's exactly what these movies do (they just lack any kind of interesting romance or survival story).
But the funny thing is that - as I carefully taught my 7th graders - good sci-fi writers really do predict something of the future. After all, H.G. Wells gave us tanks and lasers way before anyone else. And I really needn't go into how Big Brother has arrived in today's world. But in retrospect, we are able to see the evolution of the ideas and inventions and social structures; and somehow, when they aren't born spontaneously out of Orwell's mind, they don't seem as frightening. We know how we got here. And it hasn't killed us yet.
But Kindle is something new. In fact, it's an issue in which you simply can't just slowly turn up the heat to boil the frog, to use my favorite worn-out analogy. The electronic vs. print controversy really is a controversy, and it really will take sides. I know, I know, the World Without Print Armageddon is pretty unlikely. But then again... what if we threw in the environmentalists? GoreGooglezon? Buy Kindle - save the trees? I mean, it could happen...
I read that article in Newsweek too. Pretty interesting. I wanted more pictures, such as a 360 view...
ReplyDeleteYou might as well put $800 in the budget for Kindles. You'd each need one, right?
Say, I wonder if we'll ever be able to check out Kindles from the library???