From M. Allen Cunningham's The Flickering Page, New in Paperback This Month from Atelier26

Illustration by Nathan Shields

" 'Books are the last bastion of analog,' said Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos at the 2007 launch of the Kindle. 'Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn’t. … [The Kindle] is the most important thing we’ve ever done.' It was well-nigh time, went Bezos’s message, for everyone to acknowledge that the printed book (slow to produce, often heavy to carry, lacking buttons or lights) was a medium in need of 'an update.' Given our wide-spread acceptance of the technological progress ideology, this would seem to make perfect sense. 'It’s so ambitious,' claimed Bezos, 'to take something as highly evolved as the book and improve on it. And maybe even change the way people read.'*

The zealous CEO’s words bring to mind a comment from the ancient world:
'An inventor is not always the best judge of how useful or not his own inventions will be for those who use them.'—Socrates, 420 BC
Did the Kindle 'improve' upon the book? Do e-reading devices in general? Is the syndrome of eternal hardware upgrades an evolutionary given? Is the desire for speed, convenience, portability, and connectivity the natural and salutary 'next step' for the reader always seeking the rich and rewarding experience of a great book? Socrates, for one, would say that something is not rationally so just because the CEO of Amazon claims it to be.
*It is telling that Bezos should admit his wish to change the way people read (a statement author Sherman Alexie has labeled “imperialist”). "

Learn more about The Flickering Page HERE, or order it HERE