Two Flimsy Excuses

I don’t own an e-reader—yet. Truth be told, I’m a bit intimidated by them. Not the technology itself (although I haven’t got a clue what goes on inside a computer chip anymore) but the hassle of learning to use it and the additional strain it places on my budget.

I already know how to read a paper book. I learned when I was five years old. Although content has varied over the years, the basic process of scanning marks on a page remains unchanged. Books still exist. Why add an additional layer of complication to a simple process that’s been working perfectly well for over half a century?

Then there is the cost to be considered. Sure, it’s not a big investment at first; perhaps a few hundred dollars for the equipment and a few days to figure out how to work the thing. But in a couple of years, my e-reader will be obsolete and I’ll have to go through the buying, the learning and the downloading all over again. In a few more years, the whole concept of e-readers may have gone the way of the dial telephone and eight track tapes. Landfills around the world are already littered with my discarded typewriters, record players, transistor radios, cassette players, VHS players, Walkmans, under-powered PC’s, DVD players, and stupid (as opposed to smart) cell phones.

Of course my great-grandmother probably said something similar about telephones. I clearly remember my grandmother once stating she had no use for a television. My mother would have frowned on internet surfing as a ridiculous waste of time. What all these things have in common is that they were introduced to the public as toys, then ultimately became so interwoven into the fabric of our lives that it is impossible to imagine living without a telephone, difficult to imagine living without a television, and increasingly hard to accomplish the basic tasks of modern life without the internet.

So, what’s the point in getting an e-reader? Well, I have recently discovered, not one, but two reasons to justify getting myself a new toy.

Reason One

It’s no secret technology drives change, and after a period of disoriented grumbling, most of us adapt to our new more complex environments. But I wonder if we are rapidly approaching the technology/brain barrier, where the speed of progress outstrips the human ability to cope with it.

Some nursing association in Ontario has decided to accept only online renewals from its members. So, recently, much of my internet volunteering has been spent helping internet-phobic nurses renew their memberships. Sometimes I can’t help them, because they’ve forgotten their password and the password reset routine is sending a new password to the email address someone set up for them when they registered, which they’ve also forgotten.

Now these nurses are not senile or stupid. They are qualified medical professionals, reduced to quivering mental jelly by a mouse and a screen full of flash graphics.  They are people who have not kept up and are now stranded on the slope of an insurmountable learning curve. Keeping abreast of technology requires constant scrambling. By not embracing e-readers now, I’m just setting myself up for a desert of boredom when dead tree publishing goes the way of vinyl records and I have nothing to read.

Reason Two

 A while ago, I attended a book launch, where I bought a copy of the novel to support the author. I read about thirty pages on the bus into town a few days later and realized I had no desire to finish the book. No slight intended toward the author; it was a very well written book; I just didn’t resonate to any of the characters.

I got off the bus in front of a local second hand bookshop, hoping to trade the unwanted book for credit on a book I did want to read. Just in time, I remembered my book had been signed by the author. I stood outside the store, debating the etiquette of signed book disposal and finally decided it would be tacky to trade in a signed first edition. The author might frequent this bookshop and be upset to find her magnum opus on the BUCK A BOOK table less than a month after publication. I threw the book into a paper recycling bin before entering the store. On a display rack just inside the door I found a copy of my book. Resisting the urge to see if it was a signed copy, I scurried to the science fiction racks at the back of the store and picked up a China Mieville steampunk for the bus ride home.

The biggest advantage of e-books is that they can’t be signed. If everyone had e-readers, authors would spared these embarrassing dilemmas.

So there you have them, two flimsy justifications for buying an e-reader. Now if I could just figure out which is the best kind to buy. Do I need 3G? A micro-SD expansion slot? A camera?  And what’s all this DRM/mobi nonsense?