To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

I love books. I could spend hours in a library or bookstore just browsing through one section. I’m not a literary snob. I love Jane Austen, John Irving, and Dr. Suess with equal passion. I’m attracted to cover art as much as the story and I always have to read the first page to decide if it’s worth my time. So in my quests to find treasures, I often find myself buying books more than anything else. I love the rough-edged pages and old, gilt ones, the leather bound poetry books of the late 19th century and the graphic appeal of the mid-20th century illustrations. I love the smell of inked pages and the appeal of fingerprints and personal inscriptions .
No one can deny the importance of books. From the Bible to a bedtime story, they are a part of our identity. There was a point in time when one’s entire education was based on the size of the library of books they acquired. It was a ticket out of oppression and a window to other worlds. Books have been burned in protest and their contents have been the fuel for wars.
So what will become of the book? All across the nation and I’m assuming, the world, little book stores have closed their doors in favor of the big chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders. But how long will these stores be around? Producing books is costly and, to many, wasteful. So with the advent of technology that allows you, for a small fee, to upload a book, magazine, or even a newspaper at home as easily as while flying 15,000 feet in the air, how long before the book as we know it becomes obsolete? Amazon allows you to store your virtual library indefinitely, allowing a lifetime of books to be contained on one small handheld space.
For me nothing will replace the feel of a book in my hands and the satisfaction of seeing the bookmark in the last page read. Whether I race to end of the book or linger on the last few pages I love to look at my books. I’ve kept and collected books that have particularly made an impact on me in hopes of giving them to my girls one day. Sometimes I leave art books laying around in hopes that one of them will start thumbing through it. How many times have you read a book on impulse? What will happen to the spontaneity of reading?
And, truly, is better than having your child pull his favorite book from the shelf yet again revealing pages with worn edges and scribble marks. It draws me back to my own childhood when I open one of my favorites and see the large block print of my name carefully drawn on the front page by my 6-year-old hand. This just doesn’t work on a hard, cold technological tool.
Still, you can’t stop progress. I guess at some point the book itself was a technological revolution. The oral stories became the written word, individual book-making became large scale printing. I know that I will continue to buy books at my local shop, one of the few still thriving, and continue to rescue old books to be preserved. But I know too that eventually the lure of the kindle will win out.
I just hope that there will always be enough room for technology and tradition in our future.

Generation X--Technologically Delayed

Let's go back to 1982. I was 10 years old. I was considered the family dishwasher and the remote control. "Gina, can you get up and change the channel?" We got reception on 8 TV channels on a good day, and most of them were in color. Our telephone was corded and had a rotary dial. Answering machines were new. There were tv ads for fancy recordings like the new rap-inspired, "Wait for the beep, You gotta leave your name, You gotta leave your number, Just wait for the beep..." , but most of my friends didn't own one. My parents warned me to always have a dime on hand so, in case of an emergency, I could make a phone call from a pay phone. VCRs were available for rent for a hefty fee and I got to play this new game called Nintendo at my friend Laurie's house.

Now I'm not recalling this as a "woe is me", but just to illustrate how much technology has changed since I was a kid. In high school, we would see the first cell phones on movies about high-powered stock brokers and I do recall taking a computer-programming class. We had to use words like "Rem", "Dos", and "Log". I think I used my program to add two numbers together and get the correct sum (Couldn't we use a calculator for that?). By college, we needed to hand in our assignments "printed out" using a computer in the computer lab and voice mail was a part of daily life.

8 years ago, when I left my teaching career to care for my daughter, I felt up to speed. I had taken technology courses so I could do a PowerPoint presentation, use Word and the internet. I was ahead of the curve because I used a software program to calculate my grades and created a PowerPoint presentation for Parent Night.

These days, I don't go long without logging into Facebook or checking my email and I ALWAYS have my cellphone (in case of an emergency). I frequently use my computer for research, to make purchases, to buy and sell on Ebay and Etsy, but somehow I feel out of touch. Like, for the first time, I'm really getting old.

For the most part, our parents' generation is either nearing retirement or has "underlings" to do the tech-stuff for them, but we Gen-Xers must grow and change or be left in the dust of the 20-somethings, unable to compete. As an entrepreneur, I am forced to become comfortable with Blogging, Twitter, Flickr, and My Space or become as obsolete as typewriters (yes, we used to use those, too).

My 24-year-old sister's i-phone is a permanent appendage and she is fearless with her "Tweets" and posts. I, alas, find myself reading up on 'how-to' instead of diving in. This marketing of oneself is somewhat overwhelming. I read this past week that you should own your name on the web, like "JaneDoe.com" so you can be the master of your "online image". Online image??? See, and I was brought up to believe a firm handshake and good eye contact were what made a good impression. Is "Tweeting" the handshake of this generation and Flickr the eye contact? I don't know. And, is it authentic to do these things or just shameless self-promotion? I don't know the answer to that either.

But, here I am, blogging, of all things---so maybe this Gen-Xer has a few tales yet to tell. I may be a little behind, but I think slow and steady still wins the race, right???