Seth's Blog: Random Thoughts About the Kindle

I’m a week late writing about this post from Seth Godin. I largely agree with him on his points about the Amazon Kindle, except for #4:

4. The Kindle does a fine job of being a book reader, and a horrible job of actually improving the act of reading a book. This is a surprising design choice, I think, and a mistake. Here are three simple examples of how non-fiction books on the Kindle could be better, not just cheaper and thinner:

—Let me see the best parts of the book as highlighted by thousands of other readers.
—Let me see notes in the margin as voted up, Digg-style, by thousands of other readers.
—Let me interact with hyperlinks and smart connections not just within the book but across books

I can think of ten others, and so can you. Instead of making this a dead end (like a book) they could have made it a connector (like the web).

This isn’t what I want at all. What I like about books and the Kindle is that they aren’t hyper—be that hyperlinked or hyperactive. When you read a book (physical or electronic), you aren’t web browsing or channel surfing. You’re immersing yourself in something. You’re taming your ADD and actually focusing on what you’re reading. That isn’t a dead end. That’s truly experiencing a written work for what it is rather than what it links to.

I don’t want to be shooting all over the web and interacting with others as I try to read a book. I want to deeply understand what the author(s) have to say. The Kindle does a wonderful job of helping me do just that.

I hope that Amazon doesn’t take the Kindle in the direction Godin advocates in #4 (or that they at least make it easy to turn off those features if they are added).

Based on Jeff Bezos’ latest Letter to Shareholders, I doubt Amazon will be going down that road. I love this Bezos quote so much, this is the second time I’ve blogged it:

We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools. I realize my tone here tends toward the missionary, and I can assure you it’s heartfelt.

That’s a mission I can really get behind.