Reading by Capitalism: Kindle versus the Femme Fatale iPad - Mark Hubbard
To shamelessly
run with a concept employed by economist Don Boudreaux in his ‘cleaning with
capitalism’ series at Café
Hayek, I’ll post on reading by capitalism; beginning with a reading problem
I’ve recently picked up: my iPad.
I was originally
a happy man, content and in a middle age marriage to my Amazon Kindle. It was
nothing exciting, just a great read: I found the e-Ink technology kind on my
eyes, and I could read outside, but also at night with the lights off using the
torch attachment built into the cover that can (and should) be bought with the
machine. Best of all, I could read two average sized novels on a single battery
charge. Unfortunately, however, lust for a feature, or rather, an app, has led
to my Kindle being jilted for another.
The affair
started on my reading budget being weighed down by the demands of, well, all the
other things that money has to be spent on, particularly as we’ve just built a
house on escaping Christchurch, meaning library ebook lending became too
attractive to bat my eyes at anymore. The problem is the New Zealand library
service doesn’t work on Amazon's platform, no doubt a licencing issue due to
that latter company’s desire the owners’ of their machines can only get content
by buying from the Amazon store. Which I have no problem with, but it simply
meant to loan ebooks from Christchurch library I had to get an iPad and download
the free OverDrive app. A fatal attraction. Woe is me, I had no idea of the
trouble I was getting myself into, with this foxy, seductive little piece of
technology.
The difference
between a Kindle and an iPad is the difference between a Soviet styled planned
economy and laissez faire: a single function versus choice. Lots and lots of
choice. The affair with my iPad has truly left me like a gaping innocent staring
with sparkly eyes at the world of email, Twitter, games apps, every sort of app
you can think of, and of course, the Internet. Which has also ironically meant I
can’t read books any more. At least, not in the three week library ebook lending
period, before the digital locks go down on the boudoir of whatever I might be
reading. Currently two days left on Charlotte Grimshaw’s ‘Night Book’, and I’m
barely half way through it.
The trouble is I
get into bed with this temptress, my iPad, not Charlotte, and my whisky nightcap
– though I’m beginning to think apple cider might be more apt - and instead of
going direct to the book reader app I can’t seem to resist the bright lights,
glitz and possibilities of first checking my emails, then Twitter, oh, and then
perhaps I’ll just check my blog stats - getting a bit OCD on that lately - but
on the way to those, look, that article in Granny Herald, damn, I’m going to
have to write a blog on that, and before I know it Mrs H. is mumbling from the
pillow, ‘turn that damned thing off and get some sleep!’. Which I do, meekly, of
course.
So whereas I
used to read books, and love them, my heart has been turned by reading the
Internet, which is to read everything and nothing; left feeling like an empty
vessel, a wastrel, spent force, Twittering my life away, each time I turn the
saucy little iPad off. You’ll see at the top of this blog that I set it up
because I was writing a novel, well she’s been spurned also for the gleaming,
shiny retina-display of 2048-by-1536 pixels. I’ve even done something I said
there should be capital punishment for, despite my belief in the non-initiation
of force principle: used the camera app to photograph the pooch and post her on
Twitter! Kill me now, please.
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