by Orrin Konheim

Created on: January 01, 2009

Advocates for Web 2.0 contend that the printed word has improved with the lowering of the barrier for entry. With blogger and wordpress, anyone who wants to write can publish their work. While this is true, the downside of non-professional writers filling up the internet is that the professionals have their voices drowned out. The fact remains that while there are many people out there with something important to say, much of the best and most important writing comes from published authors. That is why Amazon's Kindle Reader is what I consider to be the best gadget of 2008 because of its role in bringing the content from books up to speed with the increasingly wired lifestyles of consumers.

One way to look at Kindle's edge is that it erases the disadvantage that books have over newer forms of media. Kindle, weighing 10.3 ounces, takes care of the problem of books being too bulky to carry around. The internet also creates a need for immediacy in that we want the information right away. Going to the library or a bookstore to learn something is far less efficient than simply getting it from the internet. Kindle reduces the immediacy gap by enabling you to download a book in less than a minute. Not only that, Kindle is even more efficient than the internet because it uses the same network as cell phones. When you're away from your desktop, accessing the internet through a laptop won't work unless you are at a wireless hotspot but Kindle utilizes the same network as cell phones so it works in a wider range of places and connection won't cost money.

Kindle is not just limited to books however. Newspapers from the U.S., France, Ireland, and Germany are all auto-delivered and Kindle subscribes to 1000 of the best blogs on the internet which are updated daily. Kindle has access to wikipedia and like amazon.com, it often allows readers to sample the first chapter of a book before deciding whether to make a purchase.

Kindle not only has the power to make quality reading more efficient and more accessible to the reader, but it could potentially restructure web 2.0 so that writers are once again seeing more money from their work. With the advent of Kindle, more people could potentially be buying books and subscribing to newspapers because of its increased simplicity leading to a resurrection of opportunities for journalists (especially journalists) and authors who are being laid off by the dozens these days.

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