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Despite my natural tendency to question everything, some days I just want to believe the hype. Skepticism gets tiring in the land of relentless advertising, but enhances the thrill of discovery when something I think is going to suck ends up winning me over.

So I come to you preaching with the zeal of the newly converted: the recently released Amazon Kindle 2 is really cool.

If you don't know, the Kindle is an eBook reader, but much more importantly, it's a travelling book store, and that's where it scores book-buying's 2001 Monolith Moment, evolving the process a significant step. While not every book in the world is eBook-compatible yet, someday they will be. When that day comes, if you want, you can clear off your shelves, recycle every paper book you own, and keep just your book-reading device.

Obviously, being a semi-pro writer (heavier on the semi than on the pro) I'm very interested in how books are purchased, and how writing is marketed. However, unlike most of my writing colleagues, I'm not resistant to technology, believing it will be the end of good writing. I think mediums will always change, but they will always need writers to fill them. On the surface, eBooks sound bad. It sounds like books are going away, but they're not. Only their format is changing.

That's good news, because change is something the publishing world needs desperately. Before the internet, before print-on-demand self-publishing, books had to be filtered through the self-anointed priesthood of New York City literati and their hugely wasteful forecast-and-recycle model (they guess how many they are going to sell, or purposefully overestimate to build hype, and then recycle what doesn't sell.) That method is about as inefficient as you can get.

Environmentally speaking, forecast-and-recycle has been improved with the print-on-demand model, where printing technology allows a single book to be printed at a time, so only as many books as are wanted are printed.

The Kindle moves book-making even further: no books are printed at all. This is where the short-sighted residents of Status Quo go into full-blown panic mode. "The barbarians are crashing the gate!" They cry. As usual, that warning is code for, "Our elite little club is no longer elite! Anyone can get in!" As for me, I say rock on, democracy.

People in the supposed know have been bitching about how internet technology is making people dumber and meaner. One recent example of this hysteria is the perplexingly popular yet uninsightful article Is Google Making Us Stupid? from the The Atlantic. (Answer: No, but that article sure is.) Another is the book Snark, by David Denby, a book whining about superficial and anonymous commentary on websites. Denby's entire thesis is blown apart by the simple technique of moderated comments. Looks like someone didn't need Google to make him stupid. As for Google dumbing people down, I never heard of something so off base. Search engines help conquer ignorance of all and any kind. That's ALL they do. Ignorance that remains is the fault of the person housing it, not Google.

My point is, The Kindle is going to be good for book publishing and good for writing. When you can buy a book instantly wherever you are, that's good news for writers. With website and printing technology as is, anyone can publish anything. It's full-throttle democracy.

Now onto my specific Kindle experience. Just for kicks, I picked it up and purposefully did not read the manual, to see how easy it was to use. I poked around with the buttons and figured it out. In under five minutes I had successfully ordered a book I've had my eye on for a while: The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I had the entire book in what felt like a minute.

The Black Swan was a serendipitous choice for a first Kindle read. The book starts with a philosophical approach to one's own library, that your shelves should not be filled with books you have read, but with books you haven't. This way, you can easily reference what you don't know. Books you have read are used up, you've already soaked up what they have to offer. I laughed as I read this introduction, perfectly appropriate to me holding a tiny device that contained (in theory) every single book I have never read.

I've shared my praise and I've scoffed at the hysteria, but there are some solid disadvantages to the Kindle. While it's great for anti-clutter freaks like me, nothing beats the feeling of walking into a library or bookstore and just staring in awe at the physical manifestation of all the knowledge and stories unknown to me. That's gone with The Kindle. Also, if I love a paperback, I can hand it to someone and say "You've got to read this!" but I can't do the same with the Kindle, though I've been informed that some people are trading Kindles. That's too risky for me, but this seems like an easy fix. Likely all that's needed is to finesse the digital-rights management (DRM) of the book files.

Another Kindle disadvantage is long-term: if every book is digital, it would seem more susceptible to censorship by an oppressive government or their functional equal, jerk hackers. The Kindle also loses to print in the tactile world. Touch and smell are part of the experience of books and the printed page, but not so much that I can't live without it.

That sounds like a lot of negatives but ultimately, I knew the Kindle 2 was a winner when it passed the most important test of reading. Can it be read while, ahem, multi-tasking on the toilet?

Let me simply say yes it can, and leave it at that. Ebook reading has arrived.

Learn more about this author, Larry Nocella.
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