Ode To My Kindle

Kindle, Kindle; made in the U.S.
Sent in to the wild, no more printing press
Fight Genesis fruit with bright jungle fire
While feeling the wrath of all hard copy's ire
Smiting the robots, in a world without borders
How I love my Kindle; bring on new world order.

Now as you can see I am no poet, but I do quite like my kindle. Considering it looks like the same technology I had when I was a child (do you remember your etch a sketch?) I cant believe its taken the geniuses this long to make it a reality. I purchased one about a year ago and like many a convert I have become quite the zealot. Its never left my side and when the screen shattered and I was without it for 5 days I was like an amputee mourning a missing limb. 

Amazon were fabulous. I had a replacement in my hot little hands in next to no time and at no charge so I cannot sing their praises enough (having said that its lucky you can't hear me sing). Not only is it great that I can carry a couple of thousand books with me on one easy to use device, I'm also reading stuff that I would never picked up. Its amazing that such a device could rethink the way you do something so elemental as reading. It proves that Marshall McLuhan was right...."the medium is the message".

Marshall McLuhan

There is a certain irony that his seminal work "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" (first published in 1964) seems only to be available in hard copy and you cant yet read it in a way he loosely predicted. If you would like to read some prophetic musings on advertising and the media from the man who coined the term "global village" then this book is well worth a look. I first read it in the late 1980's and it was a little spooky then. I might just pick it up again and view it through my 21st century goggles to see how it reads now....let me get back to you on that one.