Steady with the Kindle
By: Ravneet Bawa
Tags: Reading, Kindle

Photo by Nemichandra Hombannavar on Unsplash

If you were a device and you could be a Kindle or an iPhone, which one would you be? The Kindle and the iPhone are contemporaries in many ways, both coming into being after pithy instructions from the top boss to the respective design teams — one to build the world’s best e-reader and the other to build the world’s best designed touchscreen mobile phone. Both came alive in 2007–2008. Both took some essential offline functionality and hooked it to the internet with pocket interfaces you can use anytime, anywhere. I got my first Kindle in late 2010, my first iPhone in the summer of 2012, shortly after they became available in India.

My relationship with my iPhone is one of a lifetime sentence. I cannot imagine my life without it, it runs more than half of it anyway and apparently knows things about me that I myself don’t. I spend 3–4 hours on it every day. I would rather text than call and in many cases even meet (this allows me to maintain several social, low involvement relationships even as it is becoming increasingly harder to have few, high involvement ones). It saves me many hours of tedious chores, also relieves me in many hours of tedious boredom. It has made simultaneous the switch between leisure and work — just look at any office meeting with more than 10 people in the room and you will know what I mean. It allows me to lead so many lives all at once, wow right?

My Kindle though, is that quiet device that I hardly think of as a device. In 2011, the Kindle I had, worked on Whispernet. Whispernet meant I could use it without data connections which were poor at the time, and without wi-fi which wasn’t as ubiquitous. It seemed magical almost. Powerful in a quiet way. Books delivered floating through air right in my hands. Of course you maybe had to be a bit of a committed reader to fully appreciate it, but it had all my respect. 2019, not much has changed. I still marvel at my ability to carry 500 books with me in less than 500 gms of a matte finish device with no loss in readability. If I keep my downloaded library diverse, I could well be left on an island alone and not miss this world too much.

The iPhone has been prominently reviewed, written about, reviled, revered. There have been newer generations, and there have been concerted efforts to get you to upgrade to a new one. That gets business reporters in a tizzy. It riles environmentalists. Everyone talks about how addictive phones are and their impact on mental health. And well, smartphone sales (and stock) never dip. Competition is intense, market caps have billowed, the device’s novelty has worn off, replaced with a dependence we are unlikely to reverse any time soon. And not all bad. I am sure in the tip of scales, the good that has come from the profusion of smartphones, ripple effects on jobs, culture, economies — all must add up well for it to continue the stride it has. And to be clear, I am also not about to give up on it anytime soon. I can’t.

The Kindle meanwhile, has seen little to no change in terms of form factor, sure the display is infinitely better, the keyboard is gone, storage more, the availability of titles more prolific than ever before. By way of functionality however, the Kindle is still the Kindle, e-reader for readers. Slowly but surely courting lovers, tipping them over a few at a time. Everyone who is using it, is using it voluntarily, with pleasure, and perhaps gratitude. I mean sure there is nostalgia for the smell of new books but when you feel like it, you still go buy one and feel all better. The Kindle hasn’t altered our reading habits significantly, if only refined them. We are not victims without agency. I could give up on my Kindle and go right back to books. I choose not to. It extends my habit, improves. There were no ambitious attempts by the Kindle to grow into this omnibeing that will solve world hunger. And there is something staid about that. I don’t resent it the way I resent the other devices in my life. It has one job, it does it well. I can’t think of how it could do it better except take it to many many more people.

Which may not happen. A recent feature I read spoke about how the virtuous signalling of reading as a pastime is coming to an end. People are getting access to information, faster and in more engaging ways through several other formats which are now cheaper, more readily available. Content is finding new warm bodies even as bookstores are shutting down. That by itself does not mean that people are reading less, just that all reading is now well competing with videos for instance as a source of knowledge, entertainment outside of curriculum and day jobs. A few decades hence, it is possible that Kindles may be unnecessary in a world inhabited by people who have grown up on a steady audio-visual diet.

In such a scenario, if you said you would want to be an iPhone, I am not surprised. For one you will be richer. And that does not seem to be going out of fashion. But a quiet, short life as a Kindle isn’t too bad either, is it? Imagine the memoir it would make. Millions of people read millions of books through me. These are the thoughts they most resonated with — all those anonymous highlights, can you imagine what that treasure trove has to say about our collective humanity? Surely it is worth as much if not more as the product I am most likely to buy based on my browsing history.

Here, this line tickles them all. Here but is where one shed a tear. No?