I like my little gadgets or toys as I'd like to fondly refer to them as. Would this be something I'd add to my repertoire though?
Do you know that I cannot remember the last time I physically picked up a newspaper! I subscribe to the New York Times and Washington Post online, I catch up on news back in Malaysia online too via Malaysiakini and through other forums and I also get highlights or alerts of what's happening in Africa and the Latin American via Lotus Notes (compliment of the World Bank).
I'm searching my home mentally and have come to a realization that I do not have a boom box. I've a state of the art music system, an ipod and music on my iPhone but no boom box, which years ago I can remember begging my parents for.
But no books?? Instead we now have a gadget to read off from. No pages to turn? No bookmark to identify the page last read? And when I'm too lazy, at a click of a button I can choose either a male or female voice to read the story for me?? Hhmmmm
It seems like technology is coming at us at warp speed and there's no way of slowing it down. For most part I'd like to think that I am embracing technology head-on but it's things like the Kindle which have me stumped. How fast and how far can and will it go eh?
3 comments:
Technology is great. And like you i like the gizmo's we have now, from the ipods and mp3/mp4 (is there an mp5?), to funky cell phones that do everything from allowing to make a call to making sure you get to your destination without the use of convetional maps. Plasma TV's that hang on our walls like a priceless painting. But books to read of the screen on your laptop? I don't think that's for me. I enjoy the feel of the book, the texture and smell of its pages. New books look great, then you handle it so many times it becomes a little worn and dog-eared and you love it even more. It soothes you to sleep on nights you cant just seem to doze off. . .hard to do that with a laptop eh? I like to read my own book. . . nt be read to. I love the written word, its shape and sound, and imagining how it was said by the characters or how it sounded in the writer's head. So I'm afraid as fast and advanced we are moving on in this high tech world, i hope they wont take away my books.
I actually had 2 boombox till we moved here. We would have brought it but didn't have space. Till we got our plasma TV we didn't hv room for it cause we didn't need a huge TV stand. So we ended up listening to music either from my laptop or from the music channels on TV.
However, I do have to agree with Tina. Cozing up on the sofa with a good book is not the same as listening to it. I can read at my own pace and as the plot thickens I tend to read faster just to find out what the end would be. I also try to get a mental picture of the characters to match with their voice and not get stuck on the voice of the person reading it. That's why movie made from books aren't all that great cause it misses out on a lot of description.
it isn't so much reading it off your laptop but the kindle is a gadget in itself, like an itouch. But anyways, i agree there is nothing like holding and flipping thru a book, cursing coz u forgot to bookmark ur last page, curling up with a good one on a rainy or cold evening. I have books scattered all over my house and I love it. I love that I have a mini library and can add to it physically. So no i too would rather pass up on technology on this one.
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