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ShareTechnological innovations and inventions not only touch our lives in many ways, but are also redefining the way we function. The latest gadget in the market is rekindling the way we read.
There are many facets to reading. One is reading for pleasure or leisure, where the reader savours the book, ponders, thinks, often re-reads or reads aloud some pages and paragraphs, and highlights text. Business reading includes reading for information-processing, wherein the reader scans the material before zeroing on specific areas of interest. Research-based reading involves a collection of massive amount of data, which is sieved, handled and analysed.
Kindle, a reading tool launched by the world's largest web book retailer, Amazon, is poised to change the lifestyle of reading eternally, in a manner similar to the way the iPod changed music habits forever.
Unlike the iPod, which plays music and videos, Kindle is primarily meant to be a reading device. It can hold more than 1,500 titles at a time and can also read aloud to the users. Digital books are being written exclusively for Kindle, an example being a novella by bestselling author Stephen King, 'Ur', which will be released exclusively on Kindle.
Web-based publishing and reading are a trend that started several years ago, carving out a section of e-readers and e-writers. Budding writers publish books on the internet and generate a following, which gives active feedback and suggestions that help the authors tailor their books to the interest of the readers.
Free downloads of books on an iPod for listening while travelling or exercising constitute a lifestyle change that has already started to seep into the lives of people who are less visual and therefore prefer to hear a book aloud rather than read it silently line by line.
Using touch-screen and 3G technology, Sony is trying to spice up the invention by launching its own wireless e-reading device. This gadget is linked to online libraries across the world, which will provide access to new as well as old publications.
Taking this concept one step further, one can visualise a world where the old Town Hall libraries built on three or four storeys of brick and mortar, the centre of a city's pride, may become obsolete as the younger generation builds its libraries in handheld devices.
Promising a variety of applications, e-reading equipment appears to be here to stay. Students can soon use such appliances as textbooks and for storybook downloads, data collection and for handling their projects and assignments. Professionals can read their daily magazines, periodicals and newspapers on the move. The 'read aloud' feature can be used for learning languages.
The economics of e-reading products promises to work. When one looks at the number of books one ends up buying, right from study textbooks to novels and new releases of philosophy, business etc, as well as self-help books and bestsellers, the amount runs into lakhs of rupees. If a device can give you all this and more for a few thousand rupees and for nominal download charges, it makes economic sense.
Will these products be able to completely replace the age-old habit of tactile reading, where the reader experiences a sense of comfort by touching, feeling and getting involved in the books, is anybody's guess. Old schools of thought may lament that reading is losing its "touch".
The writer isan entrepreneur and educationist
