book to kindle

BOOK TO KINDLE


Some might want to accuse me of being an old fart who only looks back fondly and curses the present. You know the kind. They can’t stand the music, complain about the high cost of everything and hate kids. I don’t think anyone is immune to being fond of the music of their youth. More than likely it has something to do with associating the last of their freedom with a certain time, hence a certain music ( ironic how loudly we wailed on our teenager captivity, only to discover that becoming a wage slave was far worse ), although I’m not sure that is entirely correct. I loved the sixties music although I grew up in the seventies. Although, only from The Beatles on, so perhaps the style went from mid sixties to mid seventies or so. I sure hated the Hair Bands, but loved the nihilistic punk. But also the techno rock and girl bands of the early eighties. I didn’t like anything past Joan Jett, and rap then darkened the land. I must have prolonged my childhood innocence/escape from reality through alcohol to age twenty, which would validate my theory on the music association with freedom. I do of course curse the high cost of most things, but I usually don’t simply look at the dollar amount but calculate the cost per hour of labor. I know my labor compensation has only gone up fifty percent in thirty years, whereas most things cost two hundred percent more. So I’m justified in my complaint there. Although I wouldn’t give a kid just fifty cents to mow a lawn when it cost two bucks to get into the matinee ( although I should thank the old bastard, doing me a favor by killing any desire I had of working a real job during my youth- not that I got to slack with all the chores out at the country estate [ ten acres with horses and chickens ] ). And, really, who wouldn’t hate kids nowadays with the “I want to be a wigger” rap listening and pants hanging down past their crack. I do have some really squared away volunteers from the High School at the Food Bank, but being a mostly rural area you do get a lot of normal kids.

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And I don’t reject new technology. I never started writing on a regular basis until I could afford a computer ( when your one finger hunt and peck typing is easier and faster than using a pen or pencil, you embrace the technology ). I prefer CD’s to LP’s. I love my new Netbook computer since it uses so little electricity and has all the bells and whistles compared to my ten year old used notebook. I’m not against new, I’m against new for news sake. Just because I prefer 160 year old handgun design to 30 year old types or think that the last good rifle design was from WWII does not mean I reject the new. I simply think a lot of things are better back in our heyday, back before our slow collapse as a country began. Which rather than the 70’s I could argue actually began in 1929. When you go from almost totally free to mostly fascist to “save” the economy, and then race ahead towards totalitarianism while selling off your economy and country to keep a finance bubble inflated, I would call that one long ass collapse from the industrial giant we were. But I digress. Just because I think it silly to get excited about Facebook, in My Book just the latest abortion after Instant Messaging ( what the hell is wrong with plain old e-mail? ), this does not mean I hate all new things. I don’t hate the Kindle. While I don’t think e-books are a great survival strategy, they have their place such as if you want to stay mobile. If you are planning to swoop down on a defenseless village in the middle of the night, you want to stay unencumbered by the paper book on CIA field interrogation techniques. Far better to power up the Kindle as your village mayor is tied up, getting a refresher course on finding out where the buried food stores are.

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What disturbs me about the Kindle is not the device, which seems at first reports to be the first true e-ink book reader to get it right, but the books sold for it. They are almost never a bargain compared to paper books, only being discounted a paltry 10 or 20% or so. The machine would pay for itself quickly, and I realize that the discount reflects the actual cost of printing on paper. If you are buying a ten buck book on Kindle for $8, that e-book has the same profit mark-up throughout the food chain as the paper book ( $2 paper and shipping, $8 for the authors/publishing house/Amazon’s profit ). But as a reader, you are only comparing the two costs to yourself. A real paper book for ten or a digital signal for eight. The fact that Kindle book sales have quickly outpaced paper books tells me people have in fact lost all touch with physical products. You would have thought I could have seen this as obvious when the average bear spends $100 a month to socialize on a cell phone when the face to face type is usually free. Or thinks nothing of buying a $150,000 house over 30 years. Or thinks a $500 a month truck payment is reasonable. You aren’t buying a real house, only a green wood and sheet rock facsimile. And that piece of sheet metal isn’t worth what a house cost twenty years ago- you are buying the corporations acquisition debt and Union laborer pension obligations. People have no ability to judge what their time left on earth is worth. I realize this is subjective. But when you spend most of your wages buying overpriced intangibles, your judgment must be questioned.

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So, what is my friggin point here? Culture and social mores train the next generation. And we are training ours that living in the Matrix is reality. We are trying to live like a ghost in the machine, divorced from the messy Real World. It is another layer of insulation from Nature, reality and common sense. And you think this won’t end badly as our cocoon of computer animated dream machines becomes unsustainable? I’m not trying to blow one aspect of our consumer culture out of proportion. This is just the latest example of our reality avoidance. And, yes, I’ll be putting my book on Kindle soon. I’m not above profiting from the burning and sinking Hindenburg.

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