May
22
Bookworm as Deviant
May 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I heard somewhere that the Amish are allowed to have Kindles. I also hear they can have cell phones. Both items do not require a computer to function, and this seems to be the distinction. Reminds me a bit of certain loop holes we use when dieting…
The frozen yogurt is yogurt and yogurt is a healthy diet food.
If I have fig newtons by the handful I am getting a nice big fruit serving today!
 …the Kindle is a type of book, and books are important to read and are made of good old fashioned, totally acceptable paper. (I’m not exactly sure how they rationalize cell phones? Care to enlighten me?)
[In the same vein, click here for a book blogger's post on the Amish.]
But the actual point of this post is to balance out the posts I do on techy ideas by throwing it out there that I’d like to know what the new Luddite-like movement is going to be regarding the appearance of ebooks. The ebook is not much like the loom of Luddite times – It isn’t going to take away jobs as much as change them, but it may make paper books more novelty than not, sort of like the handwoven sweater is a special treat we don’t see that often. I wrote a short story in college about a culture that had come to the conclusion that women were no longer needed in society – and were therefore selectively aborted in favor of male children. The result was that the few secret females born to outsider communities became like odd jewels, not collected or valued like diamonds, but more like freak show abberations to be used as curiosities and even as objects of desire by a new brand of extreme deviant.
What will be the fate of our paper books? The books that don’t make noise or link to the internets or read themselves to us? I simply do not know, but I want to be sure to save some in a timecapsule so that one day my ancestors will fondle and smell them – becoming some of those extreme deviants we call bookworms.
(I feel I am obligated to mention Sarah Palin’s book deal even though I would rather be in denial about it. Here you go.)