Why I Was Wrong About the Kindle

Conversations about incorporating new technology, be it software or hardware, in our house often go something like this:

My husband, fondly known as Mr. Tech Support: “Hey Heidi, I think you (or the kids) could benefit from [insert name of new technology here].”

Me: “No, no, I don’t think we need any new technology.  In fact, there’s too much technology around here…whatever happened to the good old days where families grew all their own food and everyone sat around the wood stove at night?  Those were simpler times.  By the way, I’m thinking about getting chickens.”

Being the supremely patient husband that he is, he’ll just nod and smile.  If he really thinks we should try it he’ll have a go at talking me into it again after I’m done looking at chicken coop plans online.  This is when I launch into my litany of reasons why [insert name of new technology here] is actually evil.  Again, he’ll smile smile and nod.

And…inevitably he’s right.  I have fought everything from online banking to Google calendar to smartphones, all things I now couldn’t live without.  Where does this fear come from?  Maybe it’s hereditary: his grandmother was on Facebook and played poker on line while my grandmother never owned a computer.  Perhaps I come from a long line of people with new-technology-phobia.  Lucky for me (and my kids) I married a tech guru and he holds my hand all the way.

Back to the reason for this post:  the Kindle.  I fought this one for months and I felt like I’d accrued a pretty good list of reasons against getting one for our 10 year old daughter.  Same routine: he’d mentioned it several times, I didn’t even research it but just said it was evil and would mean the death of all books (or something like that).  I had my reasons against it and, as usual, it turns out I was completely wrong.

Reason number one (I was really proud of this one and used it first whenever the topic arose):  “Oh, the eye strain!”  This one is completely false.  I had to see one in real life to be astounded by how an electronic screen can look just like a piece of paper.  It doesn’t glow or have lighting or look like an iPad screen.  It causes no more eye strain than reading a paper book for hours on end–something I was prone to do as a child.

My back-up reason:  She won’t be reading real books, or quality literature.  I was really off here.  Okay, so it won’t be a paper book, but they are real books.  And once we download them from most sources she can keep them on her kindle (it can store over a thousand books) so she can re-read them anytime.  And here was the kicker:  many older classic books are FREE so we were able to load her Kindle up with the good stuff.  She’s already finished two classics that were on the list of books I wanted her to read.  She is reading even more and instead of picking the newest looking book with a cute cover design at the library she’s picking up a classic.  Bonus good point:  she likes reading several books at once.  With the Kindle she can bring those books with her camping or anywhere we go while taking up almost no space.

The last selling point, and something I hadn’t been open-minded enough to research and figure out, was the built-in dictionary.  Yes, it’s valuable to be able to look up words in a paper dictionary, but who stops while reading a good book to do that?  Well, on her kindle she just places her cursor over a word and sees the dictionary definition.  She’s been telling us the meaning of words she has looked up, and we’re making it into a casual “word of the day” routine where she picks one for us all to try and use.

So, I was wrong.  She’s not walking around with bloodshot eyes.  She’s actually reading great books and enlarging her vocabulary all the while.  Score another one for Mr. Tech Support.