People are going crazy over their Kindle 2. Like the teacher who reads her books to class on her Kindle, or the guy who couldn’t sleep with his wife until his Kindle came (and then he was too busy). UPS delivery men routinely go up to the door and find love notes stuck on the door for whoever delivers their Kindle 2.

Amazon started this Kindle thing as the best way to read books without ever actually picking one up. In some circles, it isn’t exactly cool to be reading a book (at school, for instance). It is nice to tell people, “No way, I’m not reading anything. I’m watching the Toy Story 3 trailer.” People are okay with you watching meaningless movie trailers, but they don’t want you filling your mind with content. This upsets people because it makes them less competitive with you in many ways. We want others to remain dumb so that we can remain dumb.

In reality, Kindle 2 is all about content. You can read books, newspapers, blogs. The Kindle has so much content that you can have no life with no problem. I’m sure there is some happy balance between content and having a life that the inventors envisioned. But do you imagine the people buying Kindle to be the “balanced” type of person. I see them throwing away all their paperbacks and writing love notes to delivery men.

You can easily pretend to be reading and stare at people in the coffee shop. This is much harder to do with books. With books, you have to elevate your creepy eyes over the physical pages. But with Kindle, you can act like this is just the appropriate angle to keep the glare off the screen. Amazon has actually made it so that light is not an issue, but people don’t know that. 

Heard of the Kindle 3? Apparently this is not for you readers, but for non-readers. That’s right, Amazon wanted to expand their “readers” market to illiterates as well. It’s also great for teenagers who like to watch cartoons.