Post- Digital Print - Monoskop

Jeff Bezos on the
cover of Newsweek,
November 26, 2007
perceived to be the world’s leading ‘virtual’ bookshop). At the press
launch for the Kindle, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos declared that “books
are the last bastion of analog” – thus implicitly declaring an all-out war
on this metaphorical bastion.
Interviewing Bezos for Newsweek magazine, 156 the computer-culture
journalist and author Steven Levy spiced up his questions with a few
of his own remarkable insights, such as: “(the book) is a more reliable
storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface…
And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries.” Bezos, during
the aforementioned press launch had stated that, on the contrary,
“short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web.
But long-form reading really hasn’t.” He also boasted: “If you’re going
to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of
respects.” As far as he was concerned, the Kindle was in fact designed
to “project an aura of bookishness”.
The Kindle is silent, lightweight (a mere 10 ounces or 290 grammes)
and only slightly larger than a standard paperback. The user can
change the font size at will (a godsend for older readers). The device
can contain a few hundred books, it allows the user to search within the
text, and it can navigate the Internet: virtual goods can be purchased
through wireless mobile broadband, leading Bezos to claim: “This isn’t
a device, it’s a service.” He then went on to describe his vision: “The
vision is that you should be able to get any book – not just any book
86