I wrote a note about Kindle and other e-books (long story short: I disapprove of the current generation except for the severely-handicapped for whom Kindle is nothing short of a blessing), and my friend Matt then wrote a much more enlightening and friendly note about Kindle himself (seeing as he actually owns one :)). I wanted to make a point to him but felt it'd be selfish of me to do in his reply box, so instead I'll post it here. Click the title to read on. This is not a long blog update, just like the one below was not, if ever-so-slightly longer.
For many years, my biggest wish has been to live in a world where I can read books in any physical position, chiefly while laying down in bed and looking straight up at the ceiling. I personally cannot achieve this with either traditional books or e-books because sticking my arms up into the air for longer than 2 minutes causes my left arm to become very numb (I have an entrapped nerve, unfortunately) and causes both arms to become tired and heavy within 5 to 10 minutes. I also cannot achieve it with traditional books or with current-gen e-books because of the lack of strong backlighting and the fact that most books, if viewed in the manner one views his ceiling, will not get adequate lamp light.
But my ideal goal is for someone to invent "reading glasses," not a spare pair of prescription glasses or a pair of bifocals, no, but glasses which you place over your eyes science-fiction-style and then see a book in front of you. You can see as many pages as your taste permits and your visual field allows for. You can have one enormous page or multiple smaller pages. You can have different books open at the same time if you wish. But for a fundamental prototype, let's assume one page per book on display, one book at a time, and let's assume that when places reading glasses on his head, he forfeits other activities (i.e. let's pause thoughts of websurfing via sunglasses for now, shall we?).
In closing, I want to state that this wish is so strong that I have recently considered that one of my very first purchases upon graduation from medical school will not be a car, will not be a house, but will be a large flat-panel monitor that one can hang on the wall like a picture frame, only I shall choose to place mine within a mount bolted to the ceiling and facing straight down towards my head on my bed. Connected to my computer (as I can already do), I will use an XBox 360 controller or similar remote-control device to tell the computer to turn the pages, to select words to look up the definitions for, or to copy-and-paste selections of text. (Needless to say, I could also websurf, watch TV, and do other things with my ceiling-mounted computer screen, unlike what one can do with an e-book. Needless to say, my dream is lavish, expensive, and years away, also quite unlike an e-book. XD)
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3 comments:
There are glasses which have a set of mirrors in them such that you see what is in front of you when you're lying down. So you could place a book face-up on your stomach and read it just fine while fully reclined. I'm not sure where to purchase them but I have seen them; they wouldn't even be that difficult to construct on your own, you'd only need two mirrors per glasses lense to accomplish it.
The problems with reading books on my belly, as I have done often but never lasting more than the 15 seconds of time it takes to rediscover these problems, are:
1. torque. Namely, the gravitational force on the book where the fulcrum of the book is where the bookspine meets my belly. In other words, you have to constantly exert energy to try and keep the book from falling face-forward onto your chest or face-away onto your groin.
2. friction. Namely, the requirement to physically lift the book from one's belly in order to turn the pages else he risks tearing them; particularly troublesome with textbooks likes Harrison's where each 1.5"-wide book contains over 500 hair-thin pieces of paper (for over 1000 pages).
3. visibility. Only a problem insofar as the bottom-most words are concerned, but indeed a concern: for a heavy textbook digs deep into my belly, producing fatty rolls which obscure vision of the lower margins of the text.
4. pain. Specifically, the pain of the book (esp. a heavy textbook) digging into one's belly; the feeling of respiratory constrictedness (because the diaphragm must now fight against the textbook); the pain of holding one's arms up for too long; etc.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not surprised to learn from reading the comments that the happiest reviewers were those who were only using the glasses to watch television, not to read heavy textbooks.
Addendum: it occurs to me that Problem #2 would not exist at all for the Kindle, and Problems 1, 3, and 4, while still present (and in the end troublesome for me), would all be much much less with a Kindle than with the real textbook.
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