Amazon: the modern-day Gutenberg?

The Amazon Kindle is a device that is changing the way books are read. Amazon recently announced that electronic book sales have overtaken physical book sales in its US market as of Christmas day 2009.

It's been billed as world changing in the history of the book. Stephen Marche of the Wall Street Journal says: "The only other events as important to the history of the book are the birth of print and the shift from the scroll to bound pages."

The Kindle is one of several 'e-readers', which are seemingly basic devices. The concept of storing books as text files may seem straight forward and even low-tech in today's laptop and smart-phone world, but they rely on a new type of technology called 'e-ink'.

Unlike a traditional device screen, which are usually liquid crystal displays (LCDs), e-ink, originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks like printed paper.

The displays consist of millions of tiny microcapsules which, when electrically charged, become visible to the reader. They are not backlit, and only black and white displays are currently in production. The result is none of the eye strain or glare associated with electronic displays and extremely long battery life. The Kindle advertises a week of uptime with a single charge with the wireless on, two with it off.

Combine this with the small amount of data a book requires, and you can store a library of hundreds—or even thousands—of books on a device that is thinner and lighter than the average paperback. PDFs, magazines, newspapers, and even blogs are downloadable.

While several companies have produced e-readers, Amazon has benefited from this technology the most, taking the largest market share with over 1.5 million devices sold and pioneering the crystallizing marketing scheme in a way that has been compared to Apple's domination of portable music devices with its ubiquitous iPod.

Users have access to a wireless store directly on the device, and can purchase books (for less than the physical copy) which are delivered directly to the Kindle via a 3G connection.

With an eye towards environmental sustainability, several universities, including the Ivy League Princeton University in New Jersey, have tested pilot programs in which they distributed Kindles to students with their assigned reading.

According to the Daily Princetonian, however, students and faculty in the program “found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use”.

As of this week all US universities using Kindles have made a deal with the US Justice Department to cease until they are functional for the blind.

US Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez explained: “Advancing technology is systematically changing the way universities approach education, but we must be sure that emerging technologies offer individuals with disabilities the same opportunities as other students.”