I love my computer. I love how Bloglines organizes my RSS feeds for me (although Yahoo doesn’t have a Books feed – grrr). I love watching Law & Order SVU reruns. But I love even more the quarter ton of books I have collected throughout my life. I love even more smudging newsprint, and printing first pages. I love JStor and printing out articles only to attack them with highlighters for my research papers, and yesterday’s speech on…

dun dun dun…

the death of the newspaper and the rise of the Internet. Boo hiss. But as the last magnate Rupert Murdoch told a gathering of newspaper editors, “we have been complacent, hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.”

Newspapers are still working on the switch. I do like the idea of local papers going more in depth locally, because why go to the national networks to read about your home town?

Publishers, however, may have found their savior. My ink-and-paper soul wrenches to say it, but Kindle just may be the industry’s saving grace. The thing has a lot of technical kinks that still need to be worked out, but the concept alone just might bring people back to reading. It saves physical space – think thousands of books in the space of one paperback; great for travelers and people with itty bitty apartments. (My apartment is small but I fit all my crap, including 500+ books, just fine.) People obsessed with gadgets would no doubt love to get their hands on this thing. Also, since they’re essentially selling e-books for these things, the books themselves are cheaper (though the device still tops $350).

The shrinking market of us Luddite page-strokers is becoming more of a niche, whether we like it or not. So if our market in general is to be saved, we must admit at least partial defeat and let the techies have their toys.