Earth Day is April 22. And now a question for The Visionary in the photo. Could eBabel, all those clashing e-book formats, actually be polluting our Planet Earth, not just the e-book market? Might Amazon be eco-hostile with its fixation on the proprietary Kindle format, which adds to the e-waste crisis?
Exactly how is Amazon a waste offender? Remember, Jeff Bezos want you to buy a Kindle to augment your PDA, cell phone and whatever other gadgets you have.
ePub as an earth-saver
With a standard format like the IDPF‘s ePub standard, by contrast, you could read the same files in the future on different kinds of gizmos, not just a K machine.
In other words, you wouldn’t need to buy a $400 gadget just to read e-books, especially after typical cellphones started including e-book capabilities, which, in the long run, they’ll most likely do.
Bottom line: Fewer batteries, fewer circuit boards to recycle than with Amazon’s eBabel approach
Ecologically, the bottom line is that there would be fewer batteries, fewer circuit boards, to recycle. Instead of buying mini-armadas of devices, consumers could undertake some gadget consolidation and not have to lug around as many little boxes. But so far, Amazon has stubbornly resisted calls to render ePub natively on the Kindle—-a green move that would help the movement to raze the Tower of eBabel.
Needless to say, while Amazon is a leading eBabel polluter, the eco-friendly corporate name notwithstanding, it has plenty of company. I hope that the Sony Reader people and others will get behind ePub all the way and work for stores to make ePub the main format, not just include the ePub-capable Adobe Digital Editions in its Reader.
Granted, eBabel is hardly a competitor with SUVs in the Earth Threats Department. But remember, e-book boosters have talked up their favorite medium as a way to green publishing and help reduce paper consumption. In the name of consistency, then, and if nothing else for symbolic reasons, publishers and others should step up efforts to bring Jeff and other offenders into the ePub fold for real.
In a related vein: New York Times article and a Green Gadgets Conference
The above thoughts on the Kindle format’s eco-hostility are inspired by a New York Times Magazine article mentioning last February’s Green Gadgets Conference. Today’s Magazine is a green issue.
Could standardized batteries reduce waste, as some conference attendees hope—when, say, you switched to a new cellphone? Alas, questions arise because of the different requirements of hardware. Not so with e-book formats, though. We know that standardize formats are desirable for many reasons beyond the eco angles. Like DRM, eBabel is toxic to both e-book sales (by torturing consumers with added technological complexities) and literature (by imperiling your ability to read already-purchased books in the future—a hassle especially bad for literary works that can best withstand the test of time).
The Mobipocket angle: Yes, Amazon offers the Mobipocket format usable on a variety of machines. But the Kindle is far bigger a priority for the company, and beyond that, isn’t it telling that Jeff’s people tweaked Mobipocket to create a special Kindle-only format, so people couldn’t use Kindle-DRMed books on other machines? Eco-evil. The upshot, as noted, will be more gadgets to recyle.
The electronics industry prosperity angle: No, the industry wouldn’t go bankrupt if people read e-books on cell phones and OLPC laptops and so on, rather than special gadgets like the Kindle. Instead, without so many gadgets to buy, they might be more willing to spend money on gizmos that did serve a variety of purposes.
The consumer morality angle: I’m not saying that consumers are wicked just because they currently buy a dedicated e-book reader rather than use a multifunction device. Remember, E Ink is currently available only for dedicated readers, not general-purpose devices. But long term, Jeff’s eBabel will artificially create the need for separate gizmos.
Of interest: Cellphone user Beth Wellington‘s thoughts on the green gadgets concept—as well as News Trust participants’ critiques of the Dreaming in Green, the Times article. Also see the blog of designer Jill Fehrenbacher, whose Inhabit campaign has helped promote the green-product movement in technology and other areas. Perhaps along the way she can help Jeff redo the Kindle so it looks less than an adding machine or a prop from a 1950s sci-fi movie.
Earth Day detail: I used the April 22 date for the U.S. and many other countries. In some places, people celebrate it at other times.
Technorati Tags: Earth Day,Amazon,Amazon.com,Jeff Bezos,Mobipocket
Wow… So basically anything that does not run on a cell phone is promoting ecological disaster? Or just any device optimized for a specific purpose, like the kindle, and all the other ebook readers? What cash registers? Shouldn’t we just use standard desktops? Really, anything with a barcode scanner, like those self-checkout machines at the library, should just be standard desktops, and we’ll just type in all the info!
And watches! What a waste of batteries! Anyone with a watch is obviously an eco-terrorist. Don’t those people know that a cell phone can tell the time? And that PDA? And the desktop? One laptop can do most of the things a desktop will do, and still be portable! Why all the extra machines?
Sound ridiculous? No less so than your argument.
I agree the extra format is a pain, and it is one of the reasons I have not purchased a kindle. Still, editorials like this just make me long for a way to sift out the news from the noise on an RSS feed.
Thanks for your lively post, Jack, but didn’t I address your concerns—when I wrote the words below?
“I’m not saying that consumers are wicked just because they currently buy a dedicated e-book reader rather than use a multifunction device. Remember, E Ink is currently available only for dedicated readers, not general-purpose devices. But long term, Jeff’s eBabel will artificially create the need for separate gizmos.”
I’m just saying that Jeff’s eBabel, yes, will cause people to create more e-waste than if they could use their PDAs to read e-books.
That is an objective fact.
If people still want separate devices, fine. But at least it will be for THEIR own logical reasons, as opposed to ARTIFICIAL, eBabel-related ones.
David