Thursday, January 6, 2011

Generation K?

On the 720 Express bus on Wilshire this morning, I was one of three people reading something on a Kindle. The other two were rather younger than myself, either college age or not long past it. The 720 may not offer a representative sample because it's a direct line to UCLA, but still, it leads me question the view that only old people are using these devices because only old people still read.

3 comments:

Tulkinghorn said...

There's some evidence that the most intense users of Kindles are connoisseurs of disreputable genres, especially romance novels, for two reasons:

(1) The Kindle is the electronic equivalent of a plain brown wrapper. (Although Baen Books has probably found a way to make an ugly e-book, too.)

(2) C.O.D.G. read a lot of books -- two or three a week -- and electronic books are prefect for high volume users.

David Chute said...

Maybe there are markets ready to re-open for DGs that are so D they barely exist anymore, such as porno novels. We do hear that pornographers have consitently been the first to pounce on IT innovations.

Christian Lindke said...

All the young people I work with are avid readers. I would have thought that the Harry Potter and Twilight phenoms would have dispelled any thoughts otherwise.