Amazon's Kindle and the Physicality of Text

Though admittedly much of this class has been devoted to a discussion of the physicality of text, Hayles’ Writing Machines really takes the concept to a whole new level. Each time we’ve been asked to read selections from this text (granted this is only the second time, but I’ve never yet sat down and read what’s assigned in one sitting), my mind has been overcome with an array of different subjects related to the physicality of text. Having just finished reading some Goethe on my Kindle (the new Amazon digital book device) before beginning my reading of Hayles, it was this device that I would like to discuss, for if it takes off, it will certainly be revolutionary for the world of physical text.
In her book, Hayles says “Literature was never only words, never merely immaterial verbal constructions. Literary texts, like us, have bodies, an actuality necessitating that their materialities and meanings are deeply interwoven with each other.” With the Kindle, however, since all of the text is the same, no matter what book you’re reading, much of the physical aspect of the text is taken away. With the Kindle, the size of the text may be changed (there are five different sizes from which to choose), but the type of text itself is programmed to always be this same simple sans-serif font – no matter whether you’re reading the Wall Street Journal or Augustine’s Confessions.
To an extent, I suppose this lack of variation amongst different texts is freeing in the sense that it allows the reader to focus (almost) entirely on the words themselves. Without any variation amongst fonts or line spacing, along with standardized margins and no gutter space, the Kindle allows a reader to soon forget about these physical aspects completely, since the reader already subconsciously knows what to expect to see on the page before even turning on the device. Furthermore, while a huge criticism of the Kindle has been that it seems too much like reading on a computer screen, these complainers have apparently never touched a Kindle; the device uses an electronic-ink display technology that simulates actual ink on a page, and the screen itself simulates real paper – thus is not shiny like a computer screen, but has the matte characteristics of actual pages.
That having been said, I feel the Kindle has a long way to go in the world of text in general. With real books, it’s often really exciting to open up the cover and see differences in the physical text from one book to the next. There’s a subconscious aesthetic element to most books which is not addressed by the Kindle. When I open up Atlas Shrugged and see tightly-packed size 10 Times New Roman font, my mind perceives the text differently from when I crack the cover of my sans-serif size 12 copy of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I dive into Hayles’ book, many of my preconceived notions about the physicality of text are completely abandoned.
Though these differences may seem insignificant to Amazon’s engineers, I think these aesthetic elements have more bearing on a reader’s literary brain than the Kindle proponents take into account. Perhaps in future versions of the Kindle, these details regarding the physicality of text will be addressed. However, the question of whether or not this device can even come close to taking the place of physical books is one that deserves some serious consideration.