Ezra Klein discusses Amazon’s Kindle in print and video

The current issue of the Columbia Review of Journalism focuses on the future of writing and reading, offering up a spate of interesting writers examining various threads of that theme. Of particular note is The American Prospect associate editor Ezra Klein’s look at the Kindle, Amazon’s new digital book reader. Books may be in decline, he surmises, but people are still reading all the time – we’re glued to our computer screens. So surely the Kindle is onto something?

This may, ultimately, prove to be Amazon’s truly crucial role—not driving the future of reading so much as the future of writing. E-reading technology will push forward even without Amazon’s involvement. The Kindle will soon face stiff competition from a bevy of able competitors. […] But if the Kindle’s successor or competitors are to succeed, it will be because Amazon used its status as the world’s largest online bookseller to force authors to think seriously about creating content that works better than the book, that goes where the book cannot, that’s interactive and cooperative and open in ways that printed text will never be. [via cjr]