The Tech Trap

I have lost a friend. My Kindle died. An avid reader, I always have a stash

of books. Books are my “fix,” so much a part of my daily life they could be called an addiction—and I wouldn’t mind.

My publisher son-in-law got a Kindle early on and one weekend showed me how it worked. Dazzling!

The idea of easily transporting twenty books to the UK in summer, nicely secured in this efficient tech-toy, seemed perfect. And it has been for five years. I have alternated with real books, but for traveling? My Kindle has made delayed planes bearable and perfect bedtime reading when visiting a friend.

Now my Kindle is dead. Maybe I dropped it? I don’t know.

 I went online to get a new one.

Not a single Kindle offered looked familiar. I had no idea what to buy. I found myself trapped and dismayed by upgrading---a word I have begun to dislike. The device had metamorphosed.

I didn’t want to upgrade. I wanted my Kindle back! I knew how to use it; I was fond of its blue leather cover with the light. What were they doing to me? No new Kindle was even the same size as mine. So much for the extravagant blue cover which had been a gift.

I ordered the least new-fangled Kindle and it arrived swiftly. I opened the box to find, as I had dreaded, not my friend at all, but a complete stranger.

I understand that tech companies are under intense pressure to improve their products. It’s a tough, competitive world they play in. It’s not the technological leaps themselves that I mind; it’s being trapped into them that I object to.

Couldn’t they allow buyers the option of purchasing the upgraded, whizziest, new toy—seducing us with its bells and whistles--at the same time that they offer the familiar standby? Is there no profit in offering consumers the option between old and new models?

Apparently not.  Not in America. We have upgrade mania. New is always better and we rush to buy it.

What happened to good enough?

Thinking myself perhaps too senior to tolerate rapid, radical, product alteration, I raised the trapped-into-upgrading subject with a young friend, who is skillful with all things technological.

“I know exactly what you mean about compulsory upgrading,” she said. “It’s ridiculous. I am keeping my original Blackberry until it dies.” (She’d better not drop it.)

The woman on Kindle Help told me not to worry, that this new Kindle would also become my “friend.”

 Right now, after four phone calls to Kindle Help? It’s hard to believe.