I don't want to be a dick and argue with Cory Doctorow, who is bright and famous, but every time I read this article I feel frustrated. I tolerate computer screens, yes. I can read off one for eight hours a day. It is not a good screen for reading a book off of. It's bright and very slightly stresses my eye and most importantly, it's not invisible. I don't sink into the content. E-ink vanishes as I read it. I curl up into it mentally the way I'll physically curl up with a good book. I gladly put down money for the Kindle. It was utterly worth my money.

The problem with Doctorow is that he's a geek more than he is a writer. Yeah, he got himself published thanks to BoingBoing, but he's not from the breed of writer that lives and breathes for language. I'm not the best spokesperson here because I'm lodged in between the two types, but I'm close enough to the one side, and I'm friends with enough people over the brink, to be able to definitely say that the people who are obsessed with language will never tolerate something like a light-based screen. Some people I know are in fact physically sensitive: they won't watch TV because they don't like how jumpy and powerful the screen is. Those same people are fine with e-ink, because it's so neutral.

Maybe most people here either don't get that or don't care. I've been in arguments with people here who think that literature is overrated and overblown by English majors: it's a typical elitist hacker response. Doctorow absolutely has that opinion. But as somebody whose startup is focused entirely on the English language, and on emphasizing beautiful language, I rather disagree, and I'd say that the people who are really pushing literature forward today are still the ones who read ink and write ink, and a lot of those people won't put up with screens as a primary reading type. I'm sure that many non-writers are the same way.