Firstly, let's get one thing clear – an eBook version still requires atoms – wether it's the silicon or germanium transistors in your Kindle's flash drive or the aluminum platters spinning away at thousands of rpm continuously in “the cloud”. The storage of digital information, like it's analog counterpart, is neither free nor perpetual. If your original iPod is any indication, then most likely you won't be using your current Kindle 5 years from now, certainly not 10 when the EEPROM starts behaving erratically. Meanwhile Amazon's cloud storage is so vast and their facilities so numerous that drives are failing nearly continuously, like every few minutes continuously, swapped piecemeal as the second law of thermodynamics takes its inevitable course, as certified by Underwriters Laboratories.

The author seems to be arguing that we shouldn't be so wasteful as to throw away our Plasma Televisions just because they discolor after 7 years and upgrade to newer models with LCD's or LED's or OLED's or 3D Internet Streaming or… ad infinitum.

I can scarcely get software from 40 years ago to run, even when I have their source in plaintext; the entire infrastructure which supports it has since moved on to newer platforms, which among other things, require exotic minerals (such as Coltan) from genocidal economies which we're arguably better off not supporting in their current forms.

In the time it takes for a book to turn to pulp, one can grow a new forrest. For the next few generations at least, one can scarcely say the same about the resources involved with manufacturing Kindles. And while yes, one can rally on about evils of producing physical goods, I think it may be missing the forrest for the trees.

I could have simply bought the book on my Kindle, but instead, I have to get up, go to a store and purchase for a higher price, her book at retail. All the very things she rails against in her purchase, work, watch TV treadmill. Oh well – hopefully they get the memo and put the book on the Kindle.