Kindles are just books and books are already mostly fairly compact and inexpensive long-form entertainment and information.

They're convenient but if they went away tomorrow, my life wouldn't really change in any material way. That's not really the case with smartphones much less the internet more broadly.

That was exactly my point.

Funny, I had "The collected stories of Frank Herbert" as my next read on my tablet. Here's a juicy quote from like the third screen of the first story:

"The bedside newstape offered a long selection of stories [...]. He punched code letters for eight items, flipped the machine to audio and listened to the news while dressing."

Anything qualitative there? Or all of it quantitative?

Story is "Operation Syndrome", first published in 1954.

Hey, where are our glowglobes and chairdogs btw?

That has to be the most dystopian-sci-fi-turning-into-reality-fast thing I've read in a while.

I'd take smartphones vanishing rather than books any day.