And yes, I will remind my friend that, as a printed book reader, he too is a gadget head. An excellent riposte!

I look forward to your review, and condolences again for the loss of your friend, who was also a valued member of the Bloomington community.

But I’d like to comment on your opener here: I am also on a similar boat in that I love printed books and I love my gadgets and most that electronic technologies have to offer. And this tendency of ours is not all that unusual.

However, we (not as in you and I, but people in general) often forget that the book is also a technology. But it is a technology that we have internalized… like writing (as claimed by Ong, Bolter and other media ecologists)… We don’t perceive them as technologies anymore.

What I am trying to say is that my passion for technology doesn’t exclude either (as yours don’t seem to either). Instead, I tend to look at how these seemingly disparate technologies interact, define, and redefine each other’s roles and functionalites in society and culture in general. None of which contradicts your position here (or in your book)… but I thought this point should also be made here. So, the next time your friend calls you a gadget-head, you kindly remind him that so is he

BTW, I am working on a blog post on LAoP and the review I promised is coming, just that this week has been hard with the loss of a good friend…

As for your green impulses, I second them. And for whatever it’s worth, I don’t buy into the hype that silicone and plastic are somehow more “green” than renewable resources like trees.

Wish I were more of a (paper) letter writer these days, as I used to be a pretty prolific one. Email is probably my main concession to the electronic life.

I’ll post one of my auto-indexes to LAoP one of these days. I used to use tape-flags, but then my books began looking like the courtyard at the United Nations.

One last, unrelated thing: loved the restaurant review you Twittered a few weeks ago. Very creative.

I came up with this obnoxious label for myself in grad school — Neo-Native American & technophylic luddite. Where books are concerned, even my ‘green’ side lusts for tree blood and their pulpy bodies. No kindlekind, ever, for me, thankyouverymuch. I will remain a lifetime member of the paper/bound book & handwritten letter club.

I am very curious to see how you index. I underline for miles & make notes in the margins, but there’s no hope for me when I try to find a passage.