Earlier this week my mother-in-law gave my husband a Kindle. That’s not particularly unusual. She tends towards being overly generous. I have learned not to complement her on anything in her house lest she make me take it home. The unusual part is that I am envious of his Kindle.
This is very unlike me. I almost never get jealous of stuff. I have too much stuff and feel very little need to acquire more (although I wouldn’t complain if a more manual sewing machine made its way into my life). I am much more likely to envy attention and love. For example, I am regularly jealous of my husband because his cat likes to sleep with him and my cat sleeps downstairs. –As I was writing that last sentence my husband came downstairs and told me how lovely it was that his cat spent the whole night with him. Grrrr Arrgh.
The other reason my device envy is weird is because I already have a Nook that I have customized to my use and I am very happy with it. His Kindle is bottom of the line, only usable for reading. My Nook is top of the line and I love all the things I can do with it. His Kindle is small and thin, but my Nook has a bigger screen and is light and easy to carry around. So why I am envious?
Several months ago, I was bragging about my Nook to a friend of mine and he told me that he is very happy with his Kindle because it is a single function device. He already had an iPhone and wasted way too much time on it. He knew if his Kindle had more functionality, he wouldn’t read on it. He would just play games. My husband is seriously addicted to playing games on Facebook, so I am very pleased that he now spends more time on the couch with me reading books on his Kindle. Leading me to ask once again, why the envy?
I think I am envious of the fact that it is a single function device. When I want to read something and pick up my Nook, I am still left with decisions that need to be made. Do I read one of the books I have loaded on to my device? Do I listen to a podcast? Do I read my RSS feeds? Do I read the articles I have saved in Pocket? Sometimes the decisions get too overwhelming and I just pick up a paper book to read. It turns out that I don’t really have device envy. I have decision-making envy.