Amazon has debuted its Kindle e-book reader. On first glance the product features trump other systems currently on the market. The Kindle can store over 200 book titles and access newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Irish Times. Depending on wireless data transfer usage, the battery life can last 2-7+ days. The devices uses EVDO wireless technology to connect to Amazon's distribution servers. No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments are required. The Kindle's display is based on e-Ink technology.

Comments from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo during the unveiling at New York's W Hotel in Union Square speaks to the challenge eBook devices face as they compete against their printed counterparts:

"Books have stubbornly resisted digitization," he elaborated. "I think there's a very good reason for that, and that is, the book is so highly evolved and so suited to its task that it's very hard to displace."

"We forget (that the printed book) is a 500-year-old technology, and we sort of forget that it's even a technology," Bezos mused. "Gutenberg would still recognize a modern-day book."

The book hasn't changed much since it was invented 500 years ago and for many it has set the benchmark on how we store and retrieve information. And has set many of our expectation for information technology: it's instant-on, easy to use, durable, sharable, and allows us to focus our attention. As Steven Levy points out in his Newsweek story, "The Future of Reading," for good or bad, the Kindle disrupts the way we seek and consume information:

Though the Kindle is at heart a reading machine made by a bookseller—and works most impressively when you are buying a book or reading it—it is also something more: a perpetually connected Internet device. A few twitches of the fingers and that zoned-in connection between your mind and an author's machinations can be interrupted—or enhanced—by an avalanche of data. Therein lies the disruptive nature of the Amazon Kindle. It's the first "always-on" book.

And there will still be room for print. The Kindle, (and the Sony Reader, and Apple's iPhone) won't replace print altogether, but these gadgets make it easier to distribute and access information in a timely fashion which leads to increased use of non-print media for certain applications. The free wireless access to Wikipedia provided by the Kindle is a perfect example of this shift.