For those that have a Kindle, you’ll be aware of the feature that allows you to see which are the passages other readers have heavily highlighted.
I like it because when I see that 415 other readers have highlighted a particular sentence, it makes me pay extra attention and figure out why it stood out to them.
It got me thinking that aside from this feature and the Kindle’s instantaneous dictionary, the Kindle is devoid of features, and.its reading experience has remained unchanged in the 10+ years that I’ve had one.
I’m sure this is deliberate to keep the reading experience as close to a physical book as possible, but a few optional features that one could turn on and off would be interesting to consider.
What if you could “pair read” and see the annotations in the margins from your Kindle friends or famous thinkers?
What if complex fantasy and science fiction novels had in-built context so that when you tap on the name of a character or fictitious item you’d see a definition and summary?
What about an indicator that showed how many people dropped off and stopped reading the book?
There are many features Amazon could add, but I do applaud their restraint. They’re trying to do one thing really well, and my above ideas are all nice-to-haves.