The sight has become familiar: In late August and early January, we become accustomed to students walking across campus, laden with white-beige campus store bags. The act has become ritual: Every semester, we find ourselves in the lower level of the campus store, carrying red baskets and meandering through aisles until we’re 50 pounds heavier and $500 poorer.

In May,  Amazon introduced the Kindle DX as a way to read textbooks, newspapers and other large documents in electronic form. The new device rides off the success of the Kindle, which has expanded since its introduction in 2007 to include 275,000 book titles. This fall, six colleges and universities will test the DX as a substitute for textbooks in a pilot program for students, and the success or failure of this program may determine the future of our book-laden days.

When the original Kindle was first introduced, its discussion in casual conversation seemed to center around a cost-benefit analysis: Does it detract from our experiences as readers when we see print on a screen rather than on a page? Admittedly, there is something special—sacred, even—about the act of page-turning. There is something unique and significant about owning this book, writing in it, dog-earing it.

This is perhaps true on an individual level—and we have every right to be emotionally attached to that copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” from 10h grade—but in a collegiate setting, our books, unfortunately, often become irrelevant after the semester ends. We may have been thrilled to take a class on memory and cognition, but a book full of brain diagrams and case studies isn’t something that we’ll go back to after we cram them into our heads during finals week. Because of the frequency at which teachers change their preferred editions and schools change their course offerings, our books often can’t be resold or reused, and what we end up with are stacks of now-useless paper, print and cardboard.

The speed at which editions change reflects the speed at which human knowledge changes; the subjects we study and the pedagogies by which we’re taught them are constantly evolving. Because textbooks aim for accuracy and objectivity, electronic textbooks—which can be updated instantaneously when inaccuracies are discovered—are ideal.
Especially in light of recent green initiatives—sustainable construction, paying for printing—it seems reasonable for the University to offer incentives for courses to use paperless textbooks or textbooks with paperless options, and for our professors to push for paperless editions in their published work. Our relationship with technology changes as quickly as knowledge itself, and a future without heavy, wasteful and expensive textbooks is not only possible, but also preferable.