Just between the two of us _ assuming that’s not already the statistical case in newspaper readership _ we who consider it our journalistic duty to keep up with the latest computer gadgetry are often as gobsmacked and dumbfounded as the caveman Org at his first glimpse of fire.

Literally.

No, wait.

Figuratively.

One of my teenage sons has acquired a computer gadget known as the “iPod.” The other night, the boy _ we’ll call him sTuart _ was sprawled on the sOfa. From the easy chair I watched as he first wrist-flicked the iPod, then rubbed his thumb across the front, then gawked briefly and then either blew on the screen or wrist-flicked back in the opposite direction, repeating the process over and over.

Naturally, I assumed the iPod was not working for him properly. I suggested the two of us head to the garage, to the needle-nose pliers, the soldering iron, the duct tape, and together make the necessary repairs, just as the previous generation of dads shared those precious father-son fix-it moments with us boys and our wonky cassette tape recorders, our broken prescription eyeglasses and our loose-fitting orthodontic appliances. (It was a simpler time.)

But the iPod wasn’t broken. Stuart was merely mucking around with what he called an “ap,” which is short for “thing to do, APparently, on an iPod.” On the iPod screen was the image of a virtual lighter, in the traditional Zippo-brand design. The first wrist flick made the virtual lid appear to open, and the thumb stroke on the virtual striker lit a virtual flame, which my son extinguished, virtually, either by blowing on the screen or by flipping back the virtual lid _ all the while learning the virtues of cool, like some serious hep cat might mindlessly flick a real Zippo during noon hour in the parking lot of Kelvington High School in 1977.

At that moment, me Org. Me no get. What make fire movie come? How fire go?

Yet me Org only amazed, not afraid. Fire no burn finger. Ooo-ooo-ooo. Watch, boy. Org poke. See? Ooo-ooo.

“Dad!”

A lighter that does not technically light anything is merely a novelty, unlikely to change modern life. On the other hand, this week Canada was introduced to an electronic book that can actually be read _ quite possibly the most profound advance of the printed word since the 1400s when Germany finally mastered the mechanical press after centuries of working without the benefit, obviously, of an owner’s manual. Other hand-held devices that transmit print page by page have been around for years, of course, but this latest deal, Kindle, is the first with genuine potential to replace books and newspapers altogether, say the experts.

Kindle is the size and shape of a book. Pages appear on screen, and can be turned, much as in analog book format (formerly: “a book”). Developer Amazon.com already offers downloads of 300,000 titles in the company’s catalogue, typically at less than half the jacket list price. Canadian newspapers will soon join 90 others worldwide that are already available by subscription on Kindle.

Could this be the demise of reading as we’ve known it?

Hard to imagine. Even with the price dropping to $259, and likely to go much lower, Kindle is still a sensitive electronic device, not something I would feel comfortable keeping in my personal library, what with all the humidity of showers and flushing. Also, Kindles all look the same, making it difficult to show off, or to hide, your reading selection in a waiting room or on a bus, short of concealing that Chicken Soup for the Swishy Girly-Man download behind an actual book copy of the Caterpillar 3208T Diesel Engine shop manual, or vice-versa.

Then again, on predicting technology, I have been wrong, some 12,345 times so far. Perhaps, in few years, just as research has become “googling,” so, too, will this column be “kindling.”

 Not that it ever purported to be much more than fire-starter, but good luck finding an analog Zippo.

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