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One phenomenon of living for any length of time in the modern personal electronics age is the fleeting nostalgia felt for past devices.

Indeed, we can measure the passage of time by the rapidly changing eras of technology almost as often as we use calendars.

After 10 years, many of us have drawers filled with old digital phones, music players, calculators, cameras and PDAs - enough artifacts, in fact, to open mini-museums.

If you are old enough, you have invariably replaced your favorite songs and their players several times (think eight-tracks and those blocky music cassette tapes).

Today, it is move-over-bookshelf. Technology is coming after your books in a big way.

Recently, Amazon launched the Kindle, its new digital book reader.

Newsweek carried the story of the Kindle, which is about the size of a smaller novel and lightweight.

Ergonomically, it feels like a folded-over paperback, fitting into your hand wider on one side than the other.

Think iPod for books. The Kindle comes complete with free wireless access to the Amazon book mother ship to enable you to order books, newspapers and other text media from nearly anywhere without a computer.

This innovation separates the Kindle from all other electronic book readers that have come before it.

Out of the box, the Kindle holds 200 books and has a 250,000-word dictionary built in ready to define any word you need instantly. With extra memory, you can carry thousands of books.

Released just in time for the holiday gift-giving frenzy, Amazon sold out of Kindles within five hours. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos promises more deliveries are imminent.

Bezos, in his Web interview with Charlie Rose (charlierose.com), artfully describes how a book disappears as the words ignite the imagination of the reader.

Amazon's aim for the Kindle is to electronically replicate this magic, and go beyond, to "outbook the book," as Bezos put it.

Features like instant page recovery, note-taking, word look-up, vast sources of inexpensively priced books, and near instant availability are sure to capture the attention of many ardent book fans.

Bezos forecasts the day in the near future when every book ever printed will be available electronically. Most must be purchased, though many books are free from sites like Gutenberg.org.

Another exciting evolution to consider is how the Kindle will influence the younger people among us who have ditched reading for the instant allure of electronic music or games.

Certainly, the possibilities for growing up fresh in the fully digital age with the world's library at your instant disposal opens new educational and entertainment dimensions.

The wise kid will embrace this brave new world in ways nearly unimaginable to older folks.

Before you hug your hefty stacks of treasured books as I want to do, consider how the iPod has removed the clutter and inconvenience of music CDs.

I will not dispose of my real book library, now approaching several thousand books. I will, however, grow into the Kindle, if for no other reason than its interactive dictionary.

I like to read multiple books at the same time. I appreciate the timeless conversations that can emerge in my mind between the authors in such untethered dialog.

The Kindle is here. Technology is transient. Meanwhile, to get a Kindle you will have to get in line.