Dumpling - agree with you on all points, especially Kindles being yet another thing to have to keep secure, along with mobile phones.
I love the atmosphere in bookshops and being able to potter round all the sections, looking at the displays, admiring the cover designs, flicking through a book at random, etc. Isn't going into a bookshop (maybe sitting down for a while to "dip into" a book) a shared communal experience, like going to the cinema? Many of the chain bookshops invite authors in who do story reading sessions for children at the weekend.
I would imagine the increasing popularity of Kindles will inevitably result in a drastic reduction in new and second hand bookshops. What will the future for libraries - another communal experience - be? Are we all going to end up spending most of our time at home, dependent on our access to the outside world via one screen or another?
There have also been several articles that question the durability of Kindles - people saying that they "freeze" or need to be replaced fairly regularly. And aren't we being "hooked into" yet another (relatively expensive) item that we will be encouraged to regularly "update" as more and more functions are added? What will happen to old, out-of-date or broken Kindles - can they be re-cycled?
Having said all that, I have to acknowledge that for people with poor eyesight, the facility to enlarge the font and create more contrast must be very useful.