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I think it depends on whether or not the added functionality is built into the OS/firmware, or if it's done by running something else.
Windows is a great example. Okay, I guess it never really ran great, but spec-wise, Win 95 ran on pretty minimal hardware.
But then they built more and more stuff into windows. Not as programs you run separately, but stuff loaded automatically or tied into it. And so today, in order to run the latest version of Windows, you need a super-computer, at least by 1995 standards. And yet, it's really not any better...
I mean, if you play PC games, you'll generally see that the latest version of windows requires about a 1 (or double) the amount of ram you had for the previous version of windows. For the same performance.
(Okay, sure, later MS clouded the issue by only releasing newer versions of DirectX in later versions of windows. But that's just to sell newer versions of Windows).
Anyway, my point is, if they just have applications you can download that run as programs, then the Kindle likely won't be adversely affected. But if they add more and more features built into the Kindle, then it's possible the firmware will suffer. Or even just adding more frills to features.
For instance, Searching in Windows XP vs 95. They added an animated dog. Whee. But that animated dog now makes it take longer to do a search, because it has to load the animations of the dog (and animate the dog while searching).
Editing a document/book might be a case of that. No animated dog, but probably extra functions that would eat up memory and CPU and thus make the reader slightly less responsive. Maybe not noticeable, but maybe it would be slightly.
On the other hand, if they had a separate editing program outside the reader, then the reader wouldn't be affected.
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