"Take all of your arguments against the inevitability of e-books and substitute the word "horse" for "book" and the word "car" for "e-book." Here are a few examples to whet your appetite for the (really) inevitable debate in the discussion section at the end of this article.
"Books will never go away." True! Horses have not gone away either.
"Books have advantages over e-books that will never be overcome." True! Horses can travel over rough terrain that no car can navigate. Paved roads don't go everywhere, nor should they.
"Books provide sensory/sentimental/sensual experiences that e-books can't match." True! Cars just can't match the experience of caring for and riding a horse: the smells, the textures, the sensations, the companionship with another living being.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Did you ride a horse to work today? I didn't. I'm sure plenty of people swore they would never ride in or operate a "horseless carriage"—and they never did! And then they died."
2.03.2009
e-books by an expert
The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age
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4 comments:
It makes me laugh to see people trying to make money off of things that aren't making money by telling consumers that they're simply wrong about their choices — and where is this more true than with e- or i- anything?
Yes, and then again, Apple has convinced us to buy many a things we never knew we needed. See: iPhone and all apps.
It didn't take much convincing. As soon as Napster was up and running, the Mp3 player was invented (not yet an Apple market at the time), and that stuff was flying off the shelves. We don't need it, but we like it.
There will always be room for online reading content of many, many kinds, but I don't think full books will ever be big. They've tried since 2002; how much more evidence do we need?
Yeah - I don't know if I'll ever like reading something on my laptop screen but this article has me convinced that the screen is not an issue anymore with new technology. A kindle is a beautiful thing.
The problem is that people don't read books (as much as they watch movies and youtube videos) so it makes no economic sense to invest money into making e-books sexy.
At the same time, paying publishers to rape forests also isn't very sexy or economical.... so we are at a crossroads.
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