So, I can kinda see that technology is moving forward, yadda-yadda, but why e-books? I know everyone says they're the bomb, but why? Like, do people not spend ENOUGH time in front of the computer? Does there need to be more time you spend reading on the internet?
I am a big fan of the book Fahrenheit 451, and as such, I will probably never give up my anti-technology ways. (More on that later.) Technology can be useful, but such things have a peak. After a certain point technology is no longer useful, but one more time-consuming item that demands your attention. The idea of e-books is to 'take books to new levels.' What new levels? You mean the kind where people become totally deviod of having an actual imagination? Is THAT the kind of level we should take books to?
I can understand if people think it's ok to read a book on your computer...in some ways it's about portability, accessability, etc. But why try and reinvent the book? A book is still one of the few pieces of technology we have today that does not make itself obsolete. I really can't see how anyone is actually going to PAY for an online book, because it's not a book anymore...it's just one more text document that people have to scroll through, and what's worse, you just PAID someone to sit at a computer you're already paying to sit and read things at.
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I was talking to my boss about this exact thing--well, he was talking about lit journals, but basically, he argued that of all things that have been technologically advanced, books are the least likely to become obsolete, because we have such an immediate tactile relationship with them. I mean, half of my CDs are uploaded onto my computer and my iPod is far more convenient than carrying around 50 CDs and a discman, but I also have about 500 books (I'm estimating--I've never counted, but I do know I've run out of shelfspace). I have no desire to get all of those uploaded on to my computer so I can sit in bed with my laptop, or shove my laptop in my purse so I can read on the bus. If books are going to be replaced by computers, technology has to improve a great deal.
I think that the technology simply isn't there to effectively replace the book yet. The computer and the internet are inherently attention-spreading (a term I'm making up right now). While I'm not going to blame it for ADD, I'll admit that I'm doing other things while I write this comment, and I keep going back and forth.
Music is a short-term commitment. Five minutes, maybe. And, as Caitlin said, it's much easier to carry an iPod (or similar device) than 50 CDs. So it is more convenient.
Books are just too long to be effectively digitized. A book is a real time commitment, anywhere between a few hours and a few days (if you were reading it straight). It's hard to put that much commitment into a computer when you can just switch windows and do something else.
Now, someone might argue that newspapers and magazines are (slowly) becoming replaced digitally, but again, a newspaper article is quite a bit shorter than a book. Also, you can get news updates much faster on the web and, well, books don't change much after the first printing.
Another argument is, well, books are not high-tech, and are therefore just so much easier. You'll never need to change the batteries of a book. You'll never be (too) afraid of dropping a book on the floor or having someone steal it. You'll never be asked by a security guard to open a book before getting on a plane to make sure it's not a bomb. Well, I hope not.
Books, check 'em out.
I do enjoy academic texts digitized. It is much more convenient to search for information in a text if you can go "Edit-find on this page" than searching through a whole journal to find the one sentence that you need.
Not to mention, when you buy a book as a gift, you could buy anything from a cheap paperback to a leatherbound gilded first-edition. You can sign the inside cover, and get it signed by the original author. When you get tired of a book, you can sell it.
Trying to sell a text document would get you arrested for piracy (theoretically), and giving your friend an e-book with "Happy Birthday, all the best, 2006" typed at the top just doesn't cut it.
The only way e-books are superior (aside from everything mentioned above) is if you want to index them. And in that case you're not actually reading it, just typing in random words to find where they show up in a given text.
I'm actually becoming more of a fan of ebooks. The searchability is nice, as well as the control over text size. It's also a great deal easier to publish (and find!) niche literature as an ebook.
Cory Doctorow has an interesting talk up on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/kchn4
He's a co-editor of Boing-Boing, and a relatively sucessful science-fiction author, who's gained a lot of his popularity by doing concurrent releases of his books in paper format, and free ebook format.
Well, perhaps, Eric, but episodic literature is always popular in any form. The point is that EVENTUALLY it comes out as a full book, and people like to have the book in their hands.
And, to be honest with you, I MUCH prefer a cd player with a gazillion CDs than my iPod, though it's handy, it's just not as tactile. When I lay in bed with my CD player on, I can feel it working. I don't know why, but I find that comforting.
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