Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Why would I want to read an e-book? It's in a format that hurts my eyes, it requires hardware I either don't have or do not enjoy spending hours in front of, and the digital rights problem is something I don't want to deal with. Give me a paperback or hardback book any day -- THAT I'll read. I think it will be a long, long, long time before e-books catch on, if ever, and it will be longer than that before *I* read one.

Rufus, I wouldn't want to read an ebook now. But someday they'll be eye-friendly. And even though you may resist them, your kids will be given them by the schools because they'll so lower the cost of text books.

As for the DRM: Yup, I agree. We need to fight the coming restrictions now.

You know, as a digital library manager, you'd think I'd be saying, "arf arf, woof woof," but you're missing the distinction between book depositories and cultural third places we can use for education, (human) networking, socialization, and so forth. Andrei Codrescu, hardly a hot-tech kind of writer, gave a wonderful talk at the American Library Association midwinter conference this January where he talked about the amazing roles libraries can play in a post-dead-tree-technology society. We still need human contact. Go hug your family and remind yourself of that.

You said "When all our works are digitized, a local library will be nothing but a playlist." Now, that's fine if browsing in physical space adds nothing substantive to the experience of looking for reading (or doing research) OR if browsing in virtual space is a whole lot cognitively cheaper. But I'm skeptical -- and I've seen no research one way or another on any of this. I worry about what we're like to throw out with the bathwater, here.

I know this was just a "won't it be cool when. . ." post, but as with many important ideas, the concept of digitizing all of the world's knowledge and making it accessible to everyone in multiple places and multiple formats is not simple. I'd be willing to bet we won't see it in our lifetimes.

And while I take in a lot of information digitally, there's nothing like curling up in front of the fire with a real book.

Bah! You're all bunch of pessimists and cranky old men. :) We will see it in our lifetimes, and the benefits of it will be unimaginable. I've been waiting for years to get to a point where, after reading a mind-blowing page of some earth-shattering piece of non-fiction, I can look up the page online and see everyone who has ever linked to or commented on. I don't just want the book, I want everyone's related knowledge - elaborations, corrections, arguments against. That's knowledge.

As for the eye strain problem:

http://eink.com/

It's finally coming out next month!