The way I look at this debate is that ebooks have brought us to a point of transition. During this period, leveraging the known, existing paradigm of the paper paged-based book is really a requirement for speeding the pace of adoption. At some point in the future, I would expect the need for page numbers to diminish as more people get used to interacting in a different way with their reading material. But right now....page numbers are needed if this technology is going to be accepted and adopted by the broad masses.
So give us the
page numbers!
-Jeff