Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'd like someone who can do a real translation to let us know if he was calling all ebook readers "Taliban," or if that referred specifically to the iPad. (It's possible that the difference is unclear in the original, but it's also possible that the meaning just doesn't auto-translate well.)
He has a point, in that e-texts remove the personal qualities we associate with books; it's something the publishing industries are going to need to deal with in a few years--can I hand my favorite series off to my kids? Will they remember them as fondly as I remember my shelves of paperbacks?
However, these concerns aren't directly relevant to ebooks' production and marketing--when cars started to replace horses, plenty of people were unhappy that they'd lose the organic connection to travel, but it didn't stop cars from dominating the marketplace eventually.
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That's the point.
When it's a matter of going from here to there, cars win over horses.
But there are still lots of people who enjoy horse riding just for the fun of it. There are lots of
Horse Whisperers who actually love horses as living beings.
What Eco says is that there will always be people who love books. And no electronic device can replace a paper edition for them. E-readers are very good, even better than print, as a mean to get information in the written form, but e-editions won't likely be cult objects in the time being.
Except for a few e-Talibans....
