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Originally Posted by axel77
Well I disagree with this principle philosophy that change "just happens", and the path we are going is actually already determined by "whatever", and we can not really influence it, as progress is already pretermined (by god???) This attitude was the principle idea of 'the modern' so from 1950 until aprox 1990, 2000. We can very well as sociecty decide again a technolgy, or decide for one technolgy against the other, hot topics in this issues are genetic engineering, nuclear energy now coming co2 exhausting worries and upcoming nano technology...
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The one thing we can say with certainty about tomorrow is that it will be different than today. We probably don't know and can't know
how it will be different -- only that it
will be.
What bothers people isn't change, per se -- it's the
rate of change, which can be highly disruptive.
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While I do fully understand people raising concerns to this technologies and like to observe public negotations about what to do, this doesn't apply to eBooks and eBookreader at all, there is no 'danger' at all going out of this technology.
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Depends on who you are. If you're a brick and mortar bookstore, already struggling with flat or declining sales. ebooks
are a threat. Everyone in your area who buys an ebook instead of a pbook is one less potential sale for you.
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So why do people like this and the publisher actually make public statements why eBooks are to fail? I mean if are *really* sure they fail, they wouldn't make any public statements about this. We also don't make a great story: "Why the sun will arise again tomorrow morning!". The truth is they actuall fear this technology to be successfull, because they think it endangers them in their social position of power/economy/status. I guess social status (oh look the man must be smart who got so much books visibly on his wall) is what Nick Hornby fears about, economy power the publisher hosting this.
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As I read Nick Hornsby's post, I saw him as less unhappy with ebooks than with the state of publishing in general. Note his opening remarks about the bookstore he visited, and the lack of business he observed.
And while power and status are powerful motivators, they aren't the only ones. I suspect a lot of publishers fear ebooks because they require major changes to an existing business model, and if they do it wrong, they can be
out of business.
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Dennis