Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
Now darling, down here we don't call it lying. We call it male bovine excrement.
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In my circles the polite term is "factually incorrect".
It sidesteps the question of whether they are lying outright or merely misinformed.
By now it is painfully obvious that there is a lot of misinformation flowing in the traditionalist camp (we've all seen some of the whoppers, right?) so people end up saying and doing stupid things because they don't understand the new world ebooks have created. These are people who still don't fully understand the consequences the 1995 revolution that is online sales of pbooks, old and new, much less the 2007 ebook evolution that mainstreamed ebooks or the effects of the conspiracy that led to the rise of Indies. They think and act like it's still 1994 and when reality doesn't match their expectations they lash out at the "obvious" target, the chief beneficiary of the continuing waves of change.
They simply fail to see the bigger picture.
Mostly because they aren't used to authors and readers having real power. Until they accept that reality they will keep on getting blindsided by every new development.
Which brings us back on topic: Bezos may simply be changing his twitter approach or maybe he had a few minutes of free time after being briefed by the Lab126 crew on the new Kindles and was impressed enough to throw out a teaser. But we're all wondering what is coming because a new Kindle might be a game changer, yet another big development: it might be the first workable academic ereader or a "good enough" color reader that can handle comics, magazines, cookbooks and other non-fiction...
...or it might not.
It might simply be a refinement of existing capabilities.
We won't know until next week, if at all.
If it truly is something new, it's impact might not be immediately apparent. The full impact of the first Kindle took years to ripple out. (Or more recently, of the Echo, which instead of being merely an online connected speaker for music streaming turned out to be a home automation trojan.)
It is one of the reasons why tracking technology is so fascinating: sometimes a new development is a pebble thrown into a pond, sometimes it's a boulder. And we rarely know which it is until later.
In the meantine, we kill time speculating and fantasizing...