Gosh, I do not mean to imply for a minute that anything is cut and dried.
Our nascent world of digital publishing is the wild west with all its attendant limitless possibilities and dangers. Nothing is certain and everything is up for grabs. We live in a very "gadget-oriented" time, especially in terms of e-books. And it is a great temptation to frame things in that context - hard drives crashing, massive power failures etc. Electronic paper is making so many advances daily, I find it difficult to track. When we talk about "re-inventing
the book" it may be useful to remove hardware considerations for a bit (difficult as that is to do at this point). I can hear it now - "But you can't separate discussion of the two." Oh yes we can, and some day we must. At what point will the hardware cease to drive the software? I believe it will happen. Electronic paper may well become ubiquitous. What then? Goodbye device, hello commodity.
So, what does the future re-invented digital
book look like? (
not book reading device!) What features and capabilities are embeded? Those of us who are scholars, scientists, librarians or researchers have very different needs than pure pleasure readers. Publishers (and even e-book gadget makers!) need to and (even want) to know what these are. Who will drive that discussion? Them or us? Right now there is a lot of second-guessing going on. Maybe that is necessary at this stage of the game. There needs to be a vision.
I have to laugh because it almost seems sometimes like some folks expect digital publishers and users to throw up their hands and say "Ok, experiment failed, let's go back to paper". Ain't gonna happen. I don't know if p-books are "dead". But it's exciting to be around the neighborhood these days, and things are just heating up.