Quote:
Originally Posted by LDBoblo
I have to say I agree with almost everything he said. Ebook technology is pretty poor, as is publisher support. Technology adopters often avoid too much negative criticism, afraid it will cause the public to reject a good idea. In my opinion, this leads to a bit too much complacency.
If you want to treat the written word as a form of manifest beauty in both tangible and intangible forms, ebook readers like the Kindle are pretty poor. They get words into your brain in a form a bit less painful than a bright backlit computer screen, but they don't do much more.
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Ebook readers are very convenient. The adapt well to individual needs for font size. A reader device weighs a lot less than books. It's more comfortable to sit with because you don't have to hold it open (and it doesn't weight 5 pounds like the pbook I'm currently reading). Takes up less space. When you get used to all this, it goes a long way to make up for the more basic aestethics of the e-ink screen. However, printed books are far from always nicer looking than an e-book 'page'. Paperback certainly aren't.
Edit: Good article, and it adresses many of the issues that does exist. I like to compare the situation with the early www - lots of possibilities but now enough knowledge about how and why