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"On Monday, the Kindle 2 will become the first e-reader available globally."
What's this about the Kindle being the first globally available ereader? Sony's Japanese, eh? And they sell to all those Yurpeen folks, don't they? And the screens get made in China, along o' all those Hanlin readers everyone rebrands, ain't they? Then, the iRexes, they're from Holland or somewhere damp like that, what?
"The only other events as important to the history of the book are the birth of print and the shift from the scroll to bound pages. The e-reader, now widely available, will likely change our thinking and our being as profoundly as the two previous pre-digital manifestations of text."
Goes on a bit don't he? Me, I think Jeff Bezos is one smart fellow, but maybe not quite of Gutenbergian stature, maybe. And probably Alan Kay and the Dynabook should get pride of place here, not some hopped up, electronified dry goods merchant.
As to the nomenclature thing: ereader, transbook, liseuse, dynabook, metabook*, digibook, and all those other 6-bit words won't mean much when people everywhere start calling them "aspirin" or "fridge" or whatever the bulk of folks pick. I'm with Jordan on this, stop worrying about what the marketers want to call them and make sure the table of contents work and all the words and grammar are correct.
*I always read that as "meathook" anyway.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
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