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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
Yes, excellent! I especially love this analogy
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It still has me stumped -- but probably was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and should not be subjected to intense scrutiny. But that's just what the general public will do, more or less unconsciously, so there may be some point in seeing where it leads.
Vinyl contra MP3 ... got it. Some further thought probably convinces me that the comparison is sound, since CD players and audio casettes won't usually take vigourous physical activity very well, while solid-state devices don't need anti-bump measures.
But books contra e-books? I won't read while I'm jogging, nor will I read anywhere else where I can't take a pocket book. (In fact, I will probably read pocket books in places where I need an extra light for the e-book reader, assuming I have a e-Ink based one. And how many use their e-book reader in the bath?) The difference here seems rather to be that I can postpone the decision of what I will read: it's one pocket book on the one hand, and several dozen texts on an e-book reader on the other. That's a different kind of relation: one involving quantity rather than quality. That is probably where the comparison is lost -- I suspect fairly few people will be in the position where they want to be able to take one or two books more on the bus, in the car or to the dentist's waiting-room, yet they will certainly want to have a wide selection of music to listen to.
The vinyl-MP3 comparison holds up reasonably well in another context, though: you probably have to do the conversion yourself. That's about where we are, it seems: Where can I find a legit MP3 of ... well, say, Marion Meadows or Pat Metheny? If I want a Dan Brown title in a format I can use on my particular e-book reader, I probably also will have to do it on my own.
(Well, yes, I can find ebooks of, Dan Brown or, say, Stanley Weyman, but I have to buy new reading software to read them. Not in 'MP3', but in some proprietary format.)
I'm almost tempted to suggest that it's more like having a car, and lots of places to go, only to find that the roads there haven't been built yet, or are open only to trains or buses. (But that doesn't hold up to scrutiny any better, does it?)
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Noone is reviewing Gutenberg or the PD ebooks.com titles, it seems ... yet that might be one of these roads needing to be built: one of the ways to place what is actually available today on the mental radar screen of prospective e-book readers. Who are the Siskel & Ebert of the PD e-book title?