I remember a paragraph from a Cory Doctorow's review of the iPad that really resonated with me:
Quote:
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I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.
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(whole article here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02...nt-either.html)
What does this have to do with the PocketBook, you say?
Well, for me, PocketBook is the reader you can buy your kid to
"grow up to be confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better".
I don't even own a PocketBook myself (yet), but I campaigned heavily for my mother to get one when her old reader broke, and from then on I'm like a kid again, excited with this new device and how to best tweak it to my (ok, her) needs. The PocketBook community encourages everyone to participate. You can translate. You can write apps. You can convert dictionaries. You can suggest improvements. You can design logos. Everyone, according to their desires and abilities, can do something. You feel that the device is really, actually yours, evolving with you. It invites you to change it.
This is a thank you to the PocketBook team, official or not, and to all the users that brought something to the table, and continue to do so.
If I had a kid, I'd buy him a PocketBook.
