Reading in the Age of Amazon

[fjtorres]

The verge takes a look at the people behind Kindle and Lab126 and the vision they have for future Kindles:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/17/7...dible-hachette

As Amazon popularized ebooks over the last decade, it catalyzed a necessary change in our reading habits. By 2007, when the first Kindle emerged, the publishing world had to compete with Facebook, mobile games, and a hundred other distractions; to retain their vitality, books needed to adapt. Over the years, Amazon has stuffed its e-readers with features making them easier to read, like embedded dictionaries and translators; it’s added a social network; it’s even introduced a feature that seamlessly turns text into audio and back at our convenience. Books are vessels for transmitting ideas, and today the vessels have ideas of their own own: about what we should read, and how we should read it.

Hundreds of millions of tablets and e-readers have been sold, but today we're still inclined to think of a book as words on a page. Amazon's success with Kindle has hinged on recognizing how much more they can be. So where does the company go from here? In a series of rare, on-the-record interviews for Kindle’s 7th anniversary, Amazon executives sketched out their evolving vision for the future of reading. It's wild — and it's coming into focus faster than you might have guessed.

It's a good read.

[Victoria]

It is a good read - thanks for posting!

[crich70]

We shouldn't forget the late Michael S. Hart who was a bit ahead of his time when he started what became Project Gutenberg. Back then few had computers and there wasn't even a hint of things like dedicated e-readers like we have today. He and others like him helped to create the environment in which ebooks now exist.