the future of reading / the book / etc.

[miriam1978]

The first time someone suggested that all books would one day be read electronically, I choked. Literally. This was in college, and I worshipped books as physical works of art; the move from paper to screen would surely suck the magic from them. This must be, I thought, a plot by evil corporations to stop us from reading. BUT. While I still enjoy

Comments

[anonymous]

How would they make money off of revisions then?

[miriam1978]

Same as now; revise and update the content and sell the new editions.

Bonus: it would be both impossible (and unnecessary, since they would be so affordable in the first place) to sell "used" copies of electronic textbooks.

Students would be able to search for content within the books, take notes in the margins, and use hyperlinks to get to exercises or other content.

In an tech-savvy environment where all of this would be possible and teachers, students, etc. were ready for it, some even more advanced version of the Kindle really would be an ideal medium for reading to study and learn. I know we're not there yet...just being optimistic about the long-term possibilities of the e-textbook.

[dametuckaberry]

I kind of think Kindle is brilliant. That being said, I'll wait till it's a lot less pricey and smaller. But I've refrained from reading a number of books because they're too big to carry on the subway. For those of us who need to travel light, electronic gadgets could ease an aching shoulder.

Then again, there is nothing like the smell of a library, and we'll never stop having that. Just like ipod hasn't killed live music or even the LP.

[caelfinn]

I love the idea of college text books and other reading materials for class provided on an electronic reading device. Students could also make all of their notes on it too (either by typing or using a stylus) and have everything all in one place.

Text search is one of the most powerful things electronic books give you. There is a saying in the computer world: "You can't grep dead trees." "grep" is a search command in the UNIX operating system. It's really true; it's so much faster to do a text search instead of using the index (some indices these days are abysmal) or worse, if there is no index then you're just stuck paging through trying to find something you read earlier.