CDs replaced records and tapes almost overnight because people could recognize that they were an improved technology. To plunk down another $500 for a single purpose gizmo to use them.Ĭompact discs were introduced to the marketplace the same year as the first eBooks. Books provide all of these and more without having Kindle will never command any sizable market share because it is too expensive, can’t be traded, can’tįill up bookshelves, can’t be given to a friend, can’t be inscribed by the author, can’t be safely read at the beach, in the bath, etc. Why? Because the book (codex) is in an almost perfect technology and Kindle is not an improvement. No matter how much the NYT tries to help out Amazon by advertising Kindle, the fact still remains that it is NOT a very compelling technology and will likely disappear like every other unsuccessful electronic “book” Of symbolic content to active pursuit thereof and who pass those preferences on to their offspring. I blame people who prefer passive ingestion But I don’t blame the Kindle for that seeming inevitability. Of intellectual habitat and sustenance and the species will indeed be impoverished by that fact. Lastly, I think that at some point, readers will largely die out due to lack But theseĪre people who expect technology to enhance their experiences of art and of the world and that expectation is somewhat tautological. I think it’s possible that people who don’t normally read a lot might pick up a Kindle or another reader and have a go at becoming readers. We still read, and I think that readers will always read – as long, that is, as there remains a system for supporting theĬreation and dissemination of written material. Smells that our piles and piles and shelves and shelves of paper books pick up. We have a Kindle, and well, it’s basically another delivery system for books, sans the dust and musty I have to wonder if we’re really talking here about people who already don’t read much. The great thing about technology is that I can tell you myself that so far I’ve read eleven books on my Kindle, and I don’t even want to get into the “serialization” threats (Oh no! Imagine if Dostoevsky had first been read in pieces! Er….) suffice to say the originalĪrticle and the sum given here are both more provocative than truly thought-provoking. Reading something one doesn’t feel like reading because thereĪre no other options isn’t a sign of “deep reading,” unless such reading is meaningless, and giving those who have busy lives the opportunity to read books (in however piecemeal a fashion) In the example Johnson gives in the beginning of his article he’s not even clicking a hyperlink he’s simply doing the e-book equivalent of putting down a bookĪnd picking up a new one, which is what he likely would have done anyway had he been at home (or in a bookstore!) instead of in a restaurant. ![]() The kind of people who read entire books will continue to read them in any form, and Cliff Notes readers will have a more accessible medium with which to introduce themselves to (or, as the case Lamenting Google’s snippetization of literature.) (Alarmed by this brave new world? Go back and reread John Updike’s essay in the Book Review Maybe Paper Cuts should replace the Living With Music feature with playlists of favorite literary moments? Johnson also imagines the day when you’ll be able to buy books by the chapter, the short story or the poem. Perhaps entire books will be written with search engines in mind. What will this mean for the books themselves? Perhaps nothing more than a few strategically placed words or paragraphs. High as possible on the Google search results, so will authors and publishers try to adjust their books to move up the list. Just as Web sites try to adjust their content to move as Individual paragraphs will be accompanied by descriptive tags to orient potential searchers chapter titles will be tested to determine how well they rank. And so much for writing with the intention of holding attention through a long linear narrative: So much for the ancient pleasures of reading silently, and alone. Indexing and ranking individual pages and paragraphs according to how much of this chatter they generate. Readers, he predicts, will create “booklogs,” analogous to Weblogs (now known just as blogs), pulling out and commenting on passages they find particularly illuminating or maddening. Thanks to digitization, books will soon become just another part of the enormous universe of online information, available when and where and how you want it. ![]() “Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, print books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep-focus reading,” Johnson writes. ![]() ![]() Steven Johnson, writing in The Wall Street Journal, has some good news for the publishing industry: the Kindle and other electronic readers areīut he also has some bad news for the authors: readers aren’t going to finish most of them.
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