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January 12, 2004
The Future Of Books
I would love to see every book for sale come with a CD containing a text (or even HTML) version of the book. Think of the advantages:
- A fully searchable book. How many times have you read an interesting passage you want to show friends, or need to go back and get a quote for research purposes? Paper is sadly lacking in this department.
- Portability. Wouldn't it be easier to just take your laptop to the library to study from instead of all those heavy textbooks? Or maybe you are going to be on a long plane ride and could have few books to chose from on your PDA.
Of course, are downsides...
- Copyright infringement. It's really easy to copy and distribute text, in fact, that's what the whole WWW is really good at. One possible solution would be some sort of secure format, if such a thing exists (Adobe or Microsoft, care to step up to the plate?) .
- A digital format is the perfect place to stick some ads. Imagine "More from this author, publisher, etc" links, or worse yet, actual product placements.
I still think it will be a long while before we see eBooks gain popularity, but as mobile personal computers become more and more ubiquitous, I think it's inevitable.
Comments
what does ubiquitous mean?
Posted by: pete at January 12, 2004 7:50 AM
Word: ubiq·ui·tous
Pronunciation: yü-'bi-kw&-t&s
Function: adjective
: existing or being everywhere at the same time : constantly encountered : WIDESPREAD
Sort of like omnipotent, only less ethereal.
Posted by: Rew at January 12, 2004 10:36 AM