Monday, May 14, 2007
UnRead eBooks
Even if they get better, as BD's editor insists they should, I'm not sure eBook readers will ever be much use. I know it's not the same thing, but I've never finished a book in PDF form. Never even got far into one. Another appeared at the weekend courtesy of the Continental Philosophy bulletin board: Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer.
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I think it's probably reasonable to assert that the pleasure of reading a book is bound up in the kind of consciousness wave-state(apologies...brain refuses to do better) upon or within which the reading itself occurs. A slowing-down of the self bound up in personal memory but even cultural memory. I don't think anything like this altered relaxed state occurs while in front of a computer screen(for me at least), and so reading literature blah blah blah...sorry about the loss of interest but you get the picture. If the ebook device were to be improved so as to perfectly simulate the blah blah blah....
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how difficult e-reader manufacturers have found it to replicate the effective technology already possessed by books. They even struggle with search facilities(the Sony reader doesn't have one), which you would imagine would be the only enhancement a computer based text could offer. They attempt to emulate pageturning and portability, struggle with the nuisance issues of fragility and recharging and simply cannot bring down the costs of e-books sufficiently to make wholesale replacement of a paper library worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteSome publishers (especially academic) have rubbed their hands in anticipation of bringing down production costs, but while paper books can be read anywhere (except maybe in the rain), I can't see e-readers taking off either.