Ew Technology Re: [Publib] Books and Kindle

[Nate Hill]

I'm not sure that I've followed every email in this string, so if I'm
repeating what someone else said, I apologize...

I'm a fan of the Kindle and similar technologies; like one other person
mentioned I also have Shakespeare to my iPhone and I added Stanza (ebook
reader app) as well.  But a lot of the books that I enjoy are collections of
art and architecture essays- or they are arguments made by an author who
decided they needed to use more than just a conventional text format to make
their point.  It doesn't really seem to me that the book is dying, rather
its being folded into a larger media/storytelling experience.  I'd be a lot
happier with an ebook reader and the books read on it if it really leveraged
all of the amazing possibilities associated with the elctronic format.

At some point libraries will want to invest in readers like the Kindle more
heavily... but I guess I'm not quite sure if we are there yet?


On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 9:12 AM, Michael Schofield <mschofield at neflin.org>wrote:

>  Hmm. I am more inclined to agree with Seth Godin (quoted in *The Futurist
> * "The 21st Century Writer") [
> http://www.wfs.org/May-June%20files/Futwrite1.htm] that "books are
> becoming souvenirs." This isn't because the Kindle is particularly jawesome,
> but because it makes commercial sense for publishers to cut out that messy,
> papery medium between the Information and the Informee (i.e., many
> 'publishers'--like F & W Publications (formerly)--are doffing the
> association--F & W Media). I don't think books and bookstores are dead,
> but if technology continues in the vein (and unless we're talking Kurt
> Russel in * Escape from LA *it will!), then they'll definitely be
> novelties.
>
> Libraries have the advantage of not disappearing when the power goes out,
> however. Hmmmmmmmm. I'm hopping on the bandwagon for my
> don't-need-to-heft-books (the guilty pleasures), because it costs money to
> store them!
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MichaelMay.59213074 at bloglines.com
> To: publib at webjunction.org
> Cc: mmay at cspl.us
> Date: 5 Aug 2008 16:33:17 -0000
> Subject: Re: [Publib] Books and Kindle
>
> I gave Kindle a try recently. I downloaded and read Lost on Planet China by
> J. Maarten Troost, which was OK. I should have waited for
> Ghost Train to
> the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar by Paul
> Theroux.
> But Theroux will be much better in print, anyway.
>
> What I really wanted
> was Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library by
> Don
> Borchert, but I couldn't find it in the Kindle store. Hmmph!
>
> Ironically,
> I selected a trial subscription to the Washington Post, and it is very good
> in electronic format. Of course, the op-ed columnist cited below, Richard
> Cohen, is dead wrong, Kindle is not "the beginning of the end [of] books as
> books." And too bad he doesn't mention public libraries in his blurb.
>
> There's
> an element of subversiveness to books and public libraries which Kindle
> definitely
> lacks. Kindle is a controlled device, and books within it are exactly that,
> books trapped within a device. Or better yet, they are illusions of books
> trapped within a device. Cohen might come to understood this after he uses
> Kindle, and might then realize why books and libraries and maybe even
> bookstores
> will persist.
>
> Mike in Dubuque
>
> --- Susan Vittitow" <SVITTi at state.wy.us
> wrote:
> >From the Washington Post this morning
> >
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/04/AR2008080401823.html
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Publib mailing list
> Publib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Publib mailing list
> Publib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
>
>


-- 
Nate Hill
nathanielhill at gmail.com
http://natehill.wordpress.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20080806/2cb17944/attachment.htm