Ew Technology Re: [Publib] Books and Kindle

[Philip Cheney]

Buy stock in Google.  They are best-positioned, due to their digitization of library
collections, to profit from the sale of downloads to Kindle.
 
Philip Cheney
South Carolina



Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 09:12:10 -0400From: mschofield at neflin.orgTo: publib at webjunction.orgSubject: Ew Technology Re: [Publib] Books and Kindle







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.comTo: publib at webjunction.orgCc: mmay at cspl.usDate: 5 Aug 2008 16:33:17 -0000Subject: Re: [Publib] Books and Kindle
I gave Kindle a try recently. I downloaded and read Lost on Planet China byJ. Maarten Troost, which was OK. I should have waited for    Ghost Train tothe 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 wantedwas Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library by DonBorchert, 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 goodin electronic format. Of course, the op-ed columnist cited below, RichardCohen, is dead wrong, Kindle is not "the beginning of the end [of] books asbooks." And too bad he doesn't mention public libraries in his blurb.There'san element of subversiveness to books and public libraries which Kindle definitelylacks. Kindle is a controlled device, and books within it are exactly that,books trapped within a device. Or better yet, they are illusions of bookstrapped within a device. Cohen might come to understood this after he usesKindle, and might then realize why books and libraries and maybe even bookstoreswill persist.Mike in Dubuque--- Susan Vittitow" <SVITTi at state.wy.uswrote:>From the Washington Post this morning> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/04/AR2008080401823.html _______________________________________________Publib mailing listPublib at webjunction.orghttp://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
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