[MGP-Forum Announce] Sony starts selling the Sony eBook reader: $349.00

[Susan E. Gallagher]

But the fact that I've been hearing about the e-book for so
> long makes me wonder if it's like the flying car, or the pill that
> provides complete nutrition for 24 hours: the reason they're not here is
> because we don't really want them.


Having yearned for a jet pack ever since I first saw one on 1960's tv, I'm 
not sure what role demand plays in the progress of technology.  But my 
speculation about the ebook is that its delayed appearance as a medium of 
mass communication is due to a mix of technological and cultural factors. 
Perhaps the iPod had to be ushered in by the cultural and social practices 
of Napster since the device was introduced along with iTunes.  In other 
words, the success of the iPod was determined not only by technology, but 
also by potential users' existing relationship with available content.

The fax machine was originally invented in the 1850's and improved markedly 
throughout the first half of the 20th century (see attached image if you 
can), but it was not until the 1970's that it became ubiquitous in the 
business world.  By the 1980's, perhaps as a result of changing perceptions 
of the image, our general approach to telecommunications, and evolving ways 
of doing business, fax machines became common in American homes.

The ebook might be taking a similar path, but I also think that it will 
blossom when those of us who are content providers stop trying to translate 
written texts into digital contexts and instead, as was mentioned earlier, 
allow content to dictate form.  Thus the ebook won't be a book at all, but 
will be a multimedia presentation with its own conventions, which means that 
we have to invent, along with better technology, new ways to communicate 
authority, expertise, trustworthiness, and all of the other values that were 
folded into the publication of paper-based articles, essays, and books.

We all know that there is a vacuum in the mainstream press where these 
values used to be--see, for an obvious example, Judith Miller whining about 
the inaccuracy of bloggers who don't have editors to check their work. 
However, there is also a gaping hole in academic/educational publishing now 
that academics generally write to prove productivity rather than to make a 
point, which has reduced most scholarship to deliberate unreadability and 
irrelevance.  So my Pollyannish conclusion is that the digital media that 
will probably not replace but will join and, in some cases, eclipse books 
and other written texts as authoritative means of communication are fairly 
close at hand.

At least I hope so since publishing whatever it is that is coming down the 
digital pike is what I plan to do over the next few years.

By the way, the pitfalls of cultural/technological expression were 
illustrated in a pretty funny way in Sony's announcement of its reader:  Dan 
Brown and Tom Hanks appeared at the press conference to boost the DaVinci 
Code as displayed on the new device, which just goes to show that even the 
most promising multimedia productions can tank.

Susan

Susan Gallagher, Library Fellow
Political Science Department
UMASS Lowell
http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher

>I too have experimented with various mobile devices -- and have a new
> phone with a little set of bookmarks, including Dave's rivers.
>
> I like it.  But the fact that I've been hearing about the e-book for so
> long makes me wonder if it's like the flying car, or the pill that
> provides complete nutrition for 24 hours: the reason they're not here is
> because we don't really want them.
>
> Sometimes it's hard to discern between things that need many refinements
> over time to work and things that we like to think about but don't
> really want.
>
>
>
>
> Bob Stepno wrote:
>> Great discussion... especially on a relaxed Saturday. I hope another
>> thousand words (fair warning) aren't enough to kill the conversation,
>> but I've been trying to sort out my own ideas on some of these issues
>> and the stream of consciousness here will help.
>>
>> Getting to journalism from the eBook reader topic -- Electronic books
>> and electronic newspapers aren't the same thing. The book is linear (or
>> has been, mostly), while newspapers have always been hypertextual -- 
>> linking chunks of information by putting them side by side on a page or
>> adding a "see page 13" now and then, or using multi-deck heads and
>> summary leads for folks in even more of a hurry.
>>
>> My 50+year-old eyes have read a dozen books from a Palm Treo  or Palm
>> TX screen without a problem. But I don't read much *news* that way. I
>> appreciate Dave Winer's clean "river of news" (nytimesriver.com)
>> approach to putting headlines and summaries on itty bitty screens, but
>> the mechanics of scanning headlines and clicking links to stories,
>> waiting for them, then viewing them in small chunks on a Palm or phone
>> isn't for me. I'd rather have stories in context, with sidebars,
>> datelines, photos other cues.
>>
> ml.org/thisislisa/
>
>
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