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| Hearsay: |
The ebook is here, you just have to get used to it. Or, as an alternative, you can just take a deep breath and decide to see how far down this irrelevance thing goes, says author.
First off, no one is absolutely sure exactly what is going to happen, because technological change is like that. Only one thing is pretty clear and that is that things will change, and we need to proactively adapt to those changes, lest we be forced to adapt in ways that are less appealing.
History has shown that you can’t build a sandbag wall against the tide of technological change, you have to either have a boat, build a boat, or get on someone else’s boat. Or be very clever and do something no one could have predicted … perhaps with my boat metaphor this would be to grow gills or turn into a fish.
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May 19th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Here’s my prediction – the e-book is to books what TV is to the movies.
There was a time when people said TV (and then home video) was going to kill the movie business. The business changed, but it’s far from dead. There is some overlap in content but also some content that is uniquely TV – especially cable TV, stuff like The Sopranos or Mad Men, long form stories.
It’s likely that some form of unique e-book content will emerge. Sure, books will still be turned into e-books the way movies still play on TV.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:24 am
I like your boat metaphor. I think people are either talking the change up or down too much. I don’t think there are too many typewriter lovers anymore. I don’t think there are (m)any authors writing with goose feather. It was about the time that readers get their portion of innovation.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:36 am
As I finish up a new non-fiction book, I begin to see an aspect of the ebook that could be intriguing. The book is about the Portuguese, their history, and their amazing influence over nearly 600 years around the world. One of the chapters is called Saudade and Samba, and compares the way that Portugal and Brazil both had fascist-style governments–Estados Novos–for decades in the 20th century. In both countries music was used as a tool to shape public opinion, but fado in Portugal and samba in Brazil are very different. How cool it would be to have links that could take you to examples of each! Similarly in the chapter about the way that the Portuguese language unites (or separates) Lusofonia, I’d love to have links to videos from Sri Lanka, where a Portuguese creole is still spoken in a few villages. You’re reading along and you just click to get an example of what you’ve been reading about.
Haven’t tried to float it with the publisher, but I think it’s worth considering.