Why do I want an e-book reader at all?

[catsittingstill]

I've been thinking and reading quite a bit about e-books in general and e-books and the Kindle in particular.

One reaction I've been seeing on the net is "why would you want an e-book reader in the first place?  Books are cheap—why spend 300-400$ on a machine to read them?

I like to play D&D.  One of the challenges that you face sometimes is your character's ability to carry all the stuff that might be useful in an adventure.  This was a particular problem for my Bard character, who had a lot of books.  She had reference works on various situations she might come across while adventuring—books on wildlife in various areas, books on stonework, on architecture and engineering, on the exotic customs of faraway lands.  But she only had so much room in her backpack, and she wasn't particularly strong.

The magic item she dreamed of was not a sword, or a musical instrument, but a magic book that would display the pages of any book she owned, on command.  The regular books (pounds and pounds of them) could be left safely at home, and the magic book used to refer to them at any time.

She never got that magic book.  But I could.

I don't travel a lot, but twice in the last two years I have been stuck away from home for 24 hours with nothing to do and nothing to read, except what I brought with me, because my flight was canceled.  A magic book that could become any book I owned (or even just any e-book I owned) would be a wonderful thing to have in that situation.  And a magic book that was also a shining gate into a bookstore where I could buy new books would be even better.  

The magic book isn't for everyone.  It doesn't show color, it doesn't play movies, it doesn't send e-mail, it doesn't wash the windows, make dinner, or brush the cat.  But my Bard never wanted those things from a book, even a magic book.  And I think I can live without them too.

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

Thank you. You summerized things quite well.


I a way it's why I purchased a OLPC laptop. Besides doing good somewhere in the world, it is the basic simple workable laptop I've wanted for years.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) I have looked at the XO with interest, but I wouldn't know how to set it up to read e-books.

Do you have it yet? I'd be interested in knowing how it works out for you.

I could read books on my laptop, of course, but it's quite a bit heavier than a book, and its battery is only good for 2 or 3 hours before it needs recharging. An eInk reader is supposed to be useable for days--this is part of the attraction.

There's no denying the laptop can do more, though.

[sibylle]

That's exactly one of the things I love about my ipaq - it's no longer "which two books do I take on vacation with me?" - I simply keep a lot of books on there, and voila, packing is cut down by a lot of time, and all the other agonies are too. These days I usually travel with nothing but clothes, toiletries and 4 electronical gadgets - ipaq, mp3 player, camera, phone. I remember when deciding which two books and 10 CDs to take was an agonizing decision. Digital media, how I love thee.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with the ipaq--is it a PDA-type device, or a laptop? I have a number of Baen books on my PDA, which I just started to use as an e-book reader recently. I love being able to carry a lot of books, but the screen is a bit small, and a bit tiring for me to read, and the PDA tends to need recharging sooner than I would like.

On the other hand, the PDA is easy to read in bed, since it comes with its own light :-)

[mdlbear]

One of my coworkers has all of Wikipedia compressed onto an SD card on his PDA. All of it except the pictures. In 1GB. (In fairness, I think Wikipedia is bigger now. But so are SD cards.)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I like/dislike Wikipedia--I like the general idea, and it often has information about recent cultural developments that a paper encyclopedia couldn't possibly have for years, (there's a Kindle page, for instance, and Kindle has only been available for a couple of weeks) but I dislike that there isn't enough editing and fact checking for what's in there to be necessarily reliable.

I think it's cool that your coworker can fit it all on one SD card, though.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Well. You've been caught by one of the great old dreams. It's a very old dream, and was adopted by the information technology revolution; I've just spent a quarter studying some of these dreams. And, of course, it is now technically realizable. But... But... Though it can be done, no-one has yet figured out how to pay for all the parts, or provide incentives for people to set up the organizations to put the parts together.

Well. I hope you get your wish.

(BTW, if you feel like doing some reading, at some point look at Vannevar Bush's, "As We May Think". It's the 1945 "Memex" paper.)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I tried to have a look at the article you point to but it comes up as "file not found."

So I'm not sure what you're referring to, exactly, by "great old dream." But I will note that I'm not dreaming as big (yet) as having all human knowledge on one device or anything. Just having all, or even part, of my own library on one device would be fine, provided that device was reliable.

There are all kinds of issues, like how will we read the books in a hundred years (though the vast majority of the books I read probably won't be interesting to most people in 100 years--I don't spend much time reading either science, or fiction, published in 1907). I expect that if there are books people want to read, they'll get moved to new formats.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Duh. Correct link. Still a pretty big dream, even if it's only your library. Hard to say, really, if people will be reading novels--or scientific "papers," as we now know them--in a 100 years. The forms did have beginnings; they might have ends.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I intend to read this in greater detail but my first thought is "wow, you can certainly tell when that was written by the gender language, can't you?"

Now and then I get irritated about pervasive implict assumptions that the default human being is male--it's interesting to read something that makes it so clear how much better things have become in that regard.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You know, I had to go to wikipedia and look up "thermionic tube." Didn't have the vaguest idea what he was talking about.

It's a vacuum tube. As in, the thing they used before transistors.

People *have* been thinking about this for a long time, haven't they?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

:-) One of the odd things about the history of computing is that almost everything we can do know was imagined almost from the beginning. A mixed blessing! Because it also means that we still don't know how to do what we didn't know how to do at the beginning, hence the failure of the project of AI.

V. Bush was quite sexist, wasn't he? But they all were, then, or almost all. Even the women. And his sexism probably blinded him to the social implications of the technology. Or maybe he was just very focused on science. He had quite an illustrious career; dean of engineering at MIT, and was largely responsible for the creation of the NSF.

[mdlbear]

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

[mdlbear]

We already have the storage and delivery mechanism: it's called "The Web". As for paying for readers, the first pocket calculators cost $400, too. So did the first MP3 players. Depending on the learning curve, we could be seeing $100 readers in 3-5 years, and $10 in a decade.

The other problem is licensing the content, which is part of the whole copyright mess.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of a cheap reader. I remember the 400$ calculator (barely) and this was back when 400$ was a lot more loaves of bread than it is now. But I find it really hard to stretch my brain around a 10$ device with free wireless broadband. Just...won't...go--ow!

But it will be great if it happens. Maybe I'll be less boggled, since it will creep up on me gradually.

[mdlbear]

The service is the expensive part; I'll settle for WiFi, Bluetooth, or ultrawideband (coming soon) plus whatever free hotspots I can connect to. The onboard memory card will hold all the books I need for a couple of weeks, so a full-time connection isn't a problem. (And bluetooth can connect through any nearby cell phone.)

Bluetooth headsets are already down in the $20 range; a factor of 10 in five years isn't a stretch at all. Look at FM radios.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

WiFi wouldn't work well for me because there are only 2 places I can get it; one funnels through a dialup modem and the other is a 4 mile trip and isn't very reliable. And I only have access to the second place as a faculty spouse--there are a lot of readers out there who wouldn't have that option. Are there free hotspots? How does one find them?

I guess I'm a bit of a throwback in not having a cell phone, so maybe Bluetooth with a cell phone would work for most people. On the other hand, I remember what a struggle it was to get my PDA to talk to my laptop using Bluetooth--I'm guessing if it's that much hassle with a cell phone and an ebook reader, an awful lot of readers aren't going to want to bother.

I'm not sure what ultrawideband is. Is it very expensive?

[mdlbear]

Free Wi-Fi is fairly common in an urban setting; you sometimes find it at hotels and airports. In your case, this year, you're probably better off with the Kindle's free service if it's available in your area.

Ultrawideband is cheap, fast, low power, and highly experimental. Won't be available for a couple of years.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I understand better.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Moderate-bandwidth wireless data service is not very expensive to provide; that's why cheap motels and cafes can afford to offer it. It could easily be provided as a public service, and would be much cheaper that a road network. (Long distance telephone service is also much cheaper than local. "Prices have nothing to do with costs", say the marketing gurus.) There are lists of WiFi hotspots on the web; there are a fair number in Knoxville, though I wouldn't bet on New Market.

We reach for a new world...but maybe it won't arrive in the USA. I'm actually betting on Latin America at this point.