Mark your calendar. Summer 2010 will be a bookend event.
It will be Gutenberg-like. It’s the beginning of the disappearance of Revised Print Edition.
It’s Google e-book store, where you can download the latest version of any book. Gone are the paper backs.
Or Large Print for that matter.
Select your own font.
Our interaction with the pages is now replaced by our interaction with the screen.
A little divided (sight) as opposed to united (auditory, such as Audio books) according to Walter Ong.
Dumb terminal, long-lasting batteries, and unlimited “cloud” storage capacity make all this possible.
Books are now published on demand, or download. Paper or plastic?
Save a tree.
Somehow the image of “the Remains of the Day” (Bezos’ favorite book) came to mind.
A wall full of books, and the grandfather clock, all gone. What are there for the butler to do but writing his e-memoir?
I must admit the tone of that novel brought me back to an era where service is considered noble. And you could only get a glimpse of that now a day at Four Seasons or Nordstrom.
One of my pet peeves at Penn State was when students slowly folded their Collegiate only after the prof had started to speak.
Today’s equivalent of turning off their e-readers. Everything non-digital are “the remains of the day”.
Thang Nguyen 555 