This was my response to a semi rhetorical question from regular reader and fellow blogger Gary on his Musings Cafe blog. I reproduce it here for my readers.
The question was, in short, will ebooks replace their paper ancestors?
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Hmm, I wasn't alive during the vinyl era, but it's a comparison I'd have used as well.
Unlike vinyl though, I would say that the survival of books in their current form is certain.
The difference is in the way you interact with them. A book is experienced through the eyes, not the ears - which makes a big difference, and as anyone who has stared at any screen for a length of time will attest, using your eyes to read text on a screen for four hours is actually quite painful.
The difference between this and digital movie formats is the requirement viewing detail - individual words read at arms length have a different effect to a movie or tv show on a screen two or three metres away, since you are not scanning line after line of text.
In addition, the move to DvDs was uncontroversially a huge improvement to the home movie experience - unlike with Vinyl you never hear people say that VHS had a "warmer picture"
The improvements in musical formats have been to its portability - enabling everyone to experience outrageous levels of variety in a single commute.
Unlike music, books are read over many hours, not three to five minute bites - and enabling someone to pack 1000 books with them in something the size of a single book does not, to my mind as someone who only reads one book at a time, make any discernible improvements to the experience.
In their current form, I can't see eBooks catching on like CDs, MP3s and DVDs. It'll be used by some folk, but universal appeal will escape them.
IMHO, of course - I have been wrong before.
A
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