Only one or two days gone I was in my fathers cellar, going thru my old storage of books making an attempt to pick which ones I had more of an emotional attachment too. I was moving across states with the help of a pal and his pickup, so I had to tame my inner pack rat and take just what I felt was important, things I’d basically remember not taking and regret it. Over my 20+ years I’ve picked up a far amount of books, there had been a point in my teenage years where I could easily devour two or three a week. Due to the life of a lonesome loser.
After I filled two cardboard boxes with my most fave novels, I could not help thinking about my mates new “toy”-an Amazon ‘Kindle’. An e-book rising in renown that downloads books direct from Amazon’s Whispernet.
The most recent Kindle model, Kindle DX costs just about $500, I could not believe he was willing to drop that sort of scratch to read the same books he could buy for a bit less than 1 / 4 of that cost. How could it most likely mimic the intimate connection you can get with a good paper paged novel? Especially older ones, with yellowed pages and a thick, musty smell.
Ebooks had a small surge in renown in the early 2000′s, but many were only programed in one format. So if you owned an ebook, and your favorite novel just came out on a rivals Ebook-you would just have to cope with it.
Thanks to the Kindle’s popularity, many big firms decided to attempt to join the competition. Barnes & Noble introduced they are “Nook”, which is the first to be based on the ‘Android’ platform, and has a MicroSD enlargement slot for additional storage. Aside from being much cheaper Kindle alternative, it can be hacked to add applications like Pandora, a twitter customer, Google Reader, Facebook, and a net browser.
In France, Bookeen released the ultra light Cybook Opus, featuring a paper-like high contrast appearance that may really be read in direct sunlight. When the Cybook Opus is connected up to your PC it registers as a typical USB mass storage device , so you can simply copy books without special drivers.
With the releasing of Apple’s iPad, came the release of the iBooks application. Apart from having all of the features of the Kindle, it can also insert video. Still lacks USB ports, however.
While my pal raved about his costly, little, electronic library, I couldn’t avoid thinking how foolish it was to think that a little, thin gadget able to download books could ever replace hundreds of years of paper paged history. It only took up less room, you could download any book you wanted whenever you wanted, future generations would definitely be cheaper and better quality…I stopped my train of thought and took a good look at my stacks of physical books, all together they weighed a ton and took up so much space. Will this generation see the passing of published word? I am sure folk in the sixties couldn’t imagine life without their favorite 12-inch vinyl records, now those self same folks carry the whole discography of their favorite artist on an itty bitty iPod.
10 years gone T.V’s were chunky monstrosities, now they’re paper thin with such fantastic quality you can count the pores on somebody’s's chin. 10 years ago Nintendo games were still pixelated and featured squat characters with jerky movements, now it’s essentially interactive animation. In 10 years, will my ‘bookcase’ just become ‘shelves’? Featuring one PDF and whatever knick knacks I throw on there to dump the empty space? What will happen to libraries? My fave used book store?
As I ultimately closed the card boxes and pressed down the packing tape, I couldn’t help thinking how convenient it would be to just slip my fave book ‘The Stand’ in my back pocket while having the rest of my library stored on my C : drive.
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