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A generic term for electronic books, in essence
devices designed to replace printed pages with electronic equivalents. Early
e-books were hardware devices with flat-screen lcd displays dedicated
to a single task: displaying the text of books, magazines or other documents
that could be downloaded from internet sites. Unwilling to carry yet another
piece of equipment around with them, consumers were slow to catch on to the
idea, and the market for such devices remains small. But advances in screen
technology have brought the e-book concept to more mainstream computers, and
reader software is now available (notably from Microsoft and Adobe) that
lets people display downloadable books on any kind of computer screen,
complete with the formatting and graphics that they expect from paper-based
books. This has been especially well-received by users of small portable
computers and pdas, particularly those based on the Pocket pc
format running a version of windows.
E-books proponents argue that
the ability to reuse electronic books again and again will in time spell the
end of the paper-based book as we know it. Critics cite their comparatively
poor readability, the weight of the portable devices on which most of them
are read, their limited battery life and their incompatibility with bathtubs
as trying to find ways to build book-like devices that can display
electronic book documents. Joseph Jacobson, an as sistant Professor at
Massachusetts Institute if Technology (mit), is working on a project that
uses "digital ink" to display text and pictures on turnable pages. Whether
or not the deeply entrenched symbolic power of books in our culture can be
seen. Most people agree that bookless library is about as likely to happen
as the paperless office: that is to say, not at all. |
