Liberty Alone

Amazon have apparently finally announced Kindle, their electronic ink based ebook reader. This is not the first ebook reader, there is one actually available in the UK from the Dutch company iRex Technologies and Kindle seems somewhat crippled.

I’m amazed by the number of people who seem to think that this is to replace books. I really don’t think it is, I see ebooks as a compliment to books. Some books are really nice to have physical copies. I would never replace some books with electronic ones. However, for some purposes, which will vary from person to person, ereaders will be useful.

Believe it or not, some people don’t much care for having actual books, in this case ebooks will be great. They take up far less space for starters. For the environmentally minded who read a lot, there’s less paper used and less fuel in creation and delivery of ebooks.

Others (myself included) don’t want to spend as much money as would be necessary to read some books which are freely available online. Reading on a computer screen is far from ideal, as is printing out hard copies. Ebook readers will allow us to use read those books on the move and to cross reference (although that functionality is not there yet).

Delivery of newspapers directly to the device is also a great idea. Saves you having to handle the actual papers on the train, you can keep copies for future reference and of course there is no paper.

Another great thing is that it opens up the market for books even further. It will cost less to get published, it will enable people to buy foreign titles more easily (and think about the ‘book miles’ saved in shipping!). There’s at least one book I cannot easily source in the UK which I really want to read. I’ll be able to buy it for a few dollars and get it immediately.

How long until reading software is available for ebooks? Or brail interpreters? That would be fantastic for blind and partially sighted readers who currently have a far more limited range of books available than the rest of us.

I don’t expect ebooks to replace traditional books completely, but I can see several areas where they will be useful and complement traditional books. Perhaps a hybrid technology will emerge with electronic ink included in the pages of a real book to include animations or video. That technology is coming, and it opens up many possibilities.

Of course, I can’t possibly know. Perhaps ereaders will go the way of mini-discs and not be adopted in any significant numbers.
Personally, I think that like the mp3 player, they will become cheaper and cheaper and more will be available for them. That is unless a new technology surpasses them, which is not impossible.

The possibilities are many, we are being given a choice and a chance. For that we should be thankful, even if we prefer to stick with traditional books.

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