Update - 04/15/2007 - 04/21/2007

This week I read The Bookless Future by David A. Bell in The Best of Technology Writing. The beginning mostly sounded like parts of the Google Print article, focusing on how you can find so many things online now that you had to go to a specific library for in the past. Thinking back on the papers I've written the last 4 years and the times I've needed additional resources for engineering projects and assignments, I even surprised myself when I realized I hadn't been to the science and engineering library once, and had never looked up a book at all for class purposes. I pretty much agreed with Bell's sentiment that traditional writers will and have baulked at the idea of only making digital editions of books and that the experience will not be the same, but that the digital shift will continue to grow nonetheless. However, while I do much prefer looking up resources I need for classes online, I still prefer having an actual book when I'm reading something for pleasure, as reading it one the screen in that circumstance just doesn't do it for me.

Strangely enough, some of the arguments for and against ebooks were similar to Wikipedia arguments. Among these were the issue of anyone being able to publish, less traditional peer reviews by academic scholars in a particular area, having material change as information becomes more accurate or errors in publication are found and so on. As for Bell's monetary arguments, I certainly can't argue with him there. Digital scholarly works allows people to far greater access of past and present works at far less cost than attempting to buy or find a library that actually has the money and desire to purchase a paper copy.

I was rather amused by Bell's admission that he recently downloaded a book and instead of trying to read through it on his monitor, he simply searched for quotes and copy/pasted them into the paper he was working on. I certainly haven't read each and every one of the thousands of power slides I've been given access to, and Control + F has certainly been a blessing in my opinion. I hadn't even heard of the physical ebook devices Bell mentions, but they didn't really seem all that enticing in their current forms. In the end, Bell takes a more moderate view of the future, with a balance of sort between old and new eventually being reached. I find this the most logical view, with more obscure type books falling into pure ebook form with the popular books of the day still being published as long as the paper copies are still making enough money for the parties involved.