Pity the Kindle Generation
Erik T. Burns
eburns at gmail.com
Wed Oct 12 10:56:21 CDT 2011
>"What if "they" pull the plug on something which is "incorrect" in some way?"
I think this is yet another instance of "if they can get you asking
the wrong questions..."
digital versions are more permanent, not less permanent. they are
easily replicable and distributable. there need be no "central
production" site, you can't burn down or bomb the printing press, the
paper can't spoil, etc.
sure, there are a lot of (new) wrinkles -- formats can go into disuse,
files can be corrupted, mistakes can proliferate, there can be many,
many, many versions etc. (I would guess that in the nearaway future
the job of textual analysis & comparison of versions will become a
huge headache, or only mechanically feasible).
i like having and holding real books a lot. but i really like being
able to skim through, say, a Chelsea Handler book and then to delete
it without a) worrying whether it is replaceable b) destroying trees
c) causing a fire hazard etc.
as with so many things, with books too sturgeon's law applies.
On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 4:45 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whatever is downloaded onto an individual Kindle stays there until it
> is deleted by the Kindle owner. After deletion, the e-book is still
> in the individual's account to be downloaded again, if desired. So
> it's possible that the content rights of one's account might change.
> The way to safeguard against that would be to keep a copy of the
> e-book in another storage device.
>
> The thing I most dislike about my Kindle (including audio books) is
> the very clunky way of flipping forward and backward. Unless one
> places bookmarks regularly, there is no easy way. And one doesn't
> know what one might want to review later when reading something for
> the first time.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> By the way, what happened with the e-version of CL49 in England. It used to be available in England, but last time I looked, it wasn't. Did the people who bought it get to keep it?
>
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