The article is right that the eBook hype has abated, and that all the specialized eBook devices have fallen flat. And I liked the observation that
One reason, according to critics, is that the first wave of e-book creators paid way more attention to publishers' requirements (such as ensuring that books would not be easily copied, like musical recordings) than they did to what readers really want from an e-book.It's certainly true that worries about copy protection have made eBooks of all kinds less convenient and less functional for consumers, inhibiting their uptake.
But the article is rooted in all the same frustrating misconceptions and deep-rooted assumptions that keep people from seeing what is really going on in most new marketplaces. Linton Weeks, the author of the article, says:
...maybe e-books never really caught fire because there was never a deep desire for them in the first place. The 500-year-old book -- with white paper pages and night-black ink -- is a perfectly good technology for providing word-based information.Yes, of course paper is a good technology for providing word-based information. But that is to confuse the delivery mechanism for a book with what is being delivered. A book is a wonderful artifact, to be sure, and I have more than 5000 of them in my house. But what does a book contain? Stories, ideas, facts, interpretations, the voices of people long dead or from a faraway land. A book is a user interface to the world of the mind. As Edwin Schlossberg once said, "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." Or imagine. Or find out what they need to know.
Seen in this light, you realize that computer games. like the novel, are a delivery vehicle for certain types of storytelling. The web is the world's most frequently consulted reference library.
I've always held that the successful "eBook" will either be much bigger (e.g. MapQuest vs. the Random House Road Atlas, or the Safari library of all O'Reilly and Pearson tech books) or much smaller (e.g. A very specific web page vs. an omnibus reference book, or a quick reference document on a PDA) than regular books. The eBook that simply mimics the print book on screen is a transitional form, just like the early "moving pictures" that simply pointed a camera at actors on a stage.
There will always (I hope) be print books, but just as the advent of photography changed the role of painting or film changed the role of theater in our culture, electronic publishing is changing the world of print media. To look for a one-to-one transposition to the new medium is to miss the future until it has passed you by.
Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world, and an activist for open standards. O'Reilly Media also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. For everything Tim, see tim.oreilly.com.
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