One of the first times I saw an e-book reader was about a year ago when an employee showed me his. He was so excited to have been one of the first people he knew to have one. He waited months for his name to climb to the top of Amazon’s list so he could have the latest and greatest Kindle. As I prepared for this week’s article I tried to rack my brain as to what made it so great but simply can’t remember.
Tuesday afternoon was like every other Tuesday afternoon until one of my regular customers came into the shop. We went off topic as we frequently do and started discussing the ramifications of turning paper books into electronic bits and bytes. Our main discussion was primarily philosophic in nature; discussing the possibilities of veering away from paper towards electronics. What happens to the books that aren’t important enough to be scanned by Google or any of the other conversion houses?
Google claims to have indexed more than 15,000,000 books which are available either through the internet or download to an e-book reader. Certainly there are more books that have gone to print, so what happens to the other books that weren’t converted? Libraries around the globe are continuing to scan books into giant servers with the expectation of preserving them digitally.
Larger bookstores like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders are selling more and more books in electronic format. I’m not sure how the other stores operate, but, Barnes and Noble’s Nook product will automatically connect to their retail stores’ network when inside a Barnes and Noble. This promotes shopping electronically and makes purchasing for e-book readers easier. Selling a computer file doesn’t take up any shelf space thus making profits higher.
Like most people who have a collection of books, I enjoy holding onto them and referring back to them periodically. Most of the books in my collection were hard to find and contain references to things I can’t locate on the internet. Many of the books in my collection predate the internet so they don’t contain URL’s or any of the internet references to which we’ve become accustomed.
E-book readers are nothing more than little computers. Technically speaking, they’re pretty neat gadgets consisting of a processor, memory, hard drive (of sorts) and some have keyboards. All of them have some means of connecting the internet or directly to the sponsor’s website. Because they’re mini computers it means they will fail eventually. All the books and data contained in the device’s memory will potentially vanish.
More and more I hear about colleges that require e-book readers and iPads to augment paper textbooks. When I attended college textbooks were the only thing available. I still have many of my old books from college. Like most students, I sold some of the books but held onto the ones I thought were important. I couldn’t imagine paying hundreds of dollars for a digital file I couldn’t write in or flip through.
It amazes me how much of our world is changing to digital format. Our kids and grandkids won’t appreciate carrying around printed material or referring to material from decades ago. As technology changes and people impart their opinions on what’s important, the availability of printed material will go away. As technology changes and new e-book readers develop, the ability to convert from technology to technology may also dissapear.
My conversation with the customer ended with the two of us plotting an underground society of bound book lovers. We both realized that we’re being repressed by technology and our paper-generated past is becoming obscure. In the future you may see me running from technology to rebuild our once cultural society – of course – built in part by books.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him at (978) 413-2840 or call him directly at (978) 919-8059.)