Gary Frost, one of the most ardent “book” supporters out there, says this in his recent post, “drm sturm und draug“:
“A given book[s] content can be rendered on any number of devices and any screen based device can render a number of contents. With a paper book a given content is captive in a single reading device and there is little opportunity of transmission of the work from one device to another.”
It is this fact that allows people to have relationships with books. Its singular purpose allows a direct connection that is extremely hard to duplicate with an electronic device. When you’re reading a book, it’s all you got. There is no web.
Mind you, these new technologies offer new innovative ways to read and they compliment the book well but what they won’t and are incapable of doing is replacing the book.
This is job security.