Once again the demise of the book is being announced as immanent. The main problem is that the book has been around for too long, it contains no lights, soundcards or batteries and therefore must be a thing of the past. With the coming launch of the new ebook reader the Amazon Kindle battle lines have been drawn around the future of the book.
For me it doesn’t matter how fancy schmancy the details are – and Kindle has some impressive details. The dead tree with ink stains still remains my clear favorite. For many reasons, some pure nostalgia, but as Steven Levy writes in Newsweek online: The book
…is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No instruction manual or “For Dummies” guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can’t be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary.
the flexibility and durability of the book is one of it’s most endearing factors. Also thus far most technical solutions have been lacking in some form. Not to mention the fact that the book seldom requires cables and is a very difficult product to break (relatively speaking).