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RSS icon Comments on The Incredible Resurectable Book

1

Filthy rich assholes are never wrong!

Posted by Mr. Poe | February 21, 2008 11:15 AM
2

You also misspelled "resurrectable" (at least, if it were a word, that's how it would be spelled). Cheers!

Posted by Levislade | February 21, 2008 11:20 AM
3

I definitely don't think books are dying, by any means. The short story is ailing a bit, and I may lament the content of some (most) contemporary books, but as long as Oprah is still reading, America will be too.

As silly as I find Jobs's comment, Egan's parting line about forgetting the "iStuff" seems equally off the mark. Like it or not (personally, I do not), that "iStuff" has attained ubiquity, and is unlikely to be forgotten any time soon.

Posted by Aislinn | February 21, 2008 11:32 AM
4

@2: Dammit! Fixed. Thanks.

@3: Egan's whole iStuff thing reeked of mold. It was kind of embarrassing to read.

Posted by Paul Constant | February 21, 2008 11:38 AM
5

If books are dying, why are there so many freakin' Barnes and Noble stores around everywhere?

Books have a lot going for them: they don't need power to work, they can withstand much rougher treatment than almost any computer, and they're a proven archival medium. I can open any book published in the 80's, try that with a 5 1/4" floppy disk produced at the same time.

Reading may be dying, but that's a different issue altogether.

Posted by Westside forever | February 21, 2008 11:39 AM
6

Jobs has a reputation regarding such pronouncements. It should be noted that with regard to the above quote he was speaking of Amazon's "Kindle". It was part of an out-of-hand dismissal of the Kindle and the associated technology. He has made many such pronouncements in the past, and often they have proceeded Apple releasing a product that addresses the deadzone that Jobs had just written off. With the release of the iPhone SDK, it is widely supposed that the iPhone will become the leading eBook platform.

Posted by John Galt | February 21, 2008 12:18 PM
7

Jobs has a reputation regarding such pronouncements. It should be noted that with regard to the above quote he was speaking of Amazon's "Kindle". It was part of an out-of-hand dismissal of the Kindle and the associated technology. He has made many such pronouncements in the past, and often they have proceeded Apple releasing a product that addresses the deadzone that Jobs had just written off. With the release of the iPhone SDK, it is widely supposed that the iPhone will become the leading eBook platform.

Posted by John Galt | February 21, 2008 12:18 PM
8

Yeah, right, I'm going to start reading off a $600 device with a screen the size of a pack of Post-its.

Steve Jobs is full of shit, as always. He and his products get ten times the attention they deserve. ONE PERCENT of the population of the US owns an iPhone -- nice, for a phone, I guess, but it's not even a significant slice of the PHONE market, let alone the cultural market.

Tech manuals are probably dying, and good riddance; but unless and until there is an orders-of-magnitude improvement in search technology, comparable to the improvement of Google over a pack of index cards, the mounting heap of cruft is always going to stand in the way of real usability. The kind of mental-popcorn anecdotal business book that Jobs consumes (and features in) might be well suited to electronic devices, and maybe even the "airport novel"; but real books, with real ideas and real creativity, will continue to be set down on the best technological achievement of all time -- the printed book.

And since Jobs is dismissing the idea not just of printed books, but of reading itself, he's revealed himself to be somewhere to the south of George Bush on the mental scale -- a considerable achievement indeed. What a fucking idiot. In some ways, book publishing is at a higher standard now than ever before. As for "40% don't read", that's (a) not true, and (b) no different than it was 100 years ago, or 200. We live in an incredibly literate age. Not as flashy as an iPhone, but more important.

Posted by Fnarf | February 21, 2008 12:39 PM
9

@7: Did you read the article?
"Asked about Kindle, the electronic book reader from Amazon.com, Jobs was dismissive. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is,” he told John Markoff of The Times, “the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”"

That doesn't sound like he's anticipating the iPhone's domination of the ebook market. It's practically saying there is no ebook market.

@8: "Real books, with real ideas and real creativity, will continue to be set down on the best technological achievement of all time -- the printed book.

*Swoon*. Mrs. Fnarf is a lucky woman.

Posted by Aislinn | February 21, 2008 1:05 PM
10

There is a momentum building in various media industries to move a away from individual ownership of objects such as books, cd's, games, and dvd's towards per-use payment. That way, everyone pays every time. You can loan, give away, or sell any of the above objects but the electronic equivalents are subject to fees per use. I think hard copies are really important. Remember how the past is continually edited in "1984" to fit the needs of the oppressive regime, and books become agents of subversion in "Farenheit 451"? If books, and magazines all go digital they will be much more easily corrupted. My paranoia aside, it is all about the money.

Posted by inkweary | February 21, 2008 1:06 PM
11

"Mrs. Fnarf is a lucky woman."

Could you come over and tell her that, please? She seems...skeptical.

Posted by Fnarf | February 21, 2008 1:26 PM
12

@11:

You think it's hard to be Mrs. Fnarf? Ha!

Posted by Mrs. Poe | February 21, 2008 1:58 PM

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