Some people have argued that listening to a work of literature does not really promote literacy in the same way that reading does. Having tried this for several months, however, I can report from the trenches that, for me, immersive listening is as intellectually challenging, stimulating, and rewarding as immersive reading.
I used to be skeptical when educators and technologists predicted that we may be entering a new era of oral culture, in which audible information will be at least as important as visible information. Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.
I find digital content much easier and more rewarding to interact with on screen than printed on paper.
The delivery and presentation media are important, and each format has its advantages and disadvantages, but ultimately I just want to read what I want to read, when and where I want.
For me, reading is reading.
I still read quite a few printed books, but if something is available in digital format I do not print it before I read it.
Now that gigabytes of accessible, malleable information can be carried in one's pocket, we probably will start to see some widespread shifts and trends in how and where people interact with digital documents.
Portability of lots of information should not be underestimated.
I think economics, content, and the ability to interact with content in new and different ways are what will drive the adoption of e-books.
When it comes to e-book playback devices and software, I have always thought that the emphasis on ergonomic concerns as a tipping point for the end-user population was misplaced.
I would not be surprised to see interesting new forms of expression and literary genres develop as the e-book movement matures.
Ultimately, I think that the growth and sustainability of the e-book movement depends on authors and end-users (readers).
Authors and publishers want fair compensation and a means of protecting content through digital rights management. Vendors and technology companies want new markets for e-book reading devices and other hardware. End-users most of all want a wide range and generous amount of high-quality content for free or at reasonable costs. Like end-users, libraries want quality, quantity, economy, and variety as well as flexible business models.
If, as I anticipate, a wide array of personal, portable information/communication devices becomes increasingly important and widespread for information-intensive users, it will be a major challenge for libraries to adapt their content and services to such a diverse technological environment.
An era similar to the one in which the black rotary phone dominated its product category may not recur anytime soon.
The market may never coalesce around one basic design, or even around two or three dominant devices.
Digital ink technology holds substantial promise in terms of legibility, portability, and power consumption, but I am less confident about the communication aspect.
MP3 players and flash memory devices are good for data storage and playback of music and digital talking books, but they offer little or nothing in the way of visual presentation of information and communication.
I am confident that for the foreseeable future (barring some catastrophic event affecting economic, energy, electrical, and communications systems), many subpopulations that use information intensively (e.g., students, academics, library patrons, white collar workers) will be using some sort of portal information appliance.
A completely free library is as rare as a truly free lunch.
I want the public as well as libraries and schools to enjoy unlimited access to public-domain books. This means no charges for these kind of texts themselves.
Many flagship state universities have wonderful digital libraries that are accessed by people around the world. In future, if not current, budget crises, trustees, board members, and administrators may wonder why these state institutions - with an articulated primary clientele of students, faculty, and staff members and a secondary clientele of all citizens of the state - should be spending resources on a digital library that is used by many people beyond the primary and secondary service populations.
A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.
It may be primarily property taxes in the case of a public library, or state taxes and tuition in the case of an academic library at a public university, but the funding sources of most libraries continue to have a strong geographic component.
Because nearly all digital libraries are tied to bricks-and-mortar institutions, the funding base tends to be quite localized.
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