Grant shares his thoughts about the future of electronic books, and whether dog-eared pages with scribbles in the margins will one day go the way of the papyrus roll. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Predictions about Electronic Books”
On the subject, Martha, of cell phones and novels and things in the digital realm that have to do with literature, I was thinking about my very first attempts, this was about 10 or 12 years ago, to read books on an electronic device on a regular basis.
And it was my Palm Pilot. I could download them off of the, you know, the Project Gutenberg. They have all this stuff that is out of copyright and they reformat it and stuff. And I could download it and read it there. And I would do that every day to and from work.
You mean like the great classics, right?
Yeah. Some of the stuff that you always meant to read or some of the stuff that you hadn’t read in 15 years and that sort of thing. And you felt good about it because it was good literature and it fit in my little device.
But, you know, it never really stuck with me. And I think this is the problem that all of those electronic devices have. All of the e-book readers and the Kindle and this sort of thing is you find yourself fiddling with them, making sure that the cables are plugged in. And you remember to charge them or you remember to sync them.
It’s one more electronic device in your backpack. It’s one more thing to get stolen. It’s one more thing to forget in the cab or the hotel. And frankly, I still would, even this many years on, I’d rather just throw a couple books in my bag and go. Just regular paper books.
Well, I don’t know, Grant. I’m looking forward to the potential of carrying, say, 20 books in my backpack on one electronic device.
On vacation or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just, you know, when I’m grazing.
Where are you going that you’re going to need 20 books?
That’s a very good point. As long as I have internet access, I’ll be happy. I mean, if there’s school books there, that’s fine. But school books tend to be loaded with graphs and charts and color diagrams. And none of the e-book readers, none of these digital book readers, none of them do that well.
Is there some need that they can fill, though?
No. I think that need is already filled by the laptop. I think the computer is already doing the job that they’re trying to do with the e-book reader. And I think they’re doomed to fail.
We’ll see different size computers make a claim on certain kinds of the book market. But I don’t see why I should buy a device for several hundred dollars that does a fraction of what I can get a laptop to do.
Well, that’s a good point. I’ve lost more books. And umbrellas, I could just see me losing one of those. What are they, about $400?
And you know, that’s the other thing. Yeah, some of them, they’re several hundred dollars. That’s the other thing. I like to give books away. When I’m on the road and I finish a book, I hand it to somebody and say, here’s a book I think you should read.
And you’re not going to do that with an electronic device.
No, you’re not. You both have it, and you can do like some infrared syncing or something.
Well, what about that? What about that? What about people sharing their playlists on their iPod?
Maybe people share their book lists from Kindle or whatever other device they’re using.
Maybe. I think it overcomplicates the simplicity of the personal recommendation. Here’s a book. That’s so easy.
Well, we’ll see. Check back in again in five years.
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