Ebooks Ruin The World!!!!

[julieandrews]

This from Shelf Awareness:

"The new immigrants don't shoot the old inhabitants when they come in. One technology tends to supplement rather than supplant. How you read is not as important as: will you read? And will you read something that's a book--the sustained train of thought of one person speaking to another? Search techniques are embedded in e-books that invite people to dabble rather than follow a full train of thought. This is part of a general cultural problem."
--James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, in a Newsweek poll of "some literary brains on the future of reading."

Because you can search within ebooks, you'll 'dabble' in books rather than sit down and read them from cover to cover.

Let's stop and think about this. Why would you search in an ebook?

* It's a textbook and you're studying for a test.
* It's a nonfiction book and you're doing research.
* It's a fiction book you've already read and you're doing research.
* It's a book with some good smut in it and you're searching for the good smut.

Those seem the likeliest reasons to me! Which is what people do with print books anyway. The search function just makes it easier.

So all you smut-seekers out there, be sure to read the book from front to back, so your train of thought is sustained. That way you'll be reading the sex scenes when and only when the author wants you to!

As for the 'new immigrants' not shooting the 'old inhabitants', I don't know whose Congress he's Librarian of, but the US's should know our history a little better!

Taking it in the technological sense he meant, that reminds me I have some 8tracks to buy on my way home.

Comments

[tomomi.livejournal.com]

Seriously, wtf?

There's one nugget of truth in there (How you read is not as important as will you read) and the rest is complete nonsense at best, but veers very hard toward offensively idiotic.

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

Clearly the 'Congress' in his title plays a much larger role than the 'Librarian' does.