Tech geeks predict tech revolution
British author and columnist Robert McCrum has a longish think piece on The Guardian site on the perpetually impending e-book revolution. McCrum begins the piece by arguing the inevitability of a culture-wide shift to easily stored digital books, implying that printed books will go the way of the illuminated manuscript — beautiful artworks to be savoured by an elite of book collectors. The only thing preventing the bookish equivalent to the iTunes revolution, according to McCrum and several tech geeks quoted in the piece, is a viable platform from which to view and access digital books. McCrum points out that this problem is as old as the e-book itself, but claims that it is only a matter of time before someone invents a platform that mimics the printed page. But McCrum hedges his bets near the end of the essay, asserting that although “there is every reason to want to see the printed word enhanced by something more in tune with current information technology,” there will always be people who love the look and feel and smell of a real book.
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Read Robert McCrum’s essay in The Guardian
