As for disadvantages, many of the complaints about the Kindle are those shared by technophiles who are voicing them in the very same reviews where they praise the device. The very common complaint about not being able to mark and annotate text has been solved in software. The real problem is that no one has come up with a good interface, except possibly in those labs researching touch sensitive displays and how we might want to use them.

Ultimately, it comes down to if we are willing to accept that reading long form text on a portable device is a viable option for the “book”. If we do, then it’s worth considering the possibility (maybe the inevitability) that such devices will get more features and we might also change the way we read, and with that mindset, take a stab at imagining what the “ideal” e-text reader should be able to do. We shouldn’t let Jeff Bezos confine our imaginations to the Kindle, and we should definitely not let the Authors Guild limit our use of legally “purchased” e-books.

@Indyanna
Your textual geiger counter already exists in the form of Google Books. Of course, we all know that not every book in the world has been digitized. And even if they were, good luck tracking down anything that’s out of print and not very popular in its day.

In Canada, http://www.shortcovers.ca
and in the US, http://www.shortcovers.com

They just opened up shop today and so are still pretty limited in what they have to offer but I’m sure that will improve. What I like about this service is that it works with the Sony eReader but also, you can upload to an iPod or MP3 or to an iPhone as well as to your computer. You don’t have to spend $400. I don’t know how useful this might be to me, but at least I don’t have to spend all that money to find out.

You can read excerpts and chapters of books without buying them. You can buy just a chapter of a book if that’s all you want. I really like this feature for deciding if I want to buy the book or not and for fishing out research and not necessarily a whole book every time. Also, I sometimes find myself in places without bookstores and it will be great then, especially as they get more material digitalized. And honestly, it’s not that hard to learn how to make notes on the page via your computer.

Re: Kindle, I read an article today pointing out that they have huge audio book resources and don’t pay royalties to authors for them – the biggest business is still in the audio department. I hope someone holds them up for this and soon.

Knitting Clio, Susan, and others have convinced me that there is a market for e-books, especially given its power to make any book large print or otherwise accessible to those with limited eyesight due to medical disability or old age. And I’m certainly not making an absolutist argument that Kindle should be outlawed–I’m just not sold on its utility for me, and for most scholars I know. My concerns about the affordability and power to replace traditional books stand–again, I don’t want to stop all e-book innovation or the explansion of e-libraries, but rather, I wonder how this new technology will work with our existing public library system.

Thanks also to Erica, overworked, kb, and a convert for their thoughts on the Sony e-book versus the Kindle.

Tom is right to note that this conversation is taking place on a blog–indeed, it’s taking place only because of blog technology. (That’s kind of what I was hinting at when I called my post “Burn this after reading!”) I think his comments about the way that digital reading is changing reading are spot-on. (At least they resonate with me. I worry that I may be damaging my reading attention span by being on-line so much.) And, he’s a scholar with a millenia-plus perspective on the history of the book and of literacy, so his comments bear serious consideration. By and large, I am thrilled by the digital revolution and what it has meant for reading, communicating, and scholarship. I remain, however, quite skeptical of pronouncements that a new technology will replace everything that came before it because it is teh awesumm…kind of like “Blog Triumphalism” from ca. 2004 or so?

Great American Blog, indeed. If anything, blogs have returned us to 18th century-style news circulation and consumption. Most colonial Anglo-American newspapers published little original “news” or writing, and in fact just re-published stuff they ripped from English newspapers or other colonial papers, along with inflammatory opinion pieces and (usually failed) attempts at cheap humor.

Also, Knitting Clio makes an excellent point. I watch my grandmother, who loved to read, become cut off from books because of her eyesight and hearing. Something like this, in which she could bump up the font to a readable size or turn the volume up to 11, could bring her back to books.