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eBooKs: Neither e, Nor BooKs
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then how come everyone I know spends more time reading off a
screen every year, up to and including my sainted grandmother
(geeks have a really crappy tendency to argue that certain tech-
nologies aren’t ready for primetime because their grandmothers
won’t use them — well, my grandmother sends me email all the
time. She types 70 words per minute, and loves to show off
grandsonular email to her pals around the pool at her Florida
retirement condo).
The other arguments were a lot more interesting, though.
It seemed to me that electronic books are
different
from paper
books, and have different virtues and failings. Let’s think a little
about what the book has gone through in years gone by. This is
interesting because the history of the book is the history of the
Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Pilgrims, and, ultimately,
the colonizing of the Americas and the American Revolution.
Broadly speaking, there was a time when books were hand-
printed on rare leather by monks. The only people who could read
them were priests, who got a regular eyeful of the really cool car-
toons the monks drew in the margins. The priests read the books
aloud, in Latin [LATIN BIBLE] (to a predominantly non-Latin-
speaking audience) in cathedrals, wreathed in pricey incense that
rose from censers swung by altar boys.
Then Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Martin
Luther turned that press into a revolution. [LUTHER BIBLE] He
printed Bibles in languages that non-priests could read, and dis-
tributed them to normal people who got to read the word of God
all on their own. The rest, as they say, is history.
Here are some interesting things to note about the advent of
the printing press:
[CHART: LUTHER VERSUS THE MONKS]
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