Mossberg Says Amazon ebook Delivers Books---Short on Software

This is referencing a Mossberg article in the Wall Street Journal of the past couple of weeks. Probably around November 19 when two other articles on the subject appeared in WSJ, but I can't find the specific Mossberg reference.

Here is the essence of the matter. Mossberg checked out the new Amazon e-book called Kindle, or something, and found its access to books and periodicals was pretty decent. In addition, he found that reading it was like reading a piece of paper. (It uses the same technology as Sony e-book which apparently is for rent from the company that created it.)

On the other hand, Mossberg hand the product because the software was inadequate. My point is, what does this mean? Sony has already done a fairly good job on the software, I would set the solution of that problem is really quite trivial.

In other words, the demise of the book is in fact at hand.

Yes, there have been false alarms, but the technology is finally ready. Books may persist for a while in the form of novels were perhaps treatises on philosophy, that sort of thing. But in terms of sources of information, the book is clearly on its way out.

The implications are interesting. Of course, there will be "books" of information on various subjects that will be downloaded to e-books. unlike current paper books however, these books will be linked via the Internet to other sources of relevant information. So the entire concept of a book will to a significant extent, become much more fuzzy. A new group of words will develop to describe these new types of "books." "Books", will probably be much more of a collaboration in the near future than they are now. Getting credit for one's ideas and words will still be important, and authorship labels will still accompany the various pieces of text that will conglomerate to become a "book." But I don't think any one person will be controlling the boundaries of "books" anymore. Rather, I imagine that there would be multiple editors, each defining his or her version of the "book."

In addition, new editions of the books can be created virtually at any time and the frequency of new additions would be unrestrained by anything. Reminds me of some of the people who publish regularly on the Internet, who include a time of day with the article as well as a date. cat in the near future, there will in many cases be more than one addition of a book within a single day simply because an author has found new information and added it.