Ebook: Another trend of simplicity
The need for more information and the conservation of schoolbag space will motivate students and researchers to make increasing use of electronic textbooks. True, it will still be hard to read information off a screen, so ebooks which allow easy printing (i.e., PDF files and html compiled versions) will be the favorites. An e-book (for electronic book: also eBook, ebook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are either read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book devices or e-book readers.
Text can be searched automatically, and cross-referenced using hyperlinks. This makes e-books an excellent choice of format for works that benefit from search and cross-reference capabilities, such as dictionaries, reference works, certain kinds of textbooks. Less physical space is required to store e-books. Hundreds (or thousands) may be carried together on one device. Approximately 500 average e-books can be stored on one CD (equivalent to several shelves’ worth of print books) Because they take up little space, e-books can be offered indefinitely, with no ‘out of print’ date, allowing authors to continue to earn royalties indefinitely (copyright law permitting), and allowing readers to find older works by favorite authors.
Do you gift others with a book and write a dedication on the title page?
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I’d dispute whether an ebook (and ebook reader) is fundamentally more simple than a paper book. More’s the point, they do different things, albeit with a common intersection of features and uses.
There’s a really good discussion of the issues in moving from paper to digital format in the book The Myth of the Paperless Office:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JdBwGq9euJoC&dq=myth+paperless+office&pg=PP1&ots=qwcg3WjOz4&sig=KWaEBsczGXvX-kYOpsmCu3Qp1Tc&prev=http://www.google.co.uk/search%3Fq%3Dmyth%2Bpaperless%2Boffice%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail
Disregarding how to convert a paper book to ebook, the later is much more simple to carry and save. However, if we viewed ebook as paperless office, I agree that ebook isn’t as simple as it is considered. Personally I even prefer to read on paper rather than on an electronic device.
Anyway, thank for sharing Adrian!