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Blog Entry 6 of 6 With a jaundiced eye
Commentary from me and you, the readers as to the events reported daily in the newspaper, on tv and radio.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~Strongvoice

Coming transformation of education thru e-Books?

Contributed by: Fran Miller   on 12/2/2007

The release of Amazon's Kindle and the downward pricing of Sony's e-Book has set off a firestorm of discussion as to whether this is a must-have for the Christmas season.

The romanticists who weigh in on the side of books cannot imagine the high touch and feel of a book being read in front of a fire with a glass of Cabernet ever being replaced. After all, hasn't the demise of the book been predicted ever since the emergence of the laptop computer?

The early adopters and technological afficiandos however, can't wait to get their hands on electronic readers that offer portability and electronic documents. The differences between Kindle and Sony, aside, these people are champing at the bit.

Institutional professionals in libraries, schools, and bookstores caution dipping ones toes in the water to see if it is boiling, and suggest there is room and a need for everyone to co-exist in the market.

My take on the matter is pretty simple. We are watching the classic emergence of a new technology where the vendors are attempting, early on, to get a buy-in to proprietary technology the way Microsoft did to operating systems and Apple did with the iPod and iTunes. Great try if you can pull it off.

I believe the stakes are way higher when it comes to education and lifelong learning compared to entertainment. The e-book market cries out for an open systems solution that allows portability across hand-held devices and standard file formats and commodity software. This is where the rubber hits-the-road.

If you were merely talking about scanning of the existing inventory of text-dominant books and electronic page flipping software that would be one thing. But, the future will bring interactive digital multi-media with complete hypertext, graphics, mathematical and games modeling and the like. None of the current e-book content hits the sweet spot when it comes to the future, which is rushing at us with light speed.

Amazon can easily grind Sony into the ground, merely by having more books available. But, Amazon's Kindle is the ultimate in being tethered to a corporate umbilical cord and it is likely most of what you buy from their black and white corporate world will be tossed when the new technology comes. Plus, Kindle doesn't offer PDF's and downloading from your computer. They are just interested in selling you books. Sony is more flexible, but let's face it 150dpi readers are a day late and dollar short, when, for another $200 bucks you can get an 80gig Compac with CD/DVD burning capability. Do they think we are stupid or just have more discretionary income than good sense?

This market will unfold slower than you might think because the bottleneck is with the authors. Writers of content are going to have to learn the new hyper-text software tools and that is a volatile market right now. Sure, you can do your work in Word and save it in PDF's but that is fixed technology and a bridge to no-where. Learning Dreamweaver and doing everything in HTML seems more logical, but we're not designing websites here. We want software that has avatars, testing, math modeling, etc. Products like Flash have already shown themselves to be problematic when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.

There is a chasm to cross and the future pacing technologies have yet to settle down. The baseline, that is the scanned book of the past, will create buzz and be something nice to have for this Christmas, but it will be short-lived when people look at spending $1000 for ebooks for a black and white e-reader.

Don't misunderstand me. I believe the coming advent of electronic hand-held and personal devices that can display the new content will make the printing press look like a dinosaur. The potential for improving life-long learning is immense and will make for the next Microsoft. However, of the companies out there, only Apple has the anal tendencies to develop the right device, but their latest misstep in aligning themselves with AT & T on the iPhone shows me they are fallible.

I would not look to Amazon, Microsoft or the Publishing industry to get this right. They are too interested in conservative incrementalism. It's not that Jeff Bezos doesn't know what needs to be done. His problem is that the traditional print publishers are terrified of electronic media and doing everything they can to corral their authors, circle the wagons and take on a defensive position. They watched what happened to music and see the coming collapse of their industry. They may have published the original books on creative destruction, but they either didn't read them or never fully bought-in to the concept.

No, it will come from afield and under radar. While the bookstores, libraries and the few monks still copying the Bible romanticize the past and drive into the future looking through their rear view mirrors, the world is about to be turned upside down. It will be no less revolutionary than Luther nailing his theses to the church door and saying the heck with the hierarchy. Let the revolution begin. I suspect it will come from the bottom up. It will be a Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Linux type of movement. These movements, which are "good terrorism" cannot be stopped because the participants are revolutionaries.

In the 1988 presidential election, Bill Moyers asked Barbara Tuchman, the revolutionary war historian what our founding fathers would think of what was going on now, politically. She said they would be distressed and prone to starting another revolution. Moyers asked her why. Her response was that we cope by acting like we don't care. But, deep down we do and when the conditions are right we rise up and revolt against the status quo. I personally think that as much as Thomas Jefferson loved books, he would embrace the digital future with pure abandon.

If Burning Man, open systems and the creative common movement are any indication we are about to see a thousand Martin Luthers unleashed on the modern world. School teachers, students, reference librarians, authors, tutors and a cast of thousands who don't seek to wear a monogrammed Google polo shirt will learn the new authoring software.

Then, the corporate startups will follow and the money now going to education will begin to be diverted into the new technologies. It will positively disintegrate not only the publishing, book seller and library worlds, but revolutionize education at the K-12, college, corporate and life-long level.

It will first serve niches that no one cares about and then, after it proves itself, it will go mainstream. Someday, the book will be a collector item and appeal mainly to the romanticists who grew up with it. Amazon may or may not make it.

Think Atari.

And, think of the brick and mortar that has gone into school buildings, libraries, records repositories and bookstores. Someday you may hear the echoes of ghosts in the hallway the Tattered Cover the way you do in old train stations today. Let the revolution begin!!!


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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
Submitted By: Kevin Sheppard
posted on 12/10/2007 @ 11:03:41 PM
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I believe that paper based books will be around for quite some time, I also believe that ebooks have a future. I especially believe this will be true in the education arena. With technology becoming pervasive the advantages of digital resources will become evident. I am working to make educational ebooks easier to find and purchase at: http://www.keybookshop.com/ . I would invite you to stop by and see what is available.
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Submitted By: ava godfrey
posted on 12/3/2007 @ 2:50:44 PM
(Not Rated)
You are so right about going for consumer lock in, though I think a large part of it is also motivated by the perceived need to DRM the texts. A good example of something coming in under the radar using public domain and creative commons work (libre) is http://www.booksinmyphone.com - they provide free (gratis) books you can read on your cell phone. BooksInMyPhone has taken an existing ubiquitous device and turned it into a wireless eReader. The ultra portability and always thereness of the cell phone is more convenient than a regular book, and certainly better than the current eReaders/PDAs (which try to mimic the form factor of books) or laptops. The fact that 'everyone has a cell phone' and most should be able to run these books means that it is really only the idea that has to spread.
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Submitted By: Robin Nolet
posted on 12/3/2007 @ 9:23:49 AM
Rated Blog Entry
I think there will always be a place for publishers and the Tattered Cover-good writing needs guidance and promotion, even in the technological age. It's the nature of the product that will change and, like paper and ink, they need a universal format. Publishers and authors know this is coming, though not soon, and many authors embrace the concept-if not the reality-already. It will open the door to new authors who can't fit into publishing's shrinking bottom line until publishing costs shrink. Until then, and probably even after, I'll embrace the tactile pleasures of my paper and ink books just as the fugitives in Fahrenheit 451 embraced their words.
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Fran Miller

Parker , CO

Fran Miller has posted 6 blog entries and 3 comments since joining on 9/28/2007. Fran Miller 's average blog rating is 5.
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