Book People Archive

Re: What's an ebook? and what's a book? stating the obvious (which often seems to be ignored)

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Michael S. Hart wrote:

> On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, richard seltzer wrote:
>
> > According to Amazon.com, "An e-book, or electronic book, is a digital book
> > that you can read on a computer screen or electronic device. A reader is the
> > device or software to which you download your e-book in order to read it.
[...]
> Why should we let some new company redefine our work?
>
> There were thousands of Etexts already on the Net before any of us ever
> heard of Amazon.
>
> I am perfectly happy with the definitions we have been using:
>
> An Ebook or eBook is the physical device that we carry around.
>
> An Etext or eText is the file[s] we read when displayed by such an Ebook.
>
> The book is the phyisical, the text is what is written in it. . .this doesn't
> require any definitions that haven't been in use for centuries.

Yes it does.  "Book" has had two meanings -- the physical object and the
information content therein -- for a long while.

Okay, I'll call what has been written 'text', and the physical artefact
'book', unquoted.

Situation before cheap / fast / small computers and internet:

-text, on paper, was called _either_ of "book" or "text"

-a paper book was called a "book"

Situation now is the same, but we now have in addition:

-text, in electronic form, is called either a "book", "text", or "e-book"

-an electronic book reader is called an "e-book" or a "reader" (and, I'm
sure, also a "book" soon)

So, given the inevitable advent of the use of "book" to mean an electronic
book reader, the only odd one out as far as I can see is "reader", which I
suppose is a thought-out-in-advance word coined by book publishers.  On
the other hand, Michael's particular terminology, while being more
precise, is also more restricted than the everyday terminology, and so
when used in everyday situations will be ambiguous.  "Reader" used in
place of "book" clears up this ambiguity.

Personally, I hate the word "reader", though I suppose there is some need
to clear up the ambiguity now that the physical medium and the text are no
longer so irreversibly associated with each other.


John