Book People Archive

Re: jose's "digital reprint" is a fantastic, inspiring demo

michael said:
>    Of all the complaints I have received about eBooks, very nearly all 
>    are about things the complainants can change for themselves.
>    The funny part is that, after all their complaining, 
>    and I don't mean bowerbird and Mr. Noring
>    these people seem to rarely take the minimal time and effort 
>    required to make these changes, and would rather prefer to 
>    continue complaining rather than make any kind of effort to fix things.

i have posted a reply to michael on "bpsuper",
the super-listserve on this "bookpeople" listserve
that lets people make commentary on threads here
without having to be subjected to any "moderation"...

my message, a call for simplicity, can be viewed at this u.r.l.:
>    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bpsuper/message/2

i end with this paragraph:
>   so, in conclusion, yes, there _are_ people who like to complain.
>   but at the same time, much of the global problem with e-books
>   is due to unnecessary complexities we've foisted upon people,
>   and it behooves us to examine our "contribution" to this mess,
>   and make sure we fix that before we start blaming our victims...
>   and again, thanks to michael for pointing the way from the start,
>    with his steadfast dedication to the pure simplicity of plain-text...

that's a good enough summary for those of you who might not
want to plow through all of the hairy details...

***

bill said:
>    there's more work going on 
>    on pre-digesting the text for you as well.
>    Check out http://www.liveink.com/
>    which reorganizes the text of a book 
>    into phrases for optimal reading.

those cats stole my line-break formulas i've used for years.         :+)

***

now, doesn't _anybody_ have _anything_ to say about jose's demo?

in the face of the huge book-scanning projects, where high priority is
now being given to images that gobble storage-space and bandwidth,
i think what jose has demonstrated to us is of an immense importance.
it points the way we can narrow the digital divide, rather than widen it,
by easily making full libraries available on every computer in the world.

yet once again the bookpeople listserve seems to be struck dumb...

-bowerbird