elearnspace

Reading and books

It has been a busy week for text, the written word, and reading. Amazon announces Kindle - a digital book reader (which has most appropriately been labeled: ugly, from the 80's, not of this decade...and the occasional "don't judge an ebook by its cover" (ugh)). Will Richardson states, in "The ipod of Reading": "I think it’s clear we’re in a transition period that is moving us to something not necessarily better or worse but different for sure...That in these shifts, in these changes come all sorts of not seen before potential to create connections, to build networks. Like the Kindle, much of this is absolutely different."
Newsweek is giddy: "Though the Kindle is at heart a reading machine made by a bookseller—and works most impressively when you are buying a book or reading it—it is also something more: a perpetually connected Internet device."
NEA just released a rather lengthy report on diminishing reading habits (though, as Stephen notes, this doesn't appear to reflect web-based reading.
The NewYorker tackles the discussion from a perspective of digitizing books initiatives, historical developments of text and reading, and suggests: "The real challenge now is how to chart the tectonic plates of information that are crashing into one another and then to learn to navigate the new landscapes they are creating."
And David Weinberger weighs in with: "Digital writing isn't between covers. It's eruptive, ecstatic, self-transcendent...which is to say it's hyperlinked. This changes how we write, how we read, and how we shape knowledge."