The Gates of Wrath: reading to go “completely online”
Todd Bishop, writing on the Seattle Post-Intelligencier website earlier this week, reported on Bill Gates’s comments at Microsoft’s recent Strategic Account Summit. The conference is an annual event, during which time Gates usually does his “vision thing.” And as maligned as he is, Gates’s views must have some validity since he’s the world’s richest man, because as much as I agree with the Citizen Kane quote of “It’s no trick to make a lot of money if all you want to do is make a lot of money,” in Gates’s case I don’t think you could make that much money without being right about a few things.
What Gates talked about this year, in addition to a number of other digital topics, was the future of electronic reading. Needless to say, Gates had rather strong feelings on the subject. “Reading is going to go completely online,” Gates is quoted as saying. “Why is reading online better? It’s up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links.” The case Gates is making is not techno-babble (usually the pro-digital reading side), nor is it purely emotional (usually the pro-book side); instead, he’s rather simply stating the case that the utility, in terms of digital reading, is far higher than it is for print reading. What it comes down to is this: computers can do things that books can’t; while the only thing a book can do, that a computer can’t do, is be a book.
Seattle Post-Intelligencier: Bill Gates: Reading to go ‘completely online’
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The report of [print’s] death is an exaggeration (with apologies to Mark Twain)…
In a 2006 talk to the Internet Advertising Bureau in London, Bill Gates said that we would be paperless…
I don’t buy it. Gates is in the position of saying this rather being willing to hold the opinion himself. Online reading does provide some advantages that book can’t do,which he has stated, yet if online reading wants to completely take over the traditional book reading habit, too many relative industries have to be follow with the trend, including portable reading device (portable computers, internet coverage, etc.).
Moreover, we are not living in an era of technological domination, human being have alway been possessing some natures, which I believe Gate has as well, cannot be determined by technological innovations. Book reading is a cultural phenomenon rather than being pure techonological.
I totally agree that book reading is a cultuaral phenomenon, rather than being a technological one. But so was letter writing, and that’s almost completely disappeared, replaced by e-mail. In E.M. Forster novels the characters leave calling cards, and drop in for tea because telephones didn’t exist, but today we can call pretty much anyone we know at any time, and they’ll answer even if they’re half a world away. Culture, probably more so than technology, is infinitely malleable.
I can’t completely agree neither. The feeling of holding a book and reading in a comfortable chair with a cup of afternoon tea can never be replaced by a cold screen. However, I do agree that, in terms of information search, reading in the computer is way more efficient.
I use google book a lot when writing my dissertation.
I just received an invitation by mail to a book launch. It is acting as a bookmark now in the magazine published by the same company. I was quite moved by this arcane little gesture, I’m not quite sure why. (Now I’m done, Jeff, I will quote you in despatches but won’t hog your comments no more.)