Featured on Radio 2 today, and taken up in the Guardian, the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is promoting ebooks in order to save $350M.
I couldn’t understand most of the listener comments on the radio show. Sounded at best Luddites and worst rather belittling to the State of California’s governor. California is the epicentre of the global software / tech industry. Arnold will have been advised by some of the very best minds in the sector. His opinion’s on this matter should be taken seriously.
Personally, the critics are failing to recognise what a 3rd / 4th generation ‘mobile library’ is likely to be able to do. Google’s Wave launched recently with some terrific context sensitive spell check and real-time translation. How about context sensitive reference suggestions, based on the full contents of your library? Or recording all your reading statistics – from time spent per page, to where you dip into a particular book, or books read this year.
The price of the devices will drop, as will the price of books. Access will improve with the long-tail better able to be supported. I will be able to create a vast amount of space in my house too! I can see nothing but good things from digitising books – the software will evolve until we wonder how we ever tolerated the physical for so long.
Sure, some will continue to wish to cuddle-up with a physical book. Nothing will prevent a Californian student purchasing the physical. This is simply about choices. Freedom of choice also applies to the publishers, so when something is only available in digital format don’t go bleating on about that either. Many technical books, particularly in IT, are already available both in pdf and physical format. The digital copy is often available pre-publication, since the authors are often keen to collect information about all the errors prior to publishing the physical version. Want the very latest version, go digital, since even more bugs will have been ironed out.
The UK needs to follow Arnold’s lead. Certainly, we too could do with saving a few quid in public spend.
Tags: california, ebook, governor
