In The New York Times Bits Blog (@nytimesbits), tech reporter David Streitfeld (@DavidStreitfeld) interviews Jason Merkoski (@merkoski), a leader of the team that built Amazon’s first Kindle. Merkoski, author of Burning the Page: The Ebook Revolution and the Future of Reading, dispenses with the usual techo-utopianism and says, “I think we’ve made a proverbial pact with the devil in digitizing our words.” And: “Big Brother won’t be a politician but an ad man and he’ll have the face of Google.” And: “It’s hard to love Amazon. Not the way we love Apple or a bookstore.” But he also says:
In 20 years, the space of one generation, print books will be as rare as vinyl LPs. You’ll still be able to find them in artsy hipster stores, but that’s about it. So the great advantage of ebooks is also their curse; ebooks will be the only game in town if you want to read a book. It’s sobering, and a bit sad. That said, ebooks can do what print books can’t. They’ll allow you to fit an entire library into the space of one book. They’ll allow you to search for anything in an instant, save your thoughts forever, share them with the world, and connect with other readers right there, inside the book. The book of the future will live and breathe.
Also see paidContent’s review, “Former Kindle Exec on Kindle flaws, Nook Strengths, and Google’s Future in Ebooks.”
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