How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

I guess words and phrases will gain more prominence
maybe we won’t care so much about which books are the most read, but which passages. if you can find what you want, then why read anything but the dirty parts? the author says Google will track online chatter, but what about the ebook reader itself? who knows better than the reader which parts you lingered over and which you skipped?

non-fiction will gain/lose the most as people will only read the rich, creamy section they need and discard the dry cookie chapters.

authors will go back to being paid by the word.

digital will tell us what people really are and aren’t reading. skip two chapters of A Separate Peace and your teacher will know it. read some “throbbing manhood” paragragh over and over and we’ll all know.

at some future point, there will be a record of ever word or image that’s ever passed your eyeballs. “why did he kill all these people?” “oh, look, here it is: he read too much Mad magazine as a kid.”

my guess is that ebooks will just make our attention spans even shorter. in the article, the writer admits that she wanted something and then she got it immediately. what if she had to wait to get to a bookstore? would the interest to read still be there? what about her admission that she left one book to download another? what is her commitment to the original book? I know lots of people read several books at once, but usually from a very finite pile. there’s still an obligation that can be fulfilled because the pile is manageable: what happens when the pile is of an infinite size? where is the commitment to finish that original book when it’s buried in some directory and out of sight?