Nov 9, 2001
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I HAVE AN E-BOOK OBSESSION! Did you know that? Let me explain.
E-book is obviously short for electronic book. This sounds like a nineteenth century name for what it is: a computer file. In such a computer file are the contents of a book. For example, a Word document with Pride and Prejudice in it is an e-book. So is a plain text file of the same book, or a web page or any other format. The point is that the environment where the book is read is a digital computer environment. There are a few issues about e-books that I think are important. First, there is the issue of reading an entire book on a screen. Despite that, I am obsessed with reading e-books, so I will explain why. Finally, what does the future hold for e-books?
Feb 9, 1998
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Note, this was written before I had a blog. I recovered it from the Internet Archive. Back in graduate school I had a “musings” section of my site and those essays are in the same spirit as this blog so I’ve added them with retroactive datestamps.