Rory Cellan-Jones - interesting

Interesting piece by Rory Cellan-Jones about ebooks, and the upcoming Apple announcement - see LINK

Rory’s makes the point that sharing possessions has always been easier with the written word - books can be lent to friends easily, perhaps far more easily that ebooks can. And he’s right, to a certain extent. But that’s not to say that digital technology can’t do likewise.

Imagine a wireless-enabled e-reader, on which you have the latest blockbuster. You’ve read it, you think it’s great, you tell your book-reading friends. They want to borrow it. Technologically, it’s not difficult to do this, even in the current state of Digital Rights paranoia. And what’s the problem? You read a book, you want to lend it to a friend, you meet: either you physically hand something made from dead trees over, or you bring your readers into close proximity, establish a connection, select “TRANSFER”, and the deed is done. I say again - what’s the problem?

And this is the only quoted reason that Apple won’t be experiencing an iPod moment this Tuesday, apparently.

Well, I’m not so sure. You need to factor in that ‘books’ may well be very different in a couple of years, with the ability to follow links in the book to more information. How great would it be if, having finished our electronic book, we could read all about the author and his inspiration. And for this, you need something more than the current crop of ereaders. Do you need an iSlate? Whether you need one or not, I’m guessing it’s going to be the “must-have” of 2010.