10 January 2012

Response to Carr

Nicholas Carr raises an interesting point about the future of book publishing. Digital media is extremely easy to change in relation to printed material in that it is much faster and cheaper. However, I don't really think there is much potential benefit from this in comparison with the potential harm. In addition, the ebook is not a great leap from accessing content on the internet, with the major difference being that it is more easily downloadable. 

The major difference from printed books is that changes can be made quickly and frequently. It seems like readers would be irritated with frequently updating books because it can be a notable time investment to read a book and then find out it would have a major update the next week. For nonfiction books, it is important to fix incorrect information. However, it is possible that the ability to quickly and easily fix these errors would lead to the authors being sloppy in the first place. Information that is subject to change at any time with new research would probably be better suited to being on a website for reference rather than in a book.

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