{"id":1116,"date":"2007-11-19T09:21:33","date_gmt":"2007-11-19T09:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1116"},"modified":"2007-11-19T09:21:33","modified_gmt":"2007-11-19T09:21:33","slug":"newsweek_covers_the_future_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2007\/11\/19\/newsweek_covers_the_future_of\/","title":{"rendered":"newsweek covers the future of reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"6032-newsweekkindle.jpg\" img style=\"margin:15px;\" border=\"1\" src=\"\/blog\/archives\/6032-newsweekkindle.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"233\" align=\"right\"\/> Steven Levy&#8217;s <i>Newsweek<\/i> cover story, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/id\/70983\">&#8220;The Future of Reading,&#8221;<\/a> is pegged to the much anticipated release of the Kindle, Amazon&#8217;s new e-book reader. While covering a lot of ground, from publishing industry anxieties, to mass digitization, Google, and speculations on longer-term changes to the nature of reading and writing (including a few remarks from us), the bulk of the article is spent pondering the implications of this latest entrant to the charred battlefield of ill-conceived gadgetry which has tried and failed for more than a decade to beat the paper book at its own game. The Kindle has a few very significant new things going for it, mainly an Internet connection and integration with the world&#8217;s largest online bookseller, and Jeff Bezos is betting that it might finally strike the balance required to attract larger numbers of readers: doing a respectable job of recreating the print experience while opening up a wide range of digital affordances.<br \/>\nSpeaking of that elusive balance, the bit of the article that most stood out for me was this decidely ambivalent passage on losing the &#8220;boundedness&#8221; of books:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Though the Kindle is at heart a reading machine made by a bookseller &#8211; ?\u009dand works most impressively when you are buying a book or reading it &#8211; ?\u009dit is also something more: a perpetually connected Internet device. A few twitches of the fingers and that zoned-in connection between your mind and an author&#8217;s machinations can be interrupted &#8211; ?\u009dor enhanced &#8211; ?\u009dby an avalanche of data. Therein lies the disruptive nature of the Amazon Kindle. It&#8217;s the first &#8220;always-on&#8221; book.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Levy&#8217;s Newsweek cover story, &#8220;The Future of Reading,&#8221; is pegged to the much anticipated release of the Kindle, Amazon&#8217;s new e-book reader. While covering a lot of ground, from publishing industry anxieties, to mass digitization, Google, and speculations on longer-term changes to the nature of reading and writing (including a few remarks from us), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,192,549,1010,1546,1576],"tags":[2858],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-books","category-ebooks","category-kindle","category-publishing","category-reading","tag-reading-books-ebooks-publishing-amazon-kindle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}