Date: August 3rd, 2004

Presenter: Ken Rodabaugh II

Topic: e-Books -- the New Face of Literature in the Digital Age

Meeting Summary:

Whether you agree with Charles Darwin or not, you can't dispute that evolution does apply to non-organic things.

Crude petroglyphs carved in the rocks, wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay tablets, heiroglyphs on papyrus, oak-gall ink scribblings on parchment scrolls, elegant calligraphy with illuminated capitals on vellum pages bound between leather covers, and finally standardized letterforms impressed on paper by mechanical presses....

Literature has evolved over the centuries, but the essence remains the same: making a durable record of someone's words so they can be read somewhere else at a later time. For many years -- in fact, for the past couple of centuries -- the basic form of the technology seems to have stabilized. Ink on paper has remained a constant, even though there have been improvements in the ink, the paper, and even the method of applying the one to the other.

Now, however, in the past decade or so a new technology has begun to develop. Books with neither paper nor ink have begun to appear on the scene. These electronic books (called 'e-books') may turn out to be the next major stage in the evolution of literature...

In some respects, this turned out to be a very frustrating meeting. Just as the presentation got off the ground, the weather caused the power in the immediate area to fail. As a result, no screen projection was available, so the presentation's visual aids and Internet linkages could not be shown. The only example that could be shown was my own eBook reader device:

The meeting continued as a verbal presentaion only, until the CompUSA store staff decided to close the store -- since they could not do business under such conditions and the emergency lighting was beginning to fade.

As a service to the members who were not able to see the full presentation, the entire presentation file with all links active, may be accessed by clicking on the eBook image above. I encourage you to check out some of the links, and especially the Hardware/Software, Publishers, and Story Sources section.