Date: November 2nd, 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...

As noted in the short summary on the previous page, this presentation was a "re-run" from the August meeting, which was disrupted by a power outage just as the presentation was getting started. The only example that could be shown then was my own eBook reader device:

This time, there were no technical problems to speak of, and a wide-ranging discussion was held regarding eBook reader devices present and future, sources of content for such devices, both commercial presses and "amateur" sources, and a number of related topics..