Oct14

The e-book is killing the page

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According to Alexandra Horowitz

The e-book hasn’t killed the book; instead, it’s killing the “page.” Today’s e-readers scroll text continuously, eliminating the single preformed page, along with any text defined by being on its bottom. A spokesman for the Kindle assured me that it is at the discretion of the publisher how to treat footnotes. Most are demoted to hyperlinked endnotes or, worst of all, unlinked endnotes that require scrolling through the e-reader to access. Few of these will be read, to be sure.

2 responses »

  1. Technology has “killed” or changed so many things for us. It’s hard to know just yet if that’s for the better or not, time will tell. Myself, I tend to abhor change and avoid it as long as I can on most things.

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    • According to Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

      According to [anthropologist Bruno] Latour, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is not a cautionary tale against hubris, but rather a cautionary tale against irrational fears of imperfection. Dr. Frankenstein is an antihero not because he created life, but rather because he fled in horror when he mistook his creation for a monster—a self-fulfilling prophecy. The moral of the story, where saving the planet is concerned, is that we should treat our technological creations as we would treat our children, with care and love, lest our abandonment of them turn them into monsters.

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