Alcides Fonseca

Yesterday Steven Levy published on Newsweek an article about The Future of Reading based on the opinion of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO.

In the pre-dot-com-bubble, Jeff believed on a worldwide online bookstore. He brought his vision to the real world, and today we have Amazon, as he has billions of dollars in his bank account. Pretty fair. Now he believes this is the time to change to books 2.0 (or the so called e-books). From my researching, the first e-book can be traced as far back as 1946, but only in mid-90s companies tried to sell them. I remember back in 2000 everyone was talking that e-books were going to be the future along with Pocket PCs. Microsoft Reader and Adobe PDF e-books were so promising, but 7 years later I only see some e-books being shared on P2P networks by those who don’t want to pay writers.

But if someone can successfully launch e-books, it’s Bezos. Everyone buys books from Amazon and they are in position to demand e-books from publishers. But how will they make consumers change ideas? I believe they should do to books the same as Apple did with music back when they introduced the iPod. Everyone was attached to the physical format of the CDs, just like we are to books, but the advantages of the MP3 were no match for most people. Everyone now downloads musics from the Amazon of music: the iTunes Music Store and move a few to the device. The same will happen to books. Bezos has already thought on the device for reading e-books: it’s called Kindle and has being developed since 2004. Of course I don’t believe this will be the revolutionary bookreader, but a simple prototype. The real one will be much more appealing to users.

But do I real believe books will be replaced? I still have my doubts… I’m an avid reader and I do value the physical experience of reading page by page and most of all, having them on my shelves. I need to know that they are there and I do own them. But that’s me, someone who loves fantasy and sci-fi books. But as for daily feeds, and technical books I sure read them on the computer. The interactiveness and, above all, the Ctrl+F make me use my computer for my reading. But that’s me.

The average Joe doesn’t read so much (in Portugal almost nobody reads, but I know it’s not that bad everywhere else) and the e-book will be a nice way of improve those statistics. When I went to Barcelona, one thing that amazed me was the book vending machine! A lot of people read books in the metro in the everyday commuting to work. For those people, the e-book with a Amazon online bookstore was a pretty nice innovation. And they could just go to the nearest Starbucks and download a new romance, just like you could download a music.

The crucial factor will be price. E-books will be a lot cheaper than physical books of course, and this will make young people pick the electronic version rather than the traditional one. And they are who will decide the future technologies. Of course the real lovers would still want to buy books, and there will be always those available (maybe more expensive?!) just like you can still go the a FNAC store and buy a few CDs.

Yes, that’s true! I kicked Scott Adams himself in his nuts! Repeatedly! Read more for (disgusting) details.

For those of you who live in some other dimension, Scott is the author of the famous Dilbert Comic (which btw I subscribe). He is now selling his latest book: Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! that is not, as you may think, yet another compilation of Dilbert’s strips, but rather a collection of his best posts in his blog where he makes funny comments on what happens in the world of business (among some other random stuff).

To promote his new book, apart from the traditional book-signing, Scott decided to do a Q&A at Second Life. Last night as I was awake at the time and had SL installed, why not? I teleported myself and I found right in from of me Scott’s avatar (that he made from pictures of himself). The session was quite nice with some interesting questions (like Which is more dangerous: dilbert with a machine gun, dogbert with a garrote, or catbert with a “request denied” rubber stamp?) and trivia about the comic and animated series. And guess what? A movie is coming up!!!

If you are interested, you can read the transcript.

In the end there was a session where you could go up on stage and kick Scott around. I tried some stuff like punching, slapping, but what I found most interesting was kicking him in his FamilyJewels, so I did it over 5 times in a row! Thanks Mr Adams for that pleasure!

I liked the session pretty much (disregarding the fact that I was almost sleeping in from of the pc)! Not that I prefer this kind of presentations more than I like RL‘s but if it’s impossible to be there, SL is good enough. And it can provide some amusement IRC couldn’t do!

I am a avid reader, before I fall asleep, I always read a bit unless I really like the book and then I read it all in a row. No they aren’t computer-related books, they’re mostly fantasy books but once in a while I take a look around one off-theme. Tolkien, Julliet Marillier, Homero make my evenings worth it!

Some time ago, Veronica suggested in Pownce to create a fantasy & sci-fi book club. I just loved the and idea, and more the fact that people are using this services to create this kind o connections on shared interests. Even the name was decided on Pownce!

Today the first book was released for discussion in the official blog SwordAndLaser.com but the discussion is happening on its Ning Social Network.

If you are a fan of Fantasy or Sci-fi books, why don’t you join us?

Nunca liguei a essas coisas do Panteão nem nada disso. Para mim a verdadeira homenagem é incluí-lo nos Programas Escolares. Dando aos alunos a oportunidade de ler as suas obras é que o estamos a imortalizar.

De facto, gostaria de sugerir a todos que saibam ler, quer tenham acabado de o aprender, quer já nem se lembrem de o fazer, a ler o Romance da Raposa. E acreditem que vos vai fazer pensar, apesar de ser uma fábula para crianças. E se gostarem, continuem a ler a sua obra.