E-book readers part deux

This isn't the first time that e-book readers have been the Next Big Thing. The Franklin eBookMan was released in 1999 and has been followed by a litany of failures -- the Gemstar REB, the Rocket eBook, the Sony Reader. Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos thinks he has finally hit on a winning formula with the Kindle. (Of course, he also thought society as we know it was going to be upended by the Segway.)

The Kindle is a paperback sized, shaped, and weighted electronic device that uses eInk to simulate the look of a printed page. Like many new electronic devices it is "always on" and receiving and exchanging information. The Kindle uses the same technology as cell phones, and thus can be connected to the Internet without having to be at a WiFi hotspot. You can purchase eBooks from Amazon, access Google and message other users. Of course, you can already do that with a computer... or a cell phone... or a Game Boy. In fact, the Kindle sounds an awful lot like a Personal Data Assistant, another already failed concept, attached at the hip to Amazon.com. There are two main reasons you would turn to a book instead of an Internet resource:

1. You are learning about something complex and involved that requires that lots of information be conveyed over an extended period involving studious contemplation.

2. You want to lose yourself in a narrative (the so-called reading trance) and turn off the conscious parts of your mind for a while. For instance, before you go to bed.

Neither of these ends is served by buddy-lists, click-through links, offers of the day, low battery warnings and all of the other "features" of the Kindle that one turns to a book to get away from.

The Web has already been done better elsewhere, texts have already been done better elsewhere, portable multipurpose machines have already been done better elsewhere. What need does an always connected eBook reader fill that isn't already met better somewhere else?
Is this really the book of the future?

via iLibrarian