I’ve seen a lot of discussion about E-books recently, but I think that this article by Stephen Johnson in the Wall Street Journal is the best at summarizing the benefits and problems with E-books. In a nutshell, he lists the following ways that the E-book will change how we read:

1. We will be able to purchase books much more easily.
2. Searching the contents of a vast library of books will become incredibly easy.
3. It will become harder to read an entire book, for two reasons: (a) each book will be so annotated that one can jump from one book to another with little effort; and (b) because it is so easy to purchase another book you can jump from book to book as the mood hits you.
4. Books will become more interrelated, as it will become simple to link similar and cross-referenced books to each other.
5. Books will become more known by specific paragraphs and sentences, as these will be what comes up in Google searches.
6. Reading will become a much more social endeavor.

Regardless of the consequences, it seems clear that the E-book is where we are going. The day will come when the majority of people do all their reading on an electronic device, be it a computer, cell phone or reader such as Amazon’s Kindle.

(An aside: one of the things I admire about the Amish is that they consider the full-range of consequences before they embrace a technology. I don’t necessarily think they always make the right decisions, but one can’t help but think that this attitude would be helpful in today’s “if it’s new, it’s good” world.)

I will admit that I am a devoted bibliophile. My idea of a perfect gift is an Amazon gift certificate so I can buy (usually obscure) books. I love to sit on the couch and read a good book, and part of my enjoyment is holding the book and seeing how far I’ve read and far I have to go. I don’t get the same experience with an E-book.

But my biggest concern is the third consequence I listed above: the fact that it will become harder to read a book straight through due to the ease of being able to read something else. I can see the value in being able to view a referenced source, but I’m afraid that it will lead to fewer and fewer people being able to sit down and read through an entire book. Most (good) books are a complete whole – one must read the entire book to get the full value of it. Reading 20% of the book does not necessarily give you 20% of its value; only when the entire book is read is the overall point made.

All that being said, I’m not anti-E-book (in fact, I originally read that Wall Street Journal article on my cell phone). I am especially excited about the possiblities of easily building a “matrix” of similar books based on the books you have already read – this could give me a reading list a mile long. I just hope that the value that undoubtedly will come from putting all books in electronic format will not be offset by our society’s increasingly short attention-span.