HTLit

Gene Golovchinsky, a leading researcher in the ebook world, criticizes Cushing Academy’s decision to dump textbooks and other tree-books in favor of eBooks. The school invested in three large monitors, “laptop-friendly study carrels” and 18 eBook reading platforms such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader to view the new eBooks.

Golovchinsky mentions the ever-present copyright issues and the durability of the files, but his main concern is the ways in which eBooks are inferior to print books. They cannot, for example, show color or images. He disputes that the book is an obsolete tool.

One reason eBooks loose the drag race with paper is that they don’t yet take much advantage of hypertextuality. The ebook simulates paper. It is produced in advance, linear and rigidly structured, and one organization must fit everyone.. It must be read in a particular order, and it can’t be added to once it’s complete. Perhaps this comforts the completionists, but it’s not the way information works.

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Reading Hypertext

Key readings about Reading Hypertext, edited by Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco. Just published by Eastgate; $39.95.

TwitRoll

Some of the people we’re following lately. (This list changes arbitrarily from time to time; don’t read the tea leaves.)

• Please follow htlit on Twitter.
• Mark Bernstein (chief scientist at hypertext publisher Eastgate Systems)
• Stacey Mason (editori at hypertext publisher Eastgate Systems)
• Steve Ersinghaus (100 stories project)
• Susan Gibb (100 stories project)
• Gene Golovchinsky (hypertext and tablet computing pioneer)
• Diane Greco (hypertext author and editor)
• David Kolb (author of Socrates in the Labyrinth)
• Cathy Marshall (inventor of spatial hypertext, co-author of Forward Anywhere, Microsoft researcher)
• Jill Walker (University of Bergen)