I never have liked the idea of e-books. Something about not being able to sit in my recliner with my feet up while reading one loses its appeal. And e-books don't have that smell—you know the one. And how exactly does one keep his or her place when reading an e-book?
With all of those factors in mind, I ran across this article from Gary North. He says that people like me have Picard's Syndrome. I had no idea what that was until I read the article since I'm not a Star Trek fan.
According to North, only two people in the second generation of Star Trek read books. One is Commander Data, who reads books online at "lightening speed." The other is Captain Picard who sits in his lounge chair and reads old fashioned books.
North is trying to get people to accept e-books and his arguments are sound:
"Think of an e-book’s advantages. It can be printed out for a penny a page. You can underline the printout, make notes in the margins, or file chapters in filing cabinets. You can use a three-hole punch to create a permanent book on your shelf—tall, but functional. You can search the e-text for key words electronically. You can use your cursor and CTRL-C to extract sentences or paragraphs that can then be inserted into reports or term papers, word for word, without the necessity of proofreading the citation. You can use a free-form database to store pages or extracts. You can add keywords to this database for easy future searching. You can’t do any of this with a printed book."
North has certainly made me think. Not long ago, I printed off a book that a friend of mine wrote (and hasn't yet had published) and three-hole punched it so I could put it into a binder. It wasn't ideal, but it worked. I was even able to read it in my recliner. And North is right; I certainly had room to write. Maybe I need to make a run to Office Depot and pick up a few three ring binders, huh?
