Teachout to Gutenberg: Here’s Your Hat

According to (our good friend) Terry Teachout’s latest WSJ “Sightings” column last Saturday, the e-book’s moment has arrived:

“Yes, I miss the bookstores of my youth, and I’m sure I’ll miss the handsomely bound volumes that fill the shelves in my apartment as well… The printed book is a beautiful object, “elegant” in both the aesthetic and mathematical senses of the word, and its invention was a pivotal moment in the history of Western culture. But it is also a technology—a means, not an end. Like all technologies, it has a finite life span, and its time is almost up.”

Is the soon-to-arrive Sony Reader really the greatest thing for content since sliced bread or, barring that, even just the much-awaited “iPod for text“? Well, Mac users might not think so now, but it sure does look spiffy. For now, Wired is exhibiting more guarded optimism:

“Books have been written on sheets of dried, mashed plants for about five millennia. Paper is a cheap, relatively durable and versatile technology. Sony’s new Reader will not spell the end of that long history, but it could be the opening of an interesting new chapter.”

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