I mentioned a while back that I’ll be folding my Bookshape blog into this one over the coming weeks. This is my first new Bookshape post.
Two articles about our digital reading future caught my attention this week. At Techdirt Glyn Moody reported on a classics professor who had his books ‘undownloaded’ by Google Play because he travelled beyond his home market.
“So, it seems that ebook users need to add a new word to their vocabulary: “undownloading” — what happens when you leave the authorized zone in which you may read the ebooks you paid for, and cross into the digital badlands where they are taken away like illicit items at customs. If you are lucky, you will get them back when you return to your home patch — by un-undownloading them.”
While, at The Guardian’s Australian Culture Blog, indie bookstore loving Charlotte Harper charted her journey to the ‘dark side’ of Amazon Kindle.
Harper was ultimately seduced by Whispersync (syncing across Kindle devices and apps), the content available via Kindle Singles, and the useful ‘my highlights’ feature on Kindle devices.
Maybe this tension reflects a trade-off we’re all facing. On the one hand we love the freedom and power of the cloud. On the other hand we’re waving farewell both to our privacy and to old concepts ownership. In the future cultural products will be leased not bought and access to them will be managed by corporations.
