Explaining E-Books

My wife is a constant and prolific reader. She started outpacing me years ago, so I just gave up in favor of other media. Recently, she purchased a Nook at Barnes & Noble as a means to make her books more convenient and portable. She loves it and I’m a little smittened too.

There’s been a lot of chatter over the past few years about the future of books; how “they’re already dead and just don’t know it” and “how technology can never replace them regardless of how hard it tries”. It’s a discussion I truly despise. Books aren’t going anywhere for a long, long time, but that won’t change the growing popularity of e-books. This got me to thinking about why e-books are so popular.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across this Stephen King quote…

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

…that it clicked!  You see, King’s quote reminded me of a very famous “law of prediction” from Arthur C. Clarke…

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

…which brought it all together, solving this mystery…

“E-Books are sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from uniquely portable magic!”

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What do you think? Do you use an e-book reader?