- Delivering messages and stories always followed the technology
- From ancient times of writing on clay tablets, now we have other type of tablets to read eBook on! Is this an evolution, or just a circle?
- To read an eBook: you do not need high-tech stuff!
- How will eBooks look like from the future?
Beginning of written things
Many people still believe that the only good format for a book is a printed one. Some may emphasise that they like the smell, they like holding it in their hands, and it’s simply not the same experience reading an eBook as reading a printed one. We can’t put an electronic version on the shelf to create an aesthetic atmosphere in the room, and it doesn’t collect dust either – so it’s not the real thing!
Yet if we look at how the history of preserving writing and delivering it from the author to the reader has evolved, we can see that, as with many areas of life, this field has undergone continuous development throughout human history!
For example, the Gilgamesh Epic was spread in ancient times through baked clay tablets, some of which are on display in various museums around the world today. Since they were burnt, they are very durable, so even if they are somewhat damaged, they can still present their contents to the reader after millennia. However, I wouldn’t want to be in the position of those who wrote on them, as compared to writing on paper, this was an extremely tiring and difficult task! And, maybe holding it as reader also wasn’t quite a light experience!
Nanni’s letter of complaint is a surviving record, perhaps the first piece of writing in history to express customer dissatisfaction, which was also written on an clay tablet and burnt. We may view the world’s progress as a rather positive or negative thing, but we can perhaps all agree that writing a complaint email today is much easier in many ways than it was at Nanni’s time!
High-tech of the 16th century: printing
The invention of paper, and its subsequent spread to many cultures, made it easier to send written messages from one place to another. If we start to think about it, perhaps the Egyptian papyrus scrolls are the first to come to our mind, or the work of the monastic orders, hidden away from the world, so they could peacefully paint the initials and copy the chronicles!
Gutenberg, whom we know as the inventor of the European book printing press, made it possible to produce books more quickly and cost-efficiently, and this technology has continued to evolve since then. Nowadays you wouldn’t even call it technology, while people at the invention’s time hated it! Perhaps today we cannot fully appreciate the significance of the invention of the printing press, which, due to its efficiency, can produce and preserve more ideas, works and publications over time and space, thus contributing to the easier dissemination of these ideas.
Today’s book technology
The same goal is served by the electronic book format, which enables ideas and stories to overcome the challenges of time and geographical distance, so that information reaches not only those with whom the creator of the idea is in direct touch, but also those who would not be available to hear these ideas and stories at 11 pm on a sunday evening!
The advantage of the EBUB format is that it provides easy access, and we can have it with us without having to consider the weight of the book or the space it occupies in our bag. Its pages won’t rip, and spilled camomile tea won’t stick them together.
So the question is, how can this format be read?
With a printed book, it’s much more intuitive to buy it, open it on the page you want and start reading.
Reading an EBUB book is not much more complicated;
-either you have an eBook reader device,
– OR you have a smart device (such as the one on which you’re reading now: a phone, tablet, computer or laptop) and an EBUP reader application. Many of them are available freely on Google Play, the App Store or the application store depending on your operating system. After installing one of these, clicking on an EPUB file will open the book in the application automatically, allowing you to start reading immediately!
The future?
You can say, technology is not to be trusted, and you can think that even clay tablets and some papyrus are readable many centuries after their making, but eBook will not be so well preserved, so in 200 years no one will be able to read them!
Well, we don’t know about the future yet, but may you’re right. Imagine people in 200 years thinking about how were we able today read those files, the same way how we try to guess how the pyramids in Egypt were built…
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