I've been saying since I first heard of the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Noble Nook and even the Sony Ereader that rather than buy a digital book I'd much rather have the three dimensional hold in my own hands version any day of the week. What happens if the electricity goes out??? Or if I lose the piece of technology that was capable of allowing me to read the books? What if the whole world went insane for a few months and luxuries such as the Internet were gone even for a short time? Well then having the book would count for a lot more.
I try to always admit it when I'm wrong. I wouldn't say that I'm exactly wrong about my feelings towards digital books. But I am willing to completely concede a benefit of E-books that I had never stopped to really consider before. E-books make reading more accessible in ways that only truly make sense in our informational era. While I would rather have the paper and binding in my hands, E-books provide a cheap alternative to ignorance. E-books will probably never truly replace regular books. But E-books have the potential to become more affordable than physical books could ever hope to be. And because of that possibility it also has the potential to give any person who has at the very least Internet access (plus the determination) to read great literary works that might have been inaccessible due to simple poverty. In this day and age in the USA most children have access to the Internet and computers. Every year more schools in this country have made gifts to students as young as late elementary school of wifi accessible laptops which the students are to use for doing their school work.
When I was growing up it was just becoming mandatory to have computer access to do homework that was worth a massive percentage of your grade for that semester. Back then in the 90s it was just becoming expected for every student to have typed and spell checked reports. If you weren't lucky enough to have a computer at home you were expected to spend time after school to type up your reports. Only in my Junior year did I have a class that had any expectation that we should all have Internet access to do course work. That was a computer class where we were being taught how to "practically" search and surf the web (I have memories that make smile of being instructed how to properly "search" for topics in search engines which seems like common sense now in this day and age!). Just in a decade we've all ready been swooped up in a tide of new revolution which has the promise of making ignorance even more of a crime than it used to be in societies like the USA and others in the Western world.
In 1990 it was reasonable that the reason you couldn't read a classic book was because your family lacked the resources to buy you the book and you couldn't ever seem to get it from your local library. Now days because of E-books anybody with access to the Internet can read Lewis Carroll's tales about Alice or be terrified at HG Wells' prediction of what alien contact could mean for the world.
I would rather have an actual physical copy of any book I want to read. But if I can read an enjoyable book online from some of the fabulous web sites like:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Http://www.readprint.com/
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
http://www.questia.com
http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/
http://www.classicbookshelf.com/
And also do so free of charge I've benefited in more ways than I could have hoped before the Internet. It nearly makes growing up in the 1980s and 1990s seem like a dark age compared to the places where technology is faster and faster taking us with the passing of everyday. It makes you count your blessings. It makes you realize what a privileged time to be alive. No matter the negatives of this time in future history, compared to the past we are all fast becoming the first true generations of completely spoiled human brats compared to where we were a mere hundred years before.
I have been using Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) for a few years to read classics I'd never gotten the chance to read before. While I loved the opportunity to read the book I was not happy at the time because it was very uncomfortable to either sit in a desk chair or strain my eyes to read from a mobile device. Only recently we got a laptop which allows me to read books online with the benefit of a bigger screen and bigger font that tends to not put strain on my eyes.
Since getting to use the laptop in this way I've realized what pushed makers of devices like the Amazon Kindle to think that there was a great future in making such devices. I still tend to think that Amazon and Barnes & Noble have to go a ways further before I would spend the amount of money each of those cost for a device that can only function as an E-reader. The Apple iPad is more likely to gain my interest because you want more bang for your buck (but even the iPad leaves me unsure whether it would be worth the price tag with what I can see me actually using it for).
In the end it is a laptop or netbook's possibilities that drive home to that though I will always feel the actual physical manifestation of any book is to be strongly preferred, I must admit that we are increasingly living in an age where ignorance should be considered a sin with so many avenues available to anyone hooked to the net's ability to access such massive amounts of incredible information that would have made the Ancient Library of Alexandria envious.
Kindle Store - Limited-time offers and thousands of popular classics for FREE
With over 500,000 titles, the Kindle Store contains the largest selection of the books people want to read including New York Times® Best Sellers and most new releases from $9.99. And Amazon provides limited-time promotional offers and thousands of the most popular classics for free with wireless delivery in under 60 seconds via Whispernet to your Kindle, computer, or other mobile device.
But of course, the Internet is huge and there are lots of older, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books online. We wanted to make it easier to find these collections, which today represent nearly 2 million titles. See the sites and instructions below to download free classic and other out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books and transfer via USB to your Kindle device or read on Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac. Note that these large collections of older free books are typically created from scanned copies of physical books and can have variable quality.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=amb_link_40669842_101/?node=2245146011&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A!133142011%2Cn%3A2245146011%2Cn%3A154606011&bbn=2245146011
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