Eco gets it
It probably should not surprise anyone that Umberto Eco gets it about ebooks. Eco is a certified Smart Guy, after all.
Still. A lot of certified Smart Guys have utterly and completely failed to get it. So I still find it refreshing when someone—certified Smart or not—does.
I don’t wholly agree with the “nobody reads for pleasure on screen” dictum; despite my well-known bitterness about the Beach Blanket Bob mode of ebook marketing, I know some people will read for pleasure onscreen because I am one of them. However, Eco is careful to restrict his comments to past and present without trying to predict the future, so I can generally go along with him as far as he goes.
And he is oh-so-right about reference books. We can finally start to solve the thumb-in-the-index problem.
Some good words about libraries, too, with which I wholeheartedly agree though I don’t think they go nearly far enough.