Redefining the Book

摘要

I have been thinking about books lately. Or, more specifically, thinking about what exactly a book is these days. Is a book the whole of its text or a mere sum of its parts? Now, I am not talking about fiction here. I'm talking about all the other content that we call books. When we started moving books into the digital realm (let's call this the first generation), every effort made the e-book seem parallel to its pulp-based cousin. Some e-book reader software even replicated the sound of a page being turned, as if this gesture would make the reader think that this really was a book.