Documenting The Media Revolution

Introduction

Edward Bulwer-Lytton once said, Laws die, books never. His statement is true, books never die, however they do change form. Books indeed have been with us for ages, from the hand written limited-copy books, to the mass-market books we see in stores today. With the rapidly growing technology books are facing another metamorphosis. A change from the traditional text format to the digital media. Electronic books, usually referred to as ebooks, are becoming more popular in our society.

Discussion

The History Of e-books

An ebook is a book in digital format that can be viewed on a computer screen, a laptop or on a device called an ebook reader. It can be a novel, manual, cookbook, computer book, a school textbook, or anything that we currently have in printed form. This technological breakthrough might change and affect our society in the next future. Just like any new invention it has benefits as well as problems.

ebooks are still fairly early in the development stages and the standards are not yet strictly outlined. A popular format for ebooks is PDF (Portable Document Format). It allows viewing of the file on various operating system platforms by using software called Acrobat Reader by Adobe. Since some people still prefer the black on white print version of books, the PDF format is ideal for that purpose. The files are viewed and printed exactly as they were composed.

The Various Devices That e-books Are Read On - Past And Present,

Another popular format for ebooks is an executable file (eXe). These can be downloaded from the internet or purchased on a CD or disk. Opening the file will bring up a viewer which closely resembles a web page. The coding backing up this form is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or XML (extensible Markup Language). The ebook can be hyper linked just like a normal web page and it can include video clips, animation or music and various other interactive elements.

A third option is the most technologically advanced in the ebook industry. It is an ebook reader. It is a device which resembles a normal book but it has a panel display like a laptop. This is probably the future of ebooks, however it still needs more streamline standardization between the various manufacturers. At this point in time the Rocket eBook Reader by Nuromedia might contain different coding standard than the Softbook Reader. This incompatibility is leading publishers, authors and ebook manufacturers to come up with one uniform standard called Open-Book Standard.

The Future Of Textbooks In Non-Paper Formats

The Open-Book Standard is also known as eBX (electronic Book exchange), which is being developed for book publishers, ebook distributors, authors and retail sellers. It incorporates the HTML, XML, and Adobe PDF formats. Since eBX is an open book standard it is compatible for viewing on personal computers, laptops, variety of ebook readers, or even handheld computers. eBX also incorporates the many e-commerce standards, which allows bookstores or libraries to share the ebooks on the internet for downloading from their ...