Books-The Last Chapter ?.

It is strange sometimes just when you are about say something on a subject someone else will say something on it but not quite what you were going to say.I feel this about best selling author Jonathan Franzen's recent comment denouncing e books and e readers. I like Franzen's work and read his recent magnum opus Freedom over the summer. In Thomas Love Peacocks book Headlong Hall three philosophers are invited by an hospitable squire to a country house party.The philosophers are a Perfectabilian who believes everything is getting better, a Deterionationist who thinks everything is getting worse and a Status Quoite who thinks everything stays the same.When given any set of facts each of the philosophers uses them to prove his own point.I think Jonathon Franzen is definitely a Deterionationist where technology is concerned.E readers are essentially a tool and many bibliophiles will use them as such to increase the number of books they own and to conserve their shelf space for printed books they want to hang on to.As an anology music lovers often possess the same piece of music in different  formats such as vinyl ,CD and download.The increase in the use of e books  may well increase the value of printed books as less of them are printed just as there is a specialist trade in vinyl records.Record decks capable of playing not just vinyl but the old breakable 78s are available and will even turn the music into digital form for you.The invention of the automobile did not lead to the extinction of the horse  in fact there is a global equine industry.This is the upside to the argument on e books to counteract  Jonathan Franzen's more pessimistic view.None the less he obviously sees the e book as a threat and often when someone identifies a threat there may well be something in it.Optimism when there is no grounds for it can be fatal as the present global economic crisis shows.The global boom and bust of the last 20 years coincides pretty neatly with the digital revolution and they are probably  closely linked.