Technology companies will occasionally acknowledge they were wrong â€" just last week Apple had to apologize to its Chinese customers â€" but you hardly ever hear them express doubt about the glorious future they are building for us all.
So it is refreshing to see Jason Merkoski, a leader of the team that built Amazon’s first Kindle, dispense with the usual techo-utopianism and say, “I think we’ve made a proverbial pact with the devil in digitizing our words.†And this: “If you’re willing to overlook the fact that Big Brother won’t be a politician but an ad man and that he’ll have the face of Google.†Mr. Merkoski even has mixed feelings about Amazon, which he left two years ago. “It’s hard to love Amazon,†he notes. “Not the way we love Apple or a bookstore.â€
Those comments are from “Burning the Page: The Ebook Revolution and the Future of Reading,†which Sourcebooks will publish Tuesday as, of course, an e-book. A physical edition will follow this summer. It’s a mixture of an insider’s tale, quirky analysis and informed speculation about our onrushing digital destiny, told with an appealing ambivalence that should give it a wide readership. What follows is an edited Q&A with the 41-year-old author.
Q.
You write that “Amazon, Apple and Google are a bit like medieval fortresses in their own ways. They’re secretive like China or Japan before they opened up to Westerners, or like Tibet or Mecca, closed to foreigners.†Are they afraid that if people knew what was going on, the peasants might storm the gates
A.
There are two issues about secrecy here: social responsibility and intellectual property. As far as social responsibility goes, let me just say this: These companies have entire buildings filled with lawyers. They aren’t there to come up with new lawyer jokes. They are there, in part, to keep people like me from even answering this question. That said, I think if people were given a chance to spend a day looking inside Amazon or Apple’s veil of secrecy, most of them would be fascinated â€" although some might boycott.
Q.
And with intellectual property
A.
The biggest tech companies are secretive to the point of clinical paranoia because there’s an all-out arms race in innovation. If one company knew what another was doing, it could one-up the other with newer, better, cheaper features. That said, tech companies cross-pollinate all the time, with their ideas and worker-bees who flit from hive to hive, from Apple to Amazon to Google.
Q.
You also say, in discussing the tech companies’ power: “What moral or literary sensibilities do the executives at Amazon have What about the retailers at Barnes & Noble or Google or Apple You have to ask yourself whether you trust these men.†Well, do you
A.
There are three dimensions of trust here. Do I trust retailers not to censor books, do I trust them with my personal data, and do I trust them to curate great books for me to read Frankly, I don’t trust the executives at any e-book retailer when it comes to censorship. I know many of them. If push came to shove, I think most of these execs would rather pull e-books from the store, effectively censoring them, if that would avoid bad press. These are major retailers, not your quirky corner bookstores. They’re manned by former management consultants in clean shirts and pressed Dockers, not eccentric book-lovers with beards and cats.
Q.
And your personal data
A.
I do trust them with my identity. These companies are obsessed with safeguarding privacy. The worst they’re going to do is show me more ads.
Q.
And to recommend things
A.
Not yet. When it comes to book recommendations, retailers have the literary sensibilities of a spreadsheet â€" they’ll just recommend the most popular books to me, or books that other people also bought, but they know nothing of the soul and sparkle of a great book. I hope this changes over time.
Q.
For an e-book developer you certainly seem attached to your physical books. Even after trying to cull them, you still have thousands of them.
A.
I’m a sentimentalist. I’ve got many more books than friends, and I think I always will. Some are such a part of my life that I can’t get rid of them.
Q.
In some ways, “Burning the Page†is a celebration of the physical book even as it is looking ahead to its extinction.
A.
Reading is great, but I don’t know whether you need paper and ink for it. You’re going to get so much more from e-books because they bring your friends and family into the margins of your reading experience. They will be literally on the same page with you.
Q.
That gives me the creeps.
A.
We can lament the older experience of reading, because that’s what we were raised with. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Technology has a way of shifting, and we’re adaptable. That’s our genius: we do adapt.
Q.
Physical books were convenient, cheap, easy to use, attractive, practically indestructible. What will the great advantages of e-books be
A.
In 20 years, the space of one generation, print books will be as rare as vinyl LPs. You’ll still be able to find them in artsy hipster stores, but that’s about it. So the great advantage of e-books is also their curse; e-books will be the only game in town if you want to read a book. It’s sobering, and a bit sad. That said, e-books can do what print books can’t. They’ll allow you to fit an entire library into the space of one book. They’ll allow you to search for anything in an instant, save your thoughts forever, share them with the world, and connect with other readers right there, inside the book. The book of the future will live and breathe.
Q.
You also write about what will be lost.
A.
I found a book at my grandmother’s house that was inscribed by my great-grandfather. I learned what his original last name was â€" before he changed it. That was an interesting link to my past. We’re going to lose that sort of trace of ourselves if we go all digital.
Q.
Another surprising thing you said was, “E-books aren’t ready for children yet.â€
A.
Giving children an e-book at this point might not be that much better than plunking them down in front of a TV, especially if they’re reading the e-book on a multifunction device with instant messages, games and other distractions. Better they should be outside and engaged with the world.
Q.
Why did you leave Amazon
A.
Working at Amazon was like getting an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. at the same time. It was an incredible education. These were the smartest people I ever worked with. But Amazon had a dark side as well, as if it were the mean stepmother in a fairy tale. There was this push to get great products out to consumers. It makes a lot of teams very haggard. Amazon is held together by adrenaline, spreadsheets and people running around like crazy.
