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Literacy builder: Let people spend digital TV credits on e-books—and maybe even gizmos to read them with
February 5, 2009 | 11:05 am
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By David Rothman
What if D.C. worried less about digital TV conversion boxes and more about converting people from TV to books—or. at least. to less boob-tube watching?
Suppose those $40 coupons could be applied toward purchases of e-books or devices optimized for reading them, such as the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle or maybe even cellphones bundled with e-book software.
I suppose that’s dreaming: The Association of American Publishers and the IDPF are pretty puny compared to the National Association of Broadcasters. But I can resist the urge to speak out anyway. What do you think?
More realistically, I wonder just when D.C. will give us a well-stocked national digital library system in the TeleRead vein. Does Barack Obama really want to beef up broadband just so people can watch more YouTubes? I’ve made that point before. Will someone in D.C. kindly listen?
And speaking of promoting reading along with tech: I’ve received no reply from the White House so far to the idea of Obama officially recognizing Read an E-Book Week (site here).
Related: Techmeme roundup on the digital transition and Ars Technica item on tech policy experts to watch.
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Comments:
You know, there are free public libraries all over the country. I like ebooks, but they are not magic. Everyone already has access to lots of free books through the libraries and giving them ebooks isn’t going to improve literacy. You want to do that, do something about the education some of the children are receiving.
Also, as some friends pointed out to me when I pooh-poohed the importance of making sure everybody could watch TV, it’s important for people to be able to access TV because that’s where the most effective emergency and disaster announcements are made. It’s where you can see color radar images of the hurricane or whatever is bearing down on you. Even people too poor to afford a computer and Internet access will probably have a TV, and it’s important (they tell me) that these people have as good an access to emergency TV broadcasts as everybody else.
I have lived on two tv channels for years now, one of which doesn’t come in much of the time. I watch little television. Yet I am very unhappy that I am going to probably lose it and will end up having to buy tv reception.
The news is undoubtedly the biggest reason I want at least a couple of tv channels. And why the hell shouldn’t I enjoy a few mindless tv shows now and then like everyone else?
I live in Louisiana and we’ve had hurricanes in recent years. Both normal and weather radio stations are no comparison to the information the television stations provide (which is a damn shame because at some point you always lose electricty- and television – and it usually lasts for days).
TV isn’t all mindless inactivity. It’s how it’s used that can be bad. Just like a lot of things.
Let’s send Mr. Obama 1,000 classic ebooks that he read on his Blackberry, including works by and about his hero, a Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
I’ll put it this way – the amount of network programming I watch approaches zero. With a few exceptions like the Olympics and the Inauguration, the TV is turned on just for news and DVDs. This is not any kind of paean to the boob tube.
And yet, I am a wholehearted supporter of the digital TV credit program. I live in Tornado Alley, and when the sirens go off, I want to see the map showing which way the storm is heading. This is not an issue about subsidizing people watching soap operas; this is a public safety issue, and the broadcasters got the right to use their segment of the airwaves by agreeing to public service provisions.
Hi, Christine. Thanks for your thoughts. Enjoying access to books isn’t enough by itself, as I see it. The issue is access to the right books, addressing the needs and interests of readers, especially young people. E-books could dramatically broaden the range of choices, especially in rural locations.
Thanks,
David
How does ebooks broaden the range of choices when there are countless more paper books than ebooks? If a school or public library needs to buy the “right” books, they can. They can also borrow from nearby libraries. I live in a rural area, the library is small but there’s still a lot of books and potential to borrow thousands more from elsewhere.
There’s also free internet access. We have 6 computers in our very small local library, two specifically for children. In the summer, the library has childrens groups once weekly.
The local public library has purchased books I and my son have shown an interest in so we could access them.
If you bought ebook readers for school children, they’d be sold (illegally) and broken, it’d be a never ending expense of replacing them. And there is no reason to buy them in the first place. In this case, ebooks don’t offer much, if any, advantage.
There are a lot of problems with education, I wrote a post last night that seems to have disappeared which talked about problems in Louisiana, which I learn about on the boob tube local news. These problems are not going to be solved by ebooks, not even close.