Tablet(iPad)-ed Future: how will it change our habits?

Last week I finally bought my first e-book. Late mover: as a post-boomer guy grown up in a house full of books and a part-time librarian mom, I have my good reasons to be a paper books consumer.

But I decided to try: I bought Creative Social’s book for Kindle to read on an iPad. And I have got two first thoughts (OK, a first and a second thought) to share.

1. Reading on the iPad gives me the sore eyes after 10-12 pages;
2. The second one is tougher. Going through the book I found great empathy with what’s described in the first part (the history of digital advertising, in brief essays from top creatives in the world) and the first impulse has been “I want to pass this book around to my friends”. Then I suddenly realised: you can’t lend an e-book.
   OK, Daniele, it’s not that costly: for a mere 12 € my friends can buy it. But this is not the point. Despite all copyright, pyrating, filesharing issues, you still had permission to lend a paper book to a friend. The worst thing that could happen, people like @stefanomaggi never return it back to you. But you can’t lend an e-book. You can’t leave it to your dad’s house through the weekend for him to check. You can’t do bookcrossing (unless you want to get rid of your device). The same already happened with mp3s. But the compressed format did leave room for considerations about this being the “definitive” purchase of a song; if you liked the album, you’d buy a full-quality CD, which you could lend.
   E-books are identical twins of their paper brothers, potentially lossless versions of them.
   Some can say, “it’s because you’re not a digital native— that’s why you don’t see that sharing is the new lending.” True, but… In this case, sharing is about cut and paste, and cut and paste is copying. And copying is illegal.
   The walled-gardened future Mr. Jobs and company are preparing for us is going to intrude heavily also on our personal habits. Is this good for you?