The iPad may be a spiffy glitzy flash platform for multi-media, but it's not going to kill reading or books. At least, not for people with intellectual curiosi

The iPad may be a spiffy glitzy flash platform for multi-media, but it's not going to kill reading or books. At least, not for people with intellectual curiosity. Written materials, fiction or non-fiction, are a good way to present complex ideas efficiently. Multimedia is not. Descarte's Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences (1637), which lays some of the foundations of modern science, is a worthwhile read. What would an iPad version look like if it's not a book. What about Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, which some say is the best exposition of Existentialist thought? How would it play as a iPad application? Or Hemingway's Old Man of the Sea? I suspect that multimedia iPad applications will be, like movies based on books, always lacking nuance, complexity, and depth.