As an erstwhile wannabe literary scholar, I would be much more excited about ebooks if they were generally available in non-DRMed formats amenable to processing

As an erstwhile wannabe literary scholar, I would be much more excited about ebooks if they were generally available in non-DRMed formats amenable to processing and analysis with arbitrary software tools. For example, I can't generate a concordance of a Kindle ebook by any means, and I certainly can't use one with the NLP Toolkit. As a general reader, I'm unimpressed by the OCR errors, poor typography, and formatting mistakes of backlist ebooks. As for reading devices, I'm unimpressed with the cumbersome library management UI and generally poor fit and finish of my Kindle 3. I'm very impressed, however, by the light weight of the thing; I was reminded of this recently while reading a 700-page hardbound novel – I would have gladly traded it for an ebook. As for TFA, I'm disappointed to see the author accused of an appeal to nostalgia when he clearly was arguing on the basis of practical advantages and disadvantages. Shifts in communications forms bring changes in artistic and intellectual production as well as shifts in the culture at large – investigating and critiquing these changes strikes me as inherently worthwhile. There's certainly a rich body of work along these lines that pre-dates the ebook; c.f. Marshall McLuhan, Eric Havelock, Walter J. Ong, and Hugh Kenner, for example. (Thank goodness that the secondhand paper book market exists, since so many of their books are out of print.)