Ebook incarnation

I'm often asked why I am so intrigued by ebooks. It's very simple; ebooks are the incarnation of the two modern concepts I care about most: personalization and globalization. Ebooks allow every reader to personalize an author's work by marking passages, annotating passges, even changing and adding passages; and ebooks are quickly becoming a global phenomenon. To me, when you put together personalization and globalization you have the modern brew that will engage the world for the long future, and generation after generation of people will embrace and perfect some aspect of the twins. Personalization and globalization together are what created the global economy and the global mess. Banks were able to answer and react to every asset owners' wish and at the same time reach out beyond national boundaries to involve all the world economies. Now come ebooks, using a standardized digital format, well not quite, and standardized ereader devices, well not quite. Just as in the Biblical Tower of Babel, the plan was for ebooks to be globalized using one standard format and one standard device (certainly one channel, the internet), but personalization raised its knarly head and now we are headed toward an endless era of people around the world applying their proprietary cultural instincts to the digital products.