The electronic book is a wet dream for gadget makers and publishers alike. Since the dawn of the CD-ROM they have tried hard to give us the eBook as well as the eNewspaper.

Finally new technology like the Kindle seem to make that possible.

But I think the whole approach is wrong. You simply can’t simulate paper digitally – it’s physical attributes can’t be replicated on a screen.

You can only "advance" the concept and idea of reading and organizing a series of texts into a coherent bigger "story" (book) or collection of articles (newspaper).

We already have that new concept and you are using it right now: it’s called a browser.

People have disliked reading PDFs for years and prefer content in their browsers.

The only reason why they want shove eBooks and eNewspapers down our throats is that they want us to pay for it. We still connect to the concept of "books" and "newspapers" that we have to pay for it. Anything in a browser is supposed to be free.

Amazon wants us all to use a Kindle, so they can track and watch what we read. 

Those eReaders are all about buying content and digital rights management. And we already have seen that the Amazon Kindle as well as the iPhone (another big eBook plattform) have remote killswitches. If they want those companies can simply switch off access to any content you bought and downloaded for on YOUR own machine.

This is very easy to do with electronic gadgets with an internet – try to that with an old fashioned newspaper or book …