Nick Carr predicts:
[T]he model of book reading (and hence book writing) the iPad promotes seems fated, in time, to become the dominant one. The book itself, in this model, becomes an app, a multihypermediated experience to click through rather than a simple sequence of pages to read through. To compete with the iPad, the current top-selling e-reader, Amazon's Kindle, will no doubt be adding more bells and whistles to its suddenly tired-seeming interface.
This may indeed happen and it may indeed change the way "books" are "read". But I remain convinced that there is a singular experience - of devoting time to read a writer's sustained and crafted words of more than, say, 50,000 words - that cannot be supplanted by anything else. Maybe this solitary absorption of another's words will become the activity of a precious few. But anyone seeking wisdom or learning over knowledge and entertainment will still look for it. And treasure it.