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But the numbers tell their own story — people who read off of screens all day long buy lots of print books and read them primarily on paper. There are some who prefer an all-electronic existence (I’d like to be able to get rid of the objects after my first reading, but keep the e-books around for reference), but they’re in a tiny minority.

—Highlighted by Ian Betteridge in CONTENT: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future by Doctorow, Cory

The idea of a 60-minute album is as weird in the Internet era as the idea of sitting through 15 hours of Der Ring des Nibelungen was 20 years ago. There are some anachronisms who love their long-form opera, but the real action is in the more fluid stuff that can slither around on hot wax — and now the superfluid droplets of MP3s and samples. Opera survives, but it is a tiny sliver of a much bigger, looser music market. The future composts the past: old operas get mounted for living anachronisms; Andrew Lloyd Webber picks up the rest of the business.

—Highlighted by Ian Betteridge in CONTENT: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future by Doctorow, Cory

When recording artists demand that their works be considered as a whole — like when Radiohead insisted that the iTunes Music Store sell their whole album as a single, indivisible file that you would have to listen to all the way through — they sound like cranky throwbacks.

—Highlighted by Ian Betteridge in CONTENT: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future by Doctorow, Cory

When people talk about content they discuss readers. Readers are a known quantity. They start at the top of a page and go to the bottom, sentence by sentence. Sometimes they might skim, but often they’re fully engaged. They pause and think things through. They might even read the same section twice.

—Highlighted by Ian Betteridge in Content Strategy for Mobile by Karen McGrane

When people talk about content they discuss readers. Readers are a known quantity. They start at the top of a page and go to the bottom, sentence by sentence. Sometimes they might skim, but often they’re fully engaged. They pause and think things through. They might even read the same section twice.

—Highlighted by Ian Betteridge in Content Strategy for Mobile by Karen McGrane

Nokia’s poor results with Windows Phone are not due to Nokia’s failures. The Lumia devices have attractive and differentiated industrial design, in a smartphone market where every handset maker is struggling to stand out. Nokia shipped the launch devices on time and at attractive prices. Nokia’s problem is that Microsoft appears to have stood still. A year and a half after Windows Phone 7’s debut, it has changed little. In effect, the gap in features between Windows Phone and Android or the iPhone has widened and not shrunk as Nokia needed it to.

—Nokia’s Windows phone strategy is on the brink of failure

Amazon is not on your side. Neither is Apple, or Barnes & Noble, or Google, or Penguin or Macmillan. These are all corporations, not sports teams, and with the exception of Macmillan, they are publicly owned. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize value. You are the means to that, not the end. The side these companies are on is their own side, and the side of their shareholders. This self-interest doesn’t make them evil. It makes them corporations.

—Dear Consumers Who Apparently Think the Current Drama Surrounding eBooks is Like a Football Game – Whatever