With the growing prevalence of ebook readers that can be updated remotely–such as Amazon’s Kindle–could the time of the book riddled with errors be coming to an end?
Errors are common in all forms of media, but it is mistakes in the printed word that are perhaps the most pernicious. Once a “fact” has been pressed onto paper, it becomes a trusted source, and misinformation will multiply. The combination of human fallibility with Gutenberg’s invention of efficient printing in 1439 has, for all the revolutionary advantages of the latter, proved (in some respects) to be a toxic mixture.
It’s not mentioned specifically in the article (but is alluded to in the accompanying image), but I’m interested in how consumers will be used to identify these errors.
Comments
2 responses to “Ebook Readers and Auto-Correcting Books”
What if the claims are largely unverifiable too?
Did you know that the average person swallows eight spiders a year in their sleep?
Or what if the claim is simply a statistical deception?
For example that up to a 650,000 people die each year worldwide from falling coconuts?
I think error-riddled books will be here with us for a while longer.
Good points. I suppose it will take two things to create error-proof books: consumer-correction (as per this article) and a huge increase in education among authors, editors, publishers, etc.
I guess that means it will never happen.