I’ve never liked the idea of electronic text as a replacement for the printed book. I borrowed a Kindle e-book reader from a friend recently, and whether of not it was my prejudice, I found it pretty much a neat toy, but not a viable way to read a book.

This morning, driving into work, NPR had a story that made me reconsider the potentials of the e-book to get new ideas across to a broad audience. The story, Chinese Authors Find Creative Outlets on the Web, was about Chinese using internet publishing as a way of circumventing government censorship. I realized, maybe very late, that the portability and easy distribution of the e-book gives it some unique power to transmit ideas.

Like the American revolutionary war political pamphlets that were printed and distributed in secret, e-book publishing maybe fuel for the world’s next great revolution.