TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Megan McArdle on what she wants from ebooks:

The thing I’d like most–though I admit this is highly unlikely–is the ability to give away one’s Kindle books permanently, with one’s notes in the margins.  One could envision centuries old ebooks with talmudic collections of notes–with the price of the book rising according to the quality of previous owners.  I don’t say this is very likely, mind you.  But it would be very neat.

Something like this needs to happen, because books are different than music or movies. Two copies of an album or movie are exactly the same—it doesn’t matter who owns them, they are identical. Books, though, are different; because people make notes in books, write their thoughts and highlight passages, each book becomes unique.

We don’t specifically need an ability to give books away; perhaps we could have a social service that shows our books along with our notes, thoughts and highlighted passages, and allows others to apply them to their own books. But we do need a way of retaining our unique additions to our books and allowing others to see them.