Yet more electronic anachronism

Perhaps inspired by the now-legendary medieval helpdesk video, a riff on 15th Century email:

This is snagged off the Textologies newswire, and the comments added by Print is Dead blogger Jeff Gomez don’t pull any punches on the significance of the jokes:

In the “15th Century Email” video, the guy understands the technology enough to use it (when he makes a mistake, he knows to use the DELETE key to correct his mistake), but instead of just correcting the one mistake he then erases the entire letter and starts from scratch, the way you would crumble up a piece of paper and start all over again. And when eBook programs try to keep the experience of “turning” virtual pages, it shows they’re reacting the same as the man in the video; they understand (and want to exploit) the idea of electronic reading and digitization, but the fact that they retain the idea of turning “pages” means they’re missing out on the bigger experience. Once eBooks and digital reading can get beyond this thinking, the book will then be truly redefined, and the idea of reading will be finally revolutionized. Until then, like “15th Century Email,” we’re just using new technology in an ancient way.