Bill Gates: The End of Textbooks as We Know Them

I totally agree with a lot of what Bill Gates has to say in this video about text books. I think having electronic text books that can help you do self-assessments tests to make sure you understand the material is absolutely genius. Most modern ebook readers all they do is take a real world experience and digitize it.

Putting some intelligence in to these ebook, can expand the experience and make it more interactive. That is one way to take this technology to the next level. Personally what I would like to see in the next generation ebooks, is embedded media (i.e.: video, hyperlinks, maybe even flash), self-assessments test, and an open portable standard to move books between reader and platforms.

The fact that there is no open portable standard that allows this I see as a hindrance to mass adaption because most publishers and consumers don't want to lock themselves into a proprietary technology. I also believe that this standard should include some type of open DRM (which is copy-protection) standard to help the publishers to want to adapt it.