[extropy-chat] E-books and Nicorette

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Ten years ago I used to travel a lot and I spent many hours on aircraft, smoking cigarettes and reading books. Smoking and reading were such a central part of my air travel experience that I could not conceive being on a plane and not doing these two things all the time.
A few days ago I was on the plane and I realised that things have changed fundamentally in ten years: I was reading an e-book on my tablet PC, and happily inhaling nicotine from a Nicorette Inhaler. I was doing the same two things that I used to do ten years ago, in a fundamentally different way. We are really in the twenty-first century.
The e-book was a very good one: "Darwin's Children", the sequel to Greg Bear's "Darwin Radio", you can buy both at Fictionwise. I am an early adopter of e-books because I prefer to buy books that I can download immediately. Other fundamental advantages are that e-books can be much cheaper, that I can carry a whole library with me, and that the publisher has e-books immediately available in stock. Well as a matter of fact I have to force myself reading e-books as it is not yet the same as reading paper books, but I am sure technology will advance soon. At that point, e-books will offer a much better quality of life.
We smokers do not like forcing our smoke on others, but many of us literally cannot survive without smoking. The Nicorette Inhaler can be used as a Nicotine Replacement Therapy to quit smoking gradually (best wishes to all smokers who want to try), or as a means for smokers to survive in today's world where you cannot smoke anywhere, or as a means for smokers to live without forcing their smoke on others: a much better quality of life for all.
These two examples are meant to illustrate how, big visions aside, "small" technology is silently improving our quality of life.