Oh, Poe, am I cravin' some 'Raven'

   I'm going to admit right here that I don't quite understand e-publishing that much, but recent articles and business dealings make me wonder if Edgar Allan Poe would be more prepared for the future than the rest of us.
  Before cost-effective mass production arrived, a number of books were published in serial form in newspapers and periodicals. Is that how e-books will end up? Spoon-fed on iPads and other pads?
   Through technological convergence the eco-friendly nerds at Apple and Dell will be shilling 'pad reading' to us, as a path to a truly paperless society where trees and unparalleled eye strain will flourish.
   Eye strain? You betcha. I mean, we have yet to cycle through an entire generation forced to stare into the electrified illumination of computer screens. You can already see the effects [not impacts] which computer dependence has bent on the posture of users, shackled to their work desks — a perpetual hunch gripping their shoulders.
   But with the successful elimination {cost being the driving factor} of all printed matter, what becomes of the tome scribbler?
   As a reader, would I really need to pay for an entire book up front if I don't know whether I will like it or not? How about purchasing it a chapter at a time?
   The popularity of iTunes has shrunk CD sales [because there's usually only a couple of songs on an album that are worth owning] and I've finished far fewer books than I have started, so maybe I'll be able to buy a chapter at a time, quitting whenever I choose. In this scenario, a book's popularity will be rated by how many are actually purchased entirely.
  And perhaps a new generation of Poe folks will emerge, doling out portions of a larger work on a daily, weekly or monthly serial basis.
   Of course if the ADHD 'Twitcher' crowd continues to drive how we communicate we may get something like this:

   Once upn a mdnght drry, whl I pndrd, wk & wry,

   vr mny a qnt & crs vlm of frgttn lr,

   Whl I nddd, nly nppng, sddnly thr cm a tppng,

    s of sm n     [... oops, sorry, I hit the 140 character limit. "Please check back later for another portion of The Rvn."]
    
   So much for literature.
   Reading is so over-rated anyway, especially since my retinas got burnt up. {now, Braille books, hmmm, maybe that's what libraries will stock}