The Digital Existentialist

Whenever I encounter what appears to be an obstacle to learning another aspect of technology, I play this little scenario in my head of stone-age man sitting around a fire complaining to his wife about how much he hates trying to keep a good sharp edge on a bronze tool and how much he wishes everything would go back to faithful chert and Clovis points. They were much easier to maintain, but since everyone had moved into the bronze market, no one is trading flint anymore.
It reminds me that the human condition is one of endless evolvement, and to forget that you were born into that long stream of change will only create problems when you look into the eyes of a new technology. With that said, I see a potential repellency for people interested in Adobe EPUB eBooks. For example when I go to the help page I see 22 categories of how-to's, what-if's, and where-to-looks before I can even look at the 123 titles we have available to check out. My stone-age side says, "never buy the new model before they work the bugs out, it will only be trouble." My evolving-man side says, "carry on to see if you can work through the complexity of the issue."
Now for the digital native they don't even know they have a challenge because they think the world has always been this way...it is a glorious oblivion they live in. To look at the eBook "help page" with all its complexity is like reading the 362 page manual for my DSLR camera written by a technical writer moonlighting while getting a third engineering degree from a country and culture on the other side of the globe. Why would I want to spend 45 minutes figuring out how to find and check out an eBook instead of reading an actual book or my camera manual for that matter? I know for certain technical writer's are intelligent, but you can never trust them to make sense. Have you ever seen camera reviews and how many people love the camera, but hate the written manual? Give me the goods - NOW! I'm old - I'll be dead soon enough and by-heavens if there is a hell on earth it is found somewhere in the "help page".

Whew...

Yes, I found my way to the list and checked out an eBook after having to ask reference staff how to get through "holds" and "book bags" to get it and now when I go to my library account on the website there is no mention of the eBook on my record. Did I check it out, or is it just so much ephemera - like a Thorazine
dream, early dementia, or a bad stay in the hospital?
As always this was a great learning experience and it gives me a further glimpse of the future, but I'll definitely stick to the love of handling physical books until it is no longer possible to get good flint.