On Monday CourseSmart took the wraps off its iPhone application, which will allow students who rent electronic textbooks from CourseSmart to read their textbooks on their iPhones and iPod touches. I suppose, in theory, this might be a good idea. Students don't usually pay as much for the textbooks they rent from CourseSmart and, assuming they are one with their cell phones, always have their books at hand. Environmental types like that trees needn't be cut down, and publishes love the juicy margins on electronic books.

But who would want to read a textbook on an iPhone? The screen, while adequate for reading short emails or watching the occasional video clip, is hardly ideal for reading dense technical literature or looking at detailed diagrams. Nor is the iPhone's battery life well-suited for the kind of last-minute studying so many of my peers subject themselves to before exams.

For that matter, who would even want to read a textbook on a computer screen or an electronic paper device? While both those options offer more screen real estate than the iPhone and, in the case of the computer, the ability to add whiz-bang features like animated diagrams, having the real book is still vastly superior.

I like to reference multiple textbooks simultaneously, or at least leave them open for later reference. Such a simple study setup is difficult pull off with electronic books, unless one owns a workstation with a pair of 30 inch displays, or a dozen Kindles. (Even at my fancy private New England liberal arts college, I no know one who boasts either arrangement.) But more importantly, I can lend real textbooks to other people, reference them as long as I own them and access them without an Internet connection.

Of course, six months from now I'll probably read another article in the Wall Street Journal about the iPhone application's runaway success. Sometimes the market acts in mysterious ways. Or perhaps consumers aren't as smart as we economic type like to think.