This is a comment by NormM I found under this article.
There's a famous story that is told about Edison. On the day that he first lit up a park (in NY I think) with his new electric light, a reporter came up to him and asked him, "Do you think that someday ordinary people will be able to afford electric lights?" He is reported to have replied, "One day, only the rich will be able to afford candles."
We've already seen the exponentially-improving electronic world displacing the physical in many areas, including music and games. Virtual goods use so little resources that they can become much less expensive than real ones. One day, only the rich will be able to afford paper books.
10 comments:
As I was reading this article, I had several thoughts. Books are comfortable to me and it's an object that I can slip a Kleenex into as a bookmark and return to it anytime. It's simple, it's easy, I'm used to it.
Then I got to the point that the author said the following, "One simplistic reimagining of book layout would be to place chapters on the horizontal plane with content on a fluid vertical plane". This made me start thinking about the technical books that I read. A book has an index (which is only as good at it's author) and some are good and others are not. But, having the capability to search through the book for a certain word(s), such as you can do with PDF files is extremely valuable. Of course technical manuals don't tend to come in PDF format.
I saw a friends Kindle and was impressed with the readability of it and this alone has me thinking about these devices. Now, I haven't seen a physical iPad so I don't have a feel for it's readability, but I'd be very interested in doing so.
One other thing that concerns me is, history. There are written pages back to the beginning of time (well, almost). Books have evolved, but those pages in history still exist and can be read. Another example of this is, photography. We have pictures, slightly short of the written page, but still very old (even on the walls of caves). If these images were stored in digital format and there was a hard drive failure, they wouldn't exist anymore. Also, images stored digitally don't last forever. Take the CD or DVD, this media is not perfect and has a shelf life. And what if technology moves forward and we can no longer read a DVD. The images again are gone. You see my issues with History.
I'm certainly not suggesting that we stop storing on a digital media. I'm simply suggesting that there needs to be marriage fo sorts, so that history is maintained for future generations.
I know this went a little off subject, but what the heck I'm hitting the keys on the keyboard. :-)
DC (Edison) AC (Nicholas Tesla)--maybe this blog should reconsider its choice of inventor upon whom to lavish uncritical adulation:
http://tr.im/W5qH
Tommy
if you read a lot, get a kindle. It changed my reading habits and saved me a lot of money (of course this depends on what you want to read-- I read a lot of books that are legally available for free).
Whenever I find the digital edition of a book I own in deadtree, I give away the deadtree to a friend or use it in a bookcrossing event. I plan to do the same with my comics as they become available on the ipad.
If more people do the same, digital publication will help the distribution of free or cheap deadtree editions.
With digital print on demand services, one can always print an archival paper version. The idea that all digital copies in the world are deleted at the same time is something so unlikely that it would take a disaster of epic proportions. Something so big that books wouldn't matter, at least for some time...
I agree, except to inject that I prefer the screen of the iPad over the Kindle's so much that I have read more on the iPad in a week than I did on the kindle in a year.
This is making me eager to get the ipad in my hands. I get red eyes and headaches by reading on screens, and I always turn brightness down (I'm on a HP hdmi 30 inch display right now so I can read from a distance).
EO - "I agree, except to inject that I prefer the screen of the iPad over the Kindle's"
When I looked at the Kindle, it almost appeared to be illuminated by the ambient light (aka. the room lighting or the sun), which makes it easier to read than a normal monitor. Is this true of the iPad also? If so, I'm not sure how they show color, etc.
Ganesha Games -
"The idea that all digital copies in the world are deleted at the same time is something so unlikely that it would take a disaster of epic proportions." One BIG sun spot might just do it and all the printed books would survive.
Tommy
yes the kindle epaper is illuminated by ambient light and you can read it in the sun. The ipad has a "traditional" backlit monitor but you can fine tune it so it's not hurting your eyes (we'll see).
Ipad can't be read in full sunlight, kindle can.
One BIG sun spot might just do it and all the printed books would survive.
Hopefully civilization doesn't crumble. Archeologists of the future will think civilization ended a lot sooner than it did, if most of our books, music, movies, etc., of the future only exist in electronic form.
As long as there is money in timber, which of course the rich control, there will be paper books.
Btw people didn't go from candles to electric light, they went from gaslight. Also Edison was pushing the wrong kind of electric power. It was the first format war. He lost.
Ganesha Games -
"Ipad can't be read in full sunlight, kindle can."
This is what I expected, Thanks.
I've always had trouble reading a book at the beach, maybe this says Kindle, Kindle...
Decisions, decisions....
Dave Nielsen -
"Archeologists of the future will think civilization ended a lot sooner than it did, if most of our books, music, movies, etc., of the future only exist in electronic form."
Thanks for confirming my beliefs.
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