

Will books survive? A scorecard. - bensummers
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/11/21/will-books-survive-a-scorecard/

======
Raphael
A teenage perspective, where computer-based reading loses nothing and gains
everything. I assume an open or hackable system, which any sensible user will
take advantage of.

Readability: Change font, size, aliasing, and spacing to your liking.

Convenience: access millions of books using search

Annotation: Text editor or some kind of application.

Cost: free

Social flags: You can still tell people what you're reading. Bookshelves are
nice decoration. But I bet OLED wallpaper or paint isn't too far off.

Aesthetic: A book is a brick of paper. At least CDs are shiny.

Sentimental value: Any object can have sentimental value: clothing, sports
equipment, obsolete hardware.

Rarity: If text is not online, it doesn't exist.

Single Mindedness: Distraction is always a problem; learn discipline or face
the consequences.

Religion: Torah didn't switch to the printing press.

~~~
mattlanger
> Rarity: If text is not online, it doesn't exist.

Be careful with that line of thinking. Time and again throughout the history
of the digital age, data has ceased to exist precisely because it was in a
digital form. Consider this remark from the US National Archives: "By the mid
1970s, when computer tapes for the 1960 census came to the attention of
archivists, there remained only two machines capable of reading them. One was
already in the Smithsonian. The other was in Japan!" An entire task force now
exists at the National Archives
(<http://www.archives.gov/era/papers/preservation.html>) to address the
problem of expiring data formats (old cassettes, magnetic tape, etc).

Take the following hypothetical: if Google goes under sometime in the next
decade, and takes all of its data with it, the thousands of volumes that have
been archived by the Google Books project will persevere _only_ because
university libraries around the world have copies of them on their shelves.
Data continue to exist even when they're not immediately available to us at
our terminals.

[And this is most certainly not the forum for this, but if I'm reading between
the lines correctly you seem to be speciously implicating that Judaism was
surpassed by Christianity as the predominant western religion because of its
failure to embrace the printing press, but I would point out to you that a.) I
own a lovely bound copy of the Tanakh, published by the JPS and available from
Amazon for the low low price of $23.10, b.) the total number of adherents of
Christianity had leapfrogged Judaism by at the latest the 4th century--a full
millennium before Gutenberg--and would only continue to skyrocket seeing as it
was the de facto faith of a sprawling political empire, and c.) Judaism is an
inherently non-evangelical faith, so talk of such competitive tallying is
really irrelevant anyway.]

~~~
carbon8
Actually, the libraries in the google books project get digital copies, too.

It's also important to remember that university libraries very adamantly do
not view themselves as archives at all and are constantly weeding out books
that they view as no longer relevant to them. The only items that can be
assumed to be retained by the library are those very few items that are in
each library's special collections.

------
trimski
Keep in mind that this is about the future of ebooks, that is, those without
the limitations of today's ebook readers.

Nevertheless I won't give up my physical books soon. I borrow friends' books,
mark my own with all sorts of scribbles not easily reproducible on a computer,
focus clearly and read much longer on paper, marvel at the wonderful
construction of books, and singularly enjoy the sensation of turning page
after page when reading. Yes, I'm ascribing a healthy dose of romanticism to
reading physical books, but maybe it is for that reason I will be still
reading dead tree editions of books when ebooks are ubiquitous, like those who
view "Henry V" in the theater even though Kenneth Branaugh is available in the
cinema.

------
stcredzero
_They obviously don’t work in physical space that way; if you want to show off
your books to people who visit your home, you’re going to have to get physical
copies._

This is _not_ true! I can imagine Apple adding something to FrontRow that acts
as a "Virtual Bookshelf." Heck, it doesn't even have to be Apple. Microsoft
with that "Project Natal" tech would be able to make an awesome version of
this! Just have that up all the time as a sort of screen-saver. Don't limit
yourself to just a simulated screenshot of the backs of books. I can imagine
something with "cover-flow" and a sidebar of related works. Also, one would
have the ability to "magically" re-arrange the books according to whatever
indexing/ordering scheme they wanted.

A coffee table sized "Surface" would be ideal for this sort of thing. A
"slate" form-factor computer to sit on top of a conventional coffee table
would be dandy as well. (Just have it display a different "cover" every 3
seconds in "screen saver" mode.)

~~~
trimski
You may be interested in the app Delicious Library: <http://delicious-
monster.com/>

Edit: Also, Readernaut and Shelfari both offer the sorting features you
describe.

------
keefe
To me it is totally clear that ebook readers will dominate. The key technology
is e-ink, which is not luminescent. I believe that luminescent displays are
more difficult to read and that products like sony reader and amazon kindle
will get smaller, more efficient (remember, only need power to change the
page, you can power this with a handleheld generator or solar cell) and
eventually replace paper altogether. Also, paper requires killing all those
tree things which are so convenient for breathing...

~~~
xtho
Unfortunately, the energy needed to build & power ebook readers & to generate
& distribute ebooks (incl. maintaining the necessary server farms and other
ICT infrastructure) doesn't grow on trees.

~~~
mechanical_fish
To be fair, it also takes a lot of energy to cut down a tree, ship it to a
paper mill, boil and smash it to pulp, mold that into paper, ship the paper to
a printer, ship the printed book to you...

I don't really know which will win in energy-efficiency terms. Probably
depends on the lifetime of an ebook reader before it breaks or -- far more
likely -- becomes obsolete and needs to be either thrown away or kept in the
back of my closet until I can bring myself to throw it away. I really wish I
knew how long that was.

------
billswift
Ebooks are easier to modify and censor post publication.

Ebooks require recharging and some forms require net access.

Ebooks are more vulnerable to some forms of damage than paper books - and fire
and wet damage ebooks as well as paper books.

Ebooks are searchable - this is the biggest advantage they have for
scholarship.

~~~
mahmud
Crippleware, drm'ed publications are a small subset of "ebooks".

------
xtho
For several decades a sufficiently large number of books will be sold to make
enough money out of production, distribution, storage, and sale. Then BOD will
take over but books will be still there.

------
jfarmer
I think books will just become art objects. Illustrators rejoice!

------
Mz
Something I don't see mentioned: Health issues. I used to have thousands of
books. I eventually got rid of them all for health reasons. I currently keep
as little paper and cardboard as possible in my home. So I do the majority of
my reading online now, which is part of why I belong to HN.

Closely linked (at least in my mind): Environmental issues. If a single
ereader can replace thousands of books, this is more sustainable for a planet
with a human population in the billions.

~~~
utku_karatas2
> I used to have thousands of books. I eventually got rid of them all for
> health reasons

Interesting. Would you expand on this?

~~~
Mz
I lived for 4 1/2 years in an apartment that had to be gutted and inspected by
some environmental office or other prior to me moving in. Anytime I took a hot
shower or boiled water on the stove, brown goo ran down the walls that smelled
like cigarette tar. While living there, I ended up bedridden for about 3 1/2
months and spent about a year at death's door. I had a long history of
respiratory and other health issues which had been largely blown off by
doctors for most of my life. This crisis led to a cutting edge diagnosis of
"atypical cystic fibrosis" (relatively mild compared to the traditional
diagnosis, but still potentially deadly).

While living there, I was frequently in the ER. I went through a couple of
periods where I ended up in the ER very routinely, within about 48 hours of
coming off of antibiotics. Doctors told me point blank that "people like you
don't get well". I had managed my condition without a diagnosis for many years
(I was nearly 36 when I was diagnosed) so, in frustration with getting no real
support from doctors, I began doing my own research and trying to improve on
what I was already doing.

Eventually, I found that when I could feel a crisis coming on and was clearly
deteriorating, washing all the curtains and throw rugs and so forth sometimes
was effective in keeping me out of the ER. Eventually I concluded that if I
did more washing proactively instead of waiting for a crisis, maybe I could
avoid those crises altogether. This led to a period of some months where I
spent all day Saturday, every Saturday in a laundromat washing about 20 loads
of laundry. Yes, my health improved. But I felt like I had no life and was
simply a slave to my possessions. I also began to be outraged at the idea that
I had spent more money in just a few weeks on washing a throw rug than it
would cost to replace it. I began cavalierly throwing out throw rugs and
replacing them fairly frequently. Then I decided throw rugs were non-essential
items and one could live without them. So were curtains. I began tossing out
such belongings rather then spend all my time, energy and money trying to keep
them clean enough to keep me out of the ER.

This led to me concluding that if all this washing could help keep me out of
the ER, maybe it wasn't just my genes making me sick. Maybe it was also my
possessions. I can't change my genes but I can change my relationship to my
material possessions. I soon became determined to toss out anything in the
apartment that was making me sick. Ultimately, I concluded that everything
that had ever been in that apartment needed to go. I methodically threw it all
out over the course of several years.

I initially had fantasies that I would get rid of the contaminated items and
then get new things which were more spartan and low maintenance. I figured my
lifestyle would look fairly conventional but with a clean, modern decor. That
was not to be. To this day, I own very little. We (my sons and I -- the oldest
of whom has the same diagnosis) have had repeated experiences proving to us
how negatively papers impact our welfare. So we just don't go there.

I think this principle generalizes more than most people would like to
believe. At one point, I snuck into an empty cubicle at work and removed 3
linear feet of papers left there (covered in dust and essentially rotting in
place). I trashed some and redistributed others back to the supply room.
Within 2 days of that, I stopped needing to keep Dayquil in my desk at work.
But also within 2 days of that, two individuals who shared a wall with the
cubicle I cleaned out stopped being ill with a chronic cough and respiratory
infections, in spite of the fact that they had been steadily deteriorating and
their doctors didn't know why.

~~~
chipsy
This doesn't surprise me one bit. I think we all have sensitivities to various
unnatural concentrations that we "politely overlook." Food and chemicals are
the most obvious ones. Most paper gets treated, but it could also be intrinsic
to paper being a fibrous, naturally decomposing product. I will have to let my
parents know about this one, since they have zillions of books and my dad has
persistent asthma.

Personally, I've been food-focused and have discovered that the occasional
mild, but painful swelling I had was caused by the excessively high amounts of
EFAs found in vegetable oils(the naturally occuring amount is tiny);
simultaneously, most of my tired/inactive/sick feelings were the result of
eating grains and beans. It took a very long time to sort through bullshit
nutrition info and figure out the exact triggers, but minimizing intake of
those three has been a tremendous lifestyle improvement.

~~~
Mz
I've also made a lot of dietary changes, but that wasn't relevant to the
question that was asked of me. If you are interested, there is a website
listed in my profile which talks more about what I've done.

The bookworm with respiratory problems/allergies is a stereotype in popular
culture. I have concluded that being a bookworm helps cause those respiratory
problems and it is not merely coincidental. Most paper is treated with strong
chemicals, like bleach. Some books also have a lot of dyes in them (and I
toured a printing company about 3 years ago -- it's quite a toxic environment
and they openly acknowledge that). I react really badly to some things with
heavy dye concentrations. Plus there is just the aspect of rotting, mold,
mildew...etc.

As an interesting additional footnote: When my sons and I were sharing a
single bedroom while living with relatives for nearly a year while I was going
threw a divorce and job hunting, we stored boxes of soda and other foods in
our room with us. We found that removing the cardboard boxes consistently
lowered the temperature in our crowded little room by 5 degrees Fahrenheit and
also lowered the humidity. Coincidentally, it also cured our problem with
sometimes finding a large roach somewhere in the room. We have concluded that
cardboard boxes are essentially a rotting compost heap, giving off heat and
humidity like any compost heap. The temperature and "climate" in our apartment
is dramatically more comfortable and stable than it has ever been now that
upholstered furniture and cardboard boxes (and books and magazines) are not
part of our local "ecosystem"

