
Object Lesson: Why we need physical books - samclemens
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121560/bibliophiles-defense-physical-books
======
zzalpha
Halfway through and still not a single useful insight. It's just the same
cloying nostalgia that caused "bibliophiles" to panic when the Kindle first
hit the streets, and apparently still causes them immense anxiety today.

This despite the fact that the Kindle has caused more new people to read, and
more new people to write, than any technology since, not to be hyperbolic,
but... perhaps the printing press?

Now, if you want to talk _real_ issues, let's talk about the challenges of
archival, or the danger of making the written word inaccessible to the poor,
or the fact that you can't give away or resell an eBook, or lend it to a
friend. Those are genuine concerns we should all be thinking about as more and
more data goes digital. But, of course, none of that seems to matter to folks
like this... they're far more focused on what's happening to _them_ ,
personally. It's a surprisingly egocentric perspective.

As a random aside, I have little interest in someone who owns many books. Now,
someone who's _read_ many books... those folks are worth talking to.

~~~
harshreality
I'm not sure about the archival issue.

The only problem with archival that would make physical books superior is
after civilization collapse that destroys the supply chain for computing
devices.

Assuming DRM can be stripped, which it can be for most of the major ebook
sellers including Amazon, ebooks can then be converted to epub which are just
dialects of html with some xml metadata.

Even if html becomes deprecated in the future, there will be converters for
html to new better formats.

Unencrypted ebooks can be backed up off-site, to cloud storage, to m-disc dvds
or blu-rays stored in safe deposit boxes.

Physical libraries can be destroyed in fire or natural disaster almost as
easily as an ebook collection on a computer. Physical books take up space and
cost more, and cannot be cheaply backed up. There's a conflict between
securing physical books against wear & tear and destruction, and allowing
access to them.

It's worth distinguishing the sharing/lending issue as a legal problem, not an
inherent deficiency of ebooks. Ebooks are better for sharing/lending in many
ways... there's no need to spend time or money physically transporting them,
and no need to worry about a friend accidentally spilling coffee on your
favorite book.

~~~
teacup50
A book stored on a shelf in a relatively temperate climate can last hundreds
of years without issue.

For an optical disc to last that long and still be readable, you'll need:

1) Archival-quality discs (e.g. [http://www.mdisc.com](http://www.mdisc.com)).
Normal writable discs will delaminate.

2) A drive capable of reading the disc, and capable of interfacing with your
computer. Optical drives have a limited lifespan -- the drives used in Sega's
Dreamcast, for example, are beginning to fail. Likewise, interconnection
standards have a limited lifespan.

3) A file format that can still be read using existing technology. Will
converters be likely in 50 years? Maybe. 100? Less likely. 200? Extremely
unlikely.

That's just optical discs. You're also talking about live archival, for
example, to "cloud storage" \-- this costs a lot more money than a book
sitting on a shelf, uses a lot more power, is locked to a specific set of
authentication credentials, must be paid for if the data is not to be lost.

That's before factoring in DRM and advances therein. Sure, you can strip
Kindle DRM, with extra effort, but how many people will do so and then
accidentally store the result in a place where it will keep for 50 years? What
about when DRM gets better?

Ultimately, we suck at digital archival, and ultimately, there's only so much
we can do with a medium that requires a great deal of complexity just to
extract any amount of meaningful data whatsoever. There is a huge archival and
preservation advantage to simple mechanisms that have fewer failure points.

~~~
ralmidani
Does the archive have to remain frozen in time? When the storage medium gets
older, the files can be written to newer, cheaper, faster, denser devices. If
a standard becomes old, convert to its successor while converters still exist.

~~~
teacup50
That requires an attentive, active, and costly effort to maintain an archive,
as opposed to a medium that survives even when forgotten.

~~~
ralmidani
On a large scale, don't physical archives need maintenance, as well? People
need to keep the items stored in accordance with some sort of system
(electronic formats make this easier), theft and fire prevention are needed,
not to mention the amount of real estate that has to be bought, leased, and/or
managed.

On a smaller scale, when someone moves, they have to move, or pay someone to
move, their archive for them (I got a taste of this back in November).

~~~
teacup50
Many valuable things don't wind up in an archive until after they'd have
already been lost; a modern example of "what if she'd used Flickr?" would be:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier)

Physical archives do require maintenance, but unlike servers, they don't
convert electricity to heat at a prodigious pace, have a much simpler set of
failure modes and environmental constraints, and generally remain readable
even if you forget about them

------
bcbrown
"Many years ago," Gaspar said, taking out a copy of Moravia's The Adolescents
and thumbing it as he spoke, "I had a library of books, oh, thousands of books
-- never could bear to toss one out, not even the bad ones -- and when folks
would come to the house to visit they'd look around at all the nooks and
crannies stuffed with books; and if they were the sort of folks who don't
snuggle with books, they'd always ask the same dumb question." He waited a
moment for a response and when none was forthcoming (the sound of china cups
on sink tile), he said, "Guess what the question was." From the kitchen,
without much interest: "No idea."

"They'd always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of
large sculptures in museums. They'd ask me, 'Have you read all these books?'"
He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. "Well, young
fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you
get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit.
Till I finally figured out the right answer.

"And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess." Billy appeared in
the kitchenette doorway.

"I suppose you told them you'd read a lot of them but not all of them."

Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. "Now what good would that
have done? They wouldn't know they'd asked a dumb question, but I didn't want
to insult them, either. So when they'd ask if I'd read all those books, I'd
say, 'Hell, no. Who wants a library full of books you've already read?'"

[http://harlanellison.com/iwrite/paladin.htm](http://harlanellison.com/iwrite/paladin.htm)

------
kzhahou
When e-books have completely taken over, and the last dead-tree is tossed in
the trash, one will remain: "Gödel, Escher, Bach", with its spine thoroughly
cracked (though almost entirely unread) sitting proudly on every techie's
shelf.

------
nextos
A point not much discussed in the essay is that of technical books. In this
area, physical books are somehow better.

Has anyone had any success with big e-ink devices? I'd love to switch, but
they are a bit expensive, slow and lack good format support.

Moving around the world with tons of books is sadly very inconvenient.

~~~
zzalpha
Yeah, right now it seems tablets are the "best" option, but I actually think,
for technical materials, where you're jumping around, marking pages, etc, more
frequently, physical paper is still superior.

Well, save for the fact that technical books are rarely coil bound. At least a
digital book stays open when I set it down on my damn desk!

------
cmiles74
I suspect you need to achieve a certain level of fiscal security before you
can start to worry about the difference between the "experience" of a book as
opposed to simply being able to read it.

------
devty
so the author is saying that we 'need' physical books because the physical
presence of books adds an aesthetic dimension to reading?

wouldn't the value of that dimension decline over time? for the next
generation of readers, the majority of reading will be done in digital
formats, and the the level of emotional attachment to physical books will be
significantly less.

~~~
falcolas
We've already seen that this is not the case, as the current generation of
readers is favoring the physical book over the ebook.

So there's obviously some value to the experience of reading from a physical
artifact, and the younger generations are also obviously able to identify this
value.

~~~
zzalpha
Huh, I hadn't heard that anywhere. Got a citation? Sounds like an interesting
cultural phenomenon, assuming it's supported by the data.

~~~
falcolas
Sure, here you go.

[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult-
rea...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult-readers-
prefer-printed-ebooks)

[http://www.publishingtechnology.com/research/](http://www.publishingtechnology.com/research/)

~~~
zzalpha
Huh, so this covered 16-24 year olds. So, a bit of history, recall the Kindle
was first released in late 2007 (hard to believe it was both that long ago and
yet only that long ago...). The youngest in that age bracket would've been 8
at that point, and the oldest 16. By the time ebooks really took off they
probably would've been ten and 18 respectively, which means more or less
growing up exposed to paper books before mass market electronic alternatives
were available.

Given that, I wonder if we're still in a generational swing here.

It's possible that's not the case. But I'm not convinced this study absolutely
proves that "there's obviously some value to the experience of reading from a
physical artifact, and the younger generations are also obviously able to
identify this value." It could simply be that people prefer what they grew up
with. _shrug_

~~~
falcolas
> It could simply be that people prefer what they grew up with. shrug

If this was the case, there wouldn't be a generational difference between that
age group and older age groups, since everybody born before 2007 would have
"grown up with" regular books.

~~~
zzalpha
Hmm, unless I'm missing something, neither of the references you provided
support the hypothesis of a generational change.

The one study looked at reading preferences of 16-24 year olds and found 62%
prefer paper.

The other study analyzed reading _behaviours_ (not preferences) of 18-34 year
olds, finding 64% (UK)/79% (US) read a paper book in the previous year.

Now, from behaviour let's say we can infer preference. In that case the second
study found that an overwhelming majority of 18-34 year olds read print books
in the last year, which seems to align with 16-24 year old preferences
(though, again, it only speaks to behaviour not preference). That would seem
to refute the idea that there's a generational difference at play, here.

Of course, I could be missing some key point. It wouldn't be the first time.

------
twirlip
I read from screens all day: phone, tablet, desktop. I just finished reading
The Martian on my phone. The only time I find I absolutely must have text on
paper is when I'm memorizing lines from a script for a play. I've even tried
using flashcard software as well as audio I've recorded for my lines and cues;
it doesn't work for me.

