
When hard books disappear - jonknee
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/06/when_hard_books.php
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davidw
I don't think books will disappear. I could see a divergence, though:

High quality, "collectible" books kept for their prestige value.

"Consumable" books that you read for fun or to learn something fairly current
(not timeless) drift more and more towards ebooks.

In other words, people buy Knuth's books to adorn their office shelves with,
but probably won't feel the same way about putting "Twilight" (or worse)
there, even if they enjoy reading them.

~~~
SatvikBeri
I think there will be a major shift with the next generation. A lot of the
reasons for keeping hardcover books _are_ due to tradition/"I grew up with
this therefore I like it"-similarly to music.

I agree that consumable books will disappear faster than collectible books. In
fact, I believe Amazon released statistics a while back showing pulp fiction
sells better (compared to paper copy sales) than pretty much any other genre
on the Kindle.

But I am not so sure collectible books will be around in 30 or 50 years. By
then, the concept of a bookshelf may seem hopelessly backwards. A lot of the
historical symbols of pride have become meaningless (or at least significantly
less appreciated), why wouldn't paper copies of Knuth's books follow?

~~~
eftpotrm
I still think the notion of a 'collectible' book is a good one, but probably
not quite as phrased there.

Pure pulp will, I agree, largely leave the printed medium. Items like Twilight
may I suspect stay around as they're 'a collectible series' in spite of
perceived literary merit, almost as posters or similar do today.

I've compared the future of the book here before to the future of the horse in
the early days of cars. They will retain a luxury and a prestige with
enthusiasts for certain specific applications, but their previous general
usage will likely vanish.

What will remain in print? Some may want classic texts like Don Knuth's TAOCP,
though personally for that sort of thing I'd always rather have an eBook. I
foresee primarily luxury 'coffee table' books - lavishly illustrated,
beautifully made, designed to be objects of desire in themselves, independent
of their content.

Otherwise, we're talking legacy content. I have a 1980 copy of a huge, library
reference quality world atlas that can be pried out of my cold dead hands
thank you, and a few other similar volumes, but pretty much everything else
would frankly serve me better as an ePub file on a home server that could get
synched to my various devices.

As an aside - I would _LOVE_ a historic online mapping service. The ability to
view a map moving through time, communities displacing, rivers changing
course, harbours silting up, whole countries appearing and disappearing,
simply by selecting an area and scrolling along a time axis, would destroy my
ability to achieve anything productive for a _very_ long time ;-)

~~~
awj
> As an aside - I would LOVE a historic online mapping service. The ability to
> view a map moving through time, communities displacing, rivers changing
> course, harbours silting up, whole countries appearing and disappearing,
> simply by selecting an area and scrolling along a time axis, would destroy
> my ability to achieve anything productive for a very long time ;-)

In theory something like this could be achieved by wading through the regular
releases of openstreetmaps[1] data. Although there you're more likely to see
the results of the collection/moderation process than anything else. Still,
possibly interesting to look at.

[1] <http://www.openstreetmap.org/>

~~~
eftpotrm
An interesting thought, but if I can't go back at least sevreal hundred years
it's a lot less fun :-)

------
nirvdrum
I'm really lamenting the demise of physical books and am happy I went through
college when I did. Without a doubt having a whole volume of books at hand in
a lightweight device is awesome. But reading a book is about much more than
just the content to me. None of the devices on the market adequately model how
I interact with a book and I think fundamentally they can't.

E.g., I constantly refer back to previously read material. I never know 100%
where it is or know in advance that I'm going, but I have a rough idea of
where it was by the thickness of the book. If I'm reading a novel, I like to
refer to some previous dialog. If I'm reading a math book, I like to go back
to the motivating example. When the depth component is removed it's
surprisingly difficult to find my place. Likewise, I can navigate through a
book by thumbing through it much faster than I can press the "prev" or "next"
button or try to perform a binary search by entering in random page numbers.

Having said all that, I have a Sony Reader and I keep it in my bag when I
commute. If I end up getting stuck someplace longer than anticipated, it's
really handy to have a whole library at my hands. It's just not my preferred
way of reading.

~~~
hugh3
My Nook is good for travel, but now the novelty is wearing off I use it less
for that. Last week I went away for a week carrying only a small cabin bag,
which _should_ be the killer app for the Nook, but when it came time to pack I
didn't feel like dealing with questions like "Is my Nook charged?" and "Where
the hell is the charger cable for my Nook?" and "If I start charging now, will
it have enough charge to make it for the entire flight?" so I just shoved four
paperbacks into my bag. Heavier and bulkier, but less effort.

~~~
jonknee
Should have gotten a Kindle, hardly any need to wonder if it's charged.

~~~
RyanHolliday
And even if it isn't charged, you just need a standard micro USB cable, not
anything proprietary. I can use the same cable (including the car charger!)
for my phone and for my Kindle and for a number of other little peripheral
devices.

That, and the only time I've ever had my Kindle go dead on me was when I
accidentally left the WiFi on and used it constantly for like three weeks.

~~~
jonknee
Though you can do the same thing with the Nook. The Nook Color (like the iPad)
requires more power than conventional USB to charge quickly, but you can use a
standard micro USB cable to charge it.

------
singular
I think this is a noble aim, however isn't this partly the duty of national
libraries such as the British Library[1] and the Library of Congress[2]?
Having said that, perhaps the point is to take such archives out of the hands
of government organisations?

[1]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_library>

[2]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_congress>

~~~
astine
I do work for the Library of Congress and no, it is not part of the mission of
the Library to maintain a physical copy of every book ever written, though it
does have extensive collections. Regardless, having redundancy in efforts will
only make the efforts more effective.

Edit: To expound on my last point, It not just redundancy in the collections,
but redundancy in the effort which is important. If the LoC stores two copies
of the same book in two geographically dispersed locations but makes the same
brain-dead mistake in preservation process at both, then it doesn't matter
that there were two copies. Entirely separate organizations using entirely
separate methodologies are much safer than one organization. The general
process for storing these books seems to be very different than that of the
Library so it is good that he is duplicating the effort.

~~~
gwern
> it is not part of the mission of the Library to maintain a physical copy of
> every book ever written

I read once that the only things the Library is legally required to keep
copies of are original author holographs; I don't know if that is true.

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EGreg
This reminds me a bit of the library of alexandria.

Physical books all in one place have a bad habit of being more vulnerable to
destruction.

But hey why not, it's just one copy of the books. I think it's a great idea to
at least attempt to keep an archive for this reason:

"When they were making microfilm of books, they thought they would never have
to rescan them. When they were being scanned at 300 dpi, they thought they
would never have to scan them again. We know someday these books will be
rescanned. They will be waiting here in boxes."

~~~
whatusername
I think you'll find that only applies to picture books.

If you have a scanned/OCRed copy of a novel (or a book that is an ebook from
the get-go) -- then why would you need to rescan it?

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martincmartin
Movies didn't cause theatre to disappear completely.

Light bulbs didn't cause candles to disappear completely.

Printed books will get a feel of classic/high end/fancy. Parents will be
reading to their kids from printed books (as well as electronic ones) for a
while.

------
Peroni
Interesting article however I don't think I'll ever grasp the concept that
physical books could one day disappear entirely from the household.

If you take an example as puerile as my son's latest acquisition 'Where is
little duck?', I struggle to see how an electronic replacement can supersede
the physical interaction he has with the different textures and the constant
struggle he has learning how to turn one page at a time (he's only 13 months
old btw!).

I love ebook technology and whilst I can't justify the cost of a kindle
currently, I could definitely see myself reading more if I had one but I think
to say that technology will render physical books defunct is sensationalism.

~~~
mechanical_fish
And yet your example is squarely in the center of the problem. How many
children's books from 1850 are in your house? How many children's books from
_1950_ are in your house? What percentage of _your own_ children's books are
still in your possession?

Children's books have a very short shelf life. New ones get published all the
time. A very tiny percentage become _Curious George_ and get reprinted for
decades, but the rest go out of print. The printed copies get _used by
children_ and therefore become ragged and nasty. In ten years you will have
thrown them away. _Hopefully_ you will have thrown them away: Clutter is no
good either. If we want to preserve them it should not be your house's job.

This is why archiving is hard. It is why backups are hard. It all seems so
redundant when the objects are shiny and new and sitting right there, they're
in the stores, they're on all your iDevices, they're all over YouTube. And
then one day you wake up and _the original film of your 1970s-era Oscar-
winning movie has fallen apart_. This actually happens! You've got to think
ahead.

The danger of the digital era is that we get tempted to rely on a number of
physical copies that is so small that we get blindsided by black-swan
accidents. That's what this is really about. The movie _Metropolis_ was
ultimately saved because it was distributed in physical copies and a film
archive in Argentina didn't throw theirs away like everybody else. That sort
of thing is in danger of stopping. Make copies!

~~~
Peroni
I am 100% in favour of archiving and I agree with your point entirely. My
frustration is directed towards those who believe that within the next few
decades, printed books will be obsolete.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I tend to agree that we have a little time, but then again these things happen
quickly when they happen. If you don't prepare in advance, you end up trying
to invent your archiving plan in the middle of the fire sale.

This needn't actually be that hard if we do it systematically.

------
jim_h
I hope physical books don't disappear for a long time. Maybe once ALL books
are available as ebooks in open format and without restriction on what I can
do with them. I'd like the ability to trade, borrow, or resell my books.

Also, if there are the equiv 'used' bookstores that sell ebooks for $1.

------
WalterBright
I'd love it if Amazon offered me a discount on kindle versions of hard books
I've already bought from Amazon. I'd like to clear out the thousands of pounds
of books I have and just keep the digital versions.

I'd even promise that the books go to the recyclers, not on the used market.

------
flipbrad
it could be interesting to monitor the gradual disappearance of physical
copies of books by (for example) monitoring the frequency of listings of that
book on ebay, or the amazon marketplace (based on the assumption that books
that perish are not re-listed, although I'll admit that books are 'sticky' and
could bounce around owners until settling with owners who are keenest to hold
on to them long term, so you'd perhaps expect decreasing market volume/listing
frequency even without any perishing)

------
ck2
Or there might be a revolution in "print-on-demand" making it possible to do
for $1 per book someday.

Insert previous book for recycling credit, which gets pulped later, new book
prints on recycled paper but with ink that can also be easily extracted later.

Babylon5 had a newpaper printer I think where you inserted the previous day's
paper and got a new one. People will always like hard copy for some casual
mediums.

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mark_l_watson
Brewster Kahle is great: here is someone who has a track record of achieving
material success but has turned his energies to filling a public need.

In a _delete_ _nothing_ world, where ideally URIs never change, new material
== a new URI, it is easy enough to assume that digital material will last
forever, but I am a bit pessimistic here. For example, what if a systemic
software error invalidates most of S3?

I must agree with other people here that collectible books will probably
always exist. I have a 50 pound tome of da Vinci's total corpus of work a
customer gave me for Christmas - thumbing through that is simply a different
kind of experience than accessing the same material through a web browser,
even without rich media like video.

------
JoeAltmaier
Lots of talk about "books won't really go away". I'm reminded of the victrola
my Grandmother kept until the day she died.

Kids these days (mine and their friends) don't own music collections. Its all
on the web. They just download, listen, discard music.

I believe a generation will grow into EBooks and have utterly no use for
bulky, unsearchable faded paper books. I will be left in my crowded house,
filled with books, and the grandchildren will know I am an old coot. And I am
happy with this.

~~~
jamesbritt
_Lots of talk about "books won't really go away". I'm reminded of the victrola
my Grandmother kept until the day she died._

Except that books have a far, far, longer history than records/CD/magnetic
disks as a physical, portable medium for instant-access.

There's no reason a dead-tree book can't also have an e-ink inside-cover that
allows for full-index searching. Books have evolved but are unlikely to just
go away, and the "flip pages with your finger" UI has proved immensely
durable.

Also, what are we to make of all those kids buying vinyl? :)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Portable? Instant-access? Are you sure you don't have that backward? EBooks
outstrip paper books in this way, by at least an order of magnitude.

~~~
jamesbritt
My dead trees do not demand Net access and electricity. And they boot _really_
fast.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Come on - an EBook like Kindle doesn't require net access - you can have
thousands of books in your hand. And the current model runs for a week or two
between recharges. Those are hardly issues now, and will become non-issues in
the next year or two.

Lets admit it - books have no advantage whatsoever beyond our lifetime
familiarity and affection for them. They will go away as surely as victrolas,
snuff boxes, spats and buggy whips.

~~~
jamesbritt
I've been hearing about "the paperless society" for probably 30 years. Have to
I'm starting to become skeptical. I see the death of books as very much akin.
Sure, it seems to make sense on _paper_ , but ...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well said :)

Still, I observe a generation that doesn't buy media, at all. And CD stores
closing, and bookstore chains going belly-up. It has to mean something.

~~~
jamesbritt
It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Used to be a
generation of kids you were all free-love and pro-dope who then seemed to have
gone 180 on all that. Maybe not the best comparison, but the interests and
needs of people change as they get older. OTOH I really don't see people
raised without a land-line ever deciding they're missing very much, so it goes
both ways.

(I'm beginning to think we need to watch middle-aged women to get a real sense
of the future.)

I still buy a lot of physical books, but not very often in a physical store. I
only buy a few CDs, but those too I get online. That's just where I can find
them. CD's, though, are not interesting as objects and do nothing to enhance
the interaction with the content. A book, however, offers a set physical,
spatial, 3D cues about the content (e.g., that interesting quote was at about
the middle of the book, or five pages back).

In a way, vinyl beats digital in that regard; it's been a while, but I recall
the way one would interact (so to speak) with a record. Side A; side B;
getting up to flip the record. It offered a different kind of connection than
a CD or MP3.

I'd like to see the printed page use e-ink or something so that I can get the
best of both worlds in a morphing bundle of bound flippable pages holding
everything I want to read.

------
BasDirks
somewhat related: individual titles do disappear, without a trace. I have an
1876 French poem collection on my shelves about which _nothing_ is written on
the internet.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So write about it!

------
lettergram
I don't really feel books will disappear. I know personally I read most of my
books on ebook, but on occasions I will go buy a book of an author I like and
I know many people do the same as I do. Also the library of congress made it
its goal to archive all the knowledge both to a giant database as well as in
the paper form. So I feel the article is slightly off in that regard.

~~~
ctdonath
Won't disappear completely, just as mechanical watches haven't ... but they'll
become luxury items, focused more on "I want this and I want it as well-made
as possible" than the functional content.

I've got 26 bookcases at home. The prospect of moving is staggering (last time
the sheer mass bumped the predicted cost by $2000). There are piles of books I
so want to read but know I'll never get to ... and will never part with. Oh,
to have electronic copies of 2/3rds so I'd at least have the content for the
prospect of reading some day without the weight/volume, and to replace the
remaining 1/3rd with high quality renderings for the sensory experience of "I
_own_ this".

------
drud
It is without doubt a very good effort. More long term projects like this
should be undertaken. A good example.

------
Apocryphon
Wake me up when digital displays can match the graphical resolution of the
printed page. And when the display is attached to a reader device that will
never, ever need to be recharged. And is incredibly lightweight. And gives off
the satisfaction of physically flipping through pages.

~~~
ezy
\- <http://global.epson.com/newsroom/2011/news_20110517.html>

\- Solar

\- Books are heavier, already.

\- Personal preference, but the UI will improve over time -- it probably won't
be flipping a page however.

See you next year! :-)

~~~
Apocryphon
I ain't touching this unless it has haptic features that simulate the
sensation of page-flipping, full ability in annotations and scribblings on the
e-pages (I want to be able to use a ruler with my markings, I want digital
pens, I want to be able to use digital crayons for all I care), and it is
medically confirmed that reading e-ink produces no more eyestrain than reading
paper.

And I want it to be unhackable. And EMP shielded.

~~~
gnaritas
Page-flipping is obsolete. All these things you want, already exist in books,
so stick with books, when your generation dies, the next won't care about
those quaint things and they'll move forward with the new medium.

~~~
Apocryphon
I can't help but think fifty years down the line we'll see a huge spike in
cancer rates caused by continuous exposure to electronic devices. If not from
EM radiation, then from the materials they're made of.

And I'm generation Y, we'll invent clinical immortality and we're going to
live forever.

~~~
gnaritas
Maybe so, but every new technology comes with side effects. I'm sure the
number of paper cuts sky rocketed when books became popular. People's ability
to remember things probably also decreased because you don't need to rely on
memory so much when you can write things down. And I'm sure someone from the
previous generation was loudly protesting all this new fangled writing.

~~~
esperluette
That someone was Socrates: "The fact is that this invention will produce
forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it. They will not need to
exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written, calling things
to mind no longer from within themselves by their own unaided powers, but
under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves. So it's not
a recipe for memory, but for reminding, that you have discovered. And as for
wisdom, you're equipping your pupils with only a semblance of it, not with
truth. Thanks to you and your invention, your pupils will be widely read
without benefit of a teacher's instruction; in consequence, they'll entertain
the delusion that they have wide knowledge, while they are, in fact, for the
most part incapable of real judgment."

~~~
Apocryphon
Well, he's right, you know. Who needs the method of loci anymore?

