The End of Paper Books 669
Hugh Pickens writes "Books are on their way to extinction, writes Kevin Kelly, adding that we are in a special moment when paper books are plentiful and cheap that will not last beyond the end of this century. 'It seems hard to believe now, but within a few generations, seeing an actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion.' But a prudent society keeps at least one specimen of all it makes, so Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has decided that we should keep a copy of every book that Google and Amazon scan so that somewhere in the world there was at least one physical copy to represent the millions of digital copies. That way, if anyone ever wondered if the digital book's text had become corrupted or altered, they could refer back to the physical book that was archived somewhere safe. The books are being stored in cardboard boxes, stacked five high on a pallet wrapped in plastic, stored 40,000 strong in a shipping container, inside a metal warehouse on a dead-end industrial street near the railroad tracks in Richmond California. In this nondescript and 'nothing valuable here' building, Kahle hopes to house 10 million books — about the contents of a world-class university library. 'It still amazes me that after 20 years the only publicly available back up of the internet is the privately funded Internet Archive. The only broad archive of television and radio broadcasts is the same organization,' writes Kelly. 'They are now backing up the backups of books. Someday we'll realize the precocious wisdom of it all and Brewster Kahle will be seen as a hero.'"
New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
A few generations until seeing a paper book is as rare as seeing a lion? Thats a bit absurd, I dont know anyone who has thrown out their book collection after getting a kindle. I have a rather extensive collection and though they mostly collect dust now I have no plans on ditching them. I can see a day where new books are no longer published but just expecting all of the old ones to just disappear is ridiculous.
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Now, show me someone twenty or under with an extensive paper book collection. People will stop buying paper books and people with paper book collections will die eventually.
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I'd like to point out that most of what the average person would read probably wouldn't be considered quality literature anyway. So I wonder if there is any net effect if people begin to gravitate towards other media for entertainment. I remember when I was 18 I dated this girl who read nothing but trashy romance novels. She read them by the box full. In no way would I say she benefited intellectually from reading these books vs. watching the same stories as films (porn for women, IMO). If you look at it objectively, there's really nothing inherently better about books vs. other forms of entertainment. The only real benefit of books is that it is easier to fill them with useful information if you choose to. But you can also fill them with garbage that appeals to the masses and serves as little more than entertainment.
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I remember when I was 18 I dated this girl who read nothing but trashy romance novels. She read them by the box full.
On the other hand, a girl who read books on linear algebra wouldn't even notice your existence.
If you look at it objectively, there's really nothing inherently better about books vs. other forms of entertainment.
Books are quite different from video. If you go watch a movie, what you see is what it is, literally. Not a bit more, not a bit less. You are fed the whole story; there is no g
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, a girl who read books on linear algebra wouldn't even notice your existence.
Because she's out of my league or because she's socially retarded? Probably more the latter.
Books are quite different from video. If you go watch a movie, what you see is what it is, literally. Not a bit more, not a bit less.
The question isn't how they're different. The question is how they're better or more intellectual. Any moron can tell you how they're different.
You are fed the whole story; there is no gaps for your own imagination to fill. You consume, then the movie is over and it's out of your memory before you leave the theater.
No, you're "fed" information through multiple senses. It is more efficient that way. A good story is just as deep and thought provoking regardless of how you tell it. You can forget a book just as easily as a movie.
On the other hand, a book may tell you that the forest was dark and spooky, but you have to use your own imagination, your own memories and your own fears to "color" that picture. One book can tell as many stories as many readers it has. The book doesn't walk you, like an infant, through every bit of the story.
Right, because people watching movies *never* have different interpretations and experiences. What a bunch of nonsense.
There are other differences too. How many people watch a DVD in 10-15 minute increments? I think not many. But a book can be read this way; most fiction books are read like that.
A DVD is not necessarily the best comparison. Consider a series like Lost. You get weekly 41 minute doses of a single story line over the course of several YEARS. Say what you will about the quality of the story, but you have to admit that there were a lot of details to keep track of. It was enough to spawn whole communities of people dedicated to documented all the details in order to decipher various puzzles. These long running story lines are becoming much more common. Gone are the days when every TV show and movie was a single, self contained story arc.
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
there's really nothing inherently better about books vs. other forms of entertainment.
I don't think it is possible to disagree with you more.
I was 9 years old when I started reading the Xanth series books by Piers Anthony. I started with the middle of series at the time. For somebody my age, the protagonist was very accessible to me. I related to him. There could never be an adaption of that book in an other form of media that could even be a shadow of that universe in my mind. Not possible.
I was 11 when I read the full edition of the Lord of the Rings after The Hobbit. It was a family copy, which meant it was not the edited crap that was mostly available in libraries throughout the 70's and 80's. My copy (now passed down to me) was published in the 50's.
It was indescribable to me what I went through reading that. The scope of that world, the "resolution" and "texture" that it took in my mind could never be replaced or compared too. The LOTR movies are "passable". By that, I really mean crap. They could not tell the fully story. Literally. They left out Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. I can understand that back story behind that, but as a child, I understood him to be literally beyond the powers of the rings themselves. That grabbed my mind and imagination. Even Gandalf, which accordingly, is one of the strongest and most powerful beings in all of Middle Earth. Also known as Olorin, of the Maiar and disciple of Nienna. Yet, he is still under the influence of the rings.
The LOTR universe cannot be translated from a book. It can only be read.
Then of course there is the ridiculous expansion throughout the Rama series with Arthur C Clarke, of which The Garden of Rama was my favorite. How could *that* be transferred to another medium?
Maybe you are right about the average person today. However, I hated English class, with a passion of a thousand Suns. I never hated the books. Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Kafka's the Metamorphosis, Jack London's the Sea Wolf. I was exposed to all of those books through English class. I had no interest in sharing with others (at the time) what I felt about it. Fuck a book report. Seriously? How am I supposed to put into words at 10 years old what the Sea Wolf was like to me?
I cannot put into words the worlds that were created in my head from the act of reading those books. They caused me to think, to feel, to cry, to look within myself. They showed me nobility, evil, heroism, sacrifice. Books helped me become the person I am today by shaping my experiences. Not Movies. Books.
My love of what books did for me and where they took me can be described no better than what my punishment was a child. I was expelled from the house, but strip searched for a book first.
There is just no way, that even the most god-like director can ever create on a screen what so many of us here on Slashdot have created in our own minds.
Inherently no differrent?
Sir you must be jesting. A comparison of the two is a farce at best. The difference between a flashlight and the Glory of the Sun. Whether it changes from verbal stories, to scrolls, to parchments, to paper, to digital 1's and 0's held within crystal structures makes no difference.
The day we lose the written word, is the day we start slipping into a Dark Age, or more likely Idiocracy realized complete.
There is only one way to go further and that is for the authors themselves to create the worlds in their minds, fully formed, and then telepathically transmit all of to us.
Movies? I don't think so.
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How am I supposed to put into words at 10 years old what the Sea Wolf was like to me?
You should have been able to make a film about it.
Inherently no differrent?
You need to work on reading comprehension, ironically enough. I never said movies and books are not different. I said "better." ALmost every fault you can find with movie adaptations of books can be boiled down to movies being condensed for various reasons including production costs. You can find modern TV series that are quite expansive and detailed.
The day we lose the written word, is the day we start slipping into a Dark Age, or more likely Idiocracy realized complete.
Depends on what is being written. I can't honestly say that the world is a better place for the LOTR books h
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Never said I could not appreciate quality cinema. There are plenty of movies that I love. The most moving one I can think of is What Dreams May Come, Contact, etc, but that would still pale in comparison to the book.
Books are inherently better because you create the movie in your head as you are reading it. You just can't do that with cinema. It has budgets, time lines, etc. LOTR would have taken 100 hours to do to become close to my own imagination.
Books are inherently better for a simple reason. A c
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Comparing books and cinema (and other entertainment) is similar to comparing Eating and Breathing. Both are something we'd sorely miss, and it's hard to say one is better than the other. When the voices are all in your head, how are you to hear Rutger Hauer's spiel at the end of Blade Runner? How are you to get the nuances that some of these actors have given to the works of Shakespeare, without a lifetime of study? Similarly, if one's never devoured a book, composed mental images of what cities, mountai
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I have a dyslexic sister who can't read books, she just doesn't relate to the information in the written word. She watches films instead
For her, the world is exactly opposite to yours. The wonders you see in the written word are completely obscured for her, and her ability to be absorbed in a movie is significantly greater than mine (I read a lot).
there's nothing inherently wonderful about the written word. There is something wonderful (and I get as much from books as you do) in our ability to creat
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say that, while there isn't anything necessarily better about books than other forms of entertainment, there is something different. The demands on the attention span and memory from long-form written fiction are very, very different from the demands of movies, television shows, etc. Also, even if the material isn't very complex, just sheer practice means that voracious readers tend to be more fluent readers.
And, from a less aggressively practical perspective, the novel as a medium has different strong and weak points than film or television, which carry over across all levels of quality. Example - romance novels tend to have better characterization than softcore porn directed at women - not due to any difference in quality of writing, but due to the larger space and ability to easily represent internal dialogue.
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I completely disagree. If she read as much as you suggested, the increase in her literacy alone was probably substantial. The act of reading is essentially a kind of aerobic exercise for the mind; it keeps you mentally "in-shape" for reading.
As someone who has tried it all, books, videos, films, lectures, websites etc, I can safely say that
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I think a better way to think of it is that entertainment is a lot more easily accessible these days.
50 years ago if you were going on a long bus trip and wanted entertainment you could either bring a stack of comics or you could bring a good book.
Today you can bring your e-book reader, your iPad (3G of course), your netbook (3G of course), your cellphone (3G/4G of course) and many other gadgets that allow you to be entertained with minimal effort.
Even 30 years ago you really didn't have that many options f
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Is reading a trashy novel really any different than watching a silly Hollywood action movie?
Yes, because you have to use your imagination, even if not at full stretch, whereas with a movie you can basically sleepwalk through it unengaged.
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:4, Interesting)
This trend (and the trend of observing it) is older than 20 years. There was a book published in 1963 by Richard Hofstadter entitled, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life." He traces anti-intellectualism back to before the revolutionary war. He argues that the Evangelical movement rebelled against the more scholarly traditions of the Puritans and the Catholics, resulting in a faith-based preference for feeling and intuition over scholarship. Politics have emphasized this divide, promoting tension between populism and intellectualism.
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It has more to do with the fact that books tend to be out of date by the time they're published. Science and technology books in general are barely up to date the moment that they're published. If you're wanting to read to learn, you're probably better off reading scholarly journals.
On top of that, you can learn so much more by hanging out on a forum dedicated to your interest era then you ever could by reading.
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I don't think that's generally the case. At least if we talk about disciplines of science and engineering that have at least century-old history. The basics don't change all that much. In undergrad education in almost any subject, you could be using plenty of textbooks that are 50 years old, or more. For calculus you could use out-of-copyright stuff published in the late 1800s. Same for classical mechanics and mechanics of materials with exclusion of fracture IIRC. For chemistry, the basics are well covered
Software no different (Score:3)
Sure a COBOL manual will not serve you well these days (well, beyond probably getting you a $200k/year job if you study it well). But stuff on algorithms, data structures, etc. will hold up and be of use even if quite old.
You are right though that even these days knowing UNIX scripting is a powerful tool...
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe you could learn something about life by reading books that never go out of date?
Read "The Old Man and the Sea" and learn how a man can persist at his work and life despite the hardships thrown at him?
Read "The Great Gatsby" to gain some perspective on how yearning after wealth for its own sake is a futile pursuit?
Read just about anything. Your definition of the word "learn" is far narrower than it ought to be.
"The man who does not read is no better off than the man who cannot read."
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read hundreds of books. I used to have boxes and boxes. Then I got tired of storing them, now I have hundreds of ebooks. A few gigs of data. I'm in my thirties. Books are just data. I'd rather just see MD5 hashes or something better to verify the data. Paper can be corrupted like anything else.
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Sure, paper can be corrupted, but how many of your ebooks are going to still be readable in 100 years? 50 years? 10 years? I have paper books on my shelf that are 50+ years old and look nearly new. I also have thousands of ebooks stored on CD's that are now in a a format that is completely useless without hours and hours of conversion (if it can even be done any more). In another 50 years, my paper books will probably have yellowed a bit, but will still be going strong. My ebooks on the other hand will almo
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Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
But is this new? Go back 100 years. How many under-20 people had their own book collections?
If you're looking at the population as a whole, probably less. Books were quite expensive one hundred years ago and is was fashionable to write in only the most dense prose which required quite an education to understand. But if you just looked at the literate -- then I would say many more. Today, more people can read and write but far less of those people actually read books. And the standard is so low. How many 'literate' people who have H.S. diplomas can read A Tale of Two Cities and actually get through it, let alone understand it?
My grandmother didn't have an opportunity to go to college but many of my classics I inherited from her. She grew up during the Prohibition era so that's almost 100 years. It seems to me that with that generation one was either wholly ignorant or quite well educated. It took much more to simply graduate high school, but it meant more back then.
Basically, what I'm saying is that 100 years ago a child from an affluent family probably had an extensive book collection. A child from a poor family probably didn't have a single book and probably couldn't read. But children from affluent families today rarely have extensive book collections despite having the means and the education necessary. They have video games and computers. But most kids have at least one or two books laying around. Perhaps something they received as a present or some required reading for school.
There was a time when being upper-middle or upper class meant that one was educated. One couldn't get along socially or economically without it. For instance, here's a situation I'm sure some of you can relate with: You criticize a rich athlete/businessman/celebrity/politician for some decision or for saying something dumb and someone retorts with, "But they're rich." There was a time when the upper classes staunchly believed that money doesn't buy class. Today, money and class are considered one in the same.
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Books were quite expensive one hundred years ago and is was fashionable to write in only the most dense prose which required quite an education to understand.
Er, no [wikimedia.org].
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If social status isn't granted without literacy, then it motivates people to be literate. It's a Pygmalion (Shaw) situation: money doesn't make one good enough, the top tiers of society should require sophistication as well. I don't like the term 'social progress' because it implies a destination, some perfect utopian state that can be achieved. I'd call it 'social betterment.'
The problem with using literacy as an indicator of social class is that it depends on scarcity. It is only a motivating factor up to a point where literacy and education are common. Then the upper class finds some other measure which only they can live up to. Ultimately it is about feeling superior to those around you.
Regardless, even reading trash keeps the mind engaged and active in a way that TV does not. It's easy to zone out into the TV and still get what's going on. You can't do that with books.
Oh bullshit. People zone out to trashy novels all the time. They're just mindless entertainment.
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I think it's worth noting that being a bookworm later in life doesn't mean you were always one. I had maybe half a dozen books when I was in high school, not counting the middle grade books I still had on my shelf from back when I did Pizza Hut's Book It program (which I note is still going on [bookitprogram.com]!). And even then it was only because, when I was a sophomore in high school, my brother had brought home a book about black holes [amazon.com] that just blew my mind. After I realized the similar books said mostly the same thin
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HI.
I am an American male, and I turned twenty on the twenty-sixth of May.
My personal book collection is a bunch of Weber, Laumer, and Harrison books, along with some miscaleneous science fiction. I have borrowed (and read!) the entire Foundation series from my high-school library. I've got the entire original Hardy Boy series and I've read every single one. I have almost all of Brian Jacques Redwall series as well. I've got a stack of D&D 3.5 sourcebooks and extras that I never use because I can't find
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Now, show me someone twenty or under with an extensive paper book collection. People will stop buying paper books and people with paper book collections will die eventually.
Considering that most of them can't read beyond a 3rd grade level that's a bit unfair...
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Now, show me someone twenty or under with an extensive paper book collection. People will stop buying paper books and people with paper book collections will die eventually.
Considering that most of them can't read beyond a 3rd grade level that's a bit unfair...
I really wish I could laugh at this, but I, a 36 year old of average intelligence is astounded by the total dreck that my 20-something classmates hand in for college papers. Poor spelling, horrible grammar, inappropriate apostrophe use. Prose that smacks of illiteracy. Yet all of them seem to believe they are "brilliant geniuses" and "exceptional students."
May Sauron help us all when these kids enter the workforce.
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... I, a 36 year old of average intelligence is astounded by the total dreck that my 20-something classmates hand in for college papers. Poor spelling, horrible grammar, inappropriate apostrophe use. Prose that smacks of illiteracy. Yet all of them seem to believe they are "brilliant geniuses" and "exceptional students."
I'm willing to bet that if you were their age, you'd be handing in the same "dreck" that they hand in.
I recently found a bunch of old college essay papers I'd written in my junior and senior years of college. I was appalled at my spelling and grammar. I, was a genius when I was 20, too.
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Hiya.
You missed the words "generation" and "century". I'll keep my hardbound library for another 20 years. Then the next generation of miscreats who gets it as an estate are the ones who will ditch it, maybe ebay.
A century is a long time. However Print On Demand will be a household / mall thing by then so it could get complcated.
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About my only complaint about electronic books is that browsing a paper version is still by my estimates an order of magnitude faster than an electronic version. You'd think they'd have solved that problem by now, but it seems that the solution -- whatever it may be -- is nowhere near. Try going into a library and browsing through a bunch of random books sitting on shelves. Then try the same feat using any available e-reader solutions. It's disappointing to say the least. And it's not a made-up, useless sce
Re:New Books Maybe Old Books Never (Score:5, Insightful)
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They said that about vinyl records years ago, but there's still plenty of them being pressed - and there seems to be more and more each year.
Older books on Kindle are flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I was given an iPad 2 and tried it for book reading - gave up on it. Granted I haven't tried the Kindle, but if it is anything like the iPad for reading it is not going to kill books any time soon.
The e-ink display makes it is a completely different experience. Really, I don't know how people can stand to read books on an iPad or Nook Color.
I really recommend you try one out. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
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It is absurd. In a few generations technology will crash down probably. We can't sustain this rate of chip production forever, especially not with this idea that tech is disposable and meant to be thrown away before the year is out. In a few generations people will wise up and realize books made of paper are actually a good idea.
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And how many people (in the privileged west) haven't seen a lion?
Maybe not in the wild, but come on, everyone's been to a zoo. Seeing a lion is not a rare event.
You guys are all missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
It's the massive surge in lion numbers that we should be worrying about.
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How about film photos? It only took ten years, and now you can't even buy the film anymore! That's far less than a generation, and for books we're allowing for several generations. Digital wins. Quicker than you think.
No, books will be gone, just like the fountain pen (an elegant weapon from a more civilized age). People today under the age of 40 can't even read flowing cursive anymore!
Then serif fonts will die, and two generations from now, will be as incomprehensible to the youngsters then as blackletter is to your generation.
Where you live must be a sad place... In Norway getting 35mm film is still easy, and most photo-shops are still offering one hour development services. Off course most people are using their digital cameras more than their analog cameras, but that's to be expected since you can just snap a dozen pictures without having to worry about running out of film.
Writing in cursive is still taught in elementary schools over here, and if you can write it you can most assuredly read it. And while I can't say it's a com
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Kind of strange that I was taught loekkeskrift when I went to school in the 80's, and my nieces (14 and 9) is being taught it in schools right now then...
Off course being taught it is not the same as being good at it - it's a clear case of "use it or lose it" like many other skills (like reading fraktur and understanding Old Norse, to mention two).
A publisher's dream come true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think. With the death of paper books and the move to only digital copies (most of which will be slathered in DRM) you can eliminate the concept of resale, ensure that old editions of books become unusable, and revise history on the fly. Region lockouts, EULAs, acitvations and time limits. Then they can layer even more restrictions on top and enforce them via more bad pro-corporation, anti-citizen laws.
Sure seems like we're already on this road. All they need to do is require government licensing for access to a compiler...
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It's already impossible to rent movies and buy music and in some instances, buy books in most places in the US.
Last time I checked, the US Postal Service still delivers to every address in the US. Netflix, among others, delivers movies (on DVD or Blu-Ray) by mail.
Amazon, while offering 256kbps DRM-free MP3 downloads, also still sells music CDs and books. There are plenty of examples of other such vendors.
It may come to pass that there isn't a general market brick-and-mortar shop for books or music in some areas, particularly smaller towns, but what's wrong with ordering things for delivery?
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If I want to rent a movie tonight, I can't. Impossible. No video rental stores because everybody used Netflix. If I want to get opinions of people who work in the video store or my neighbors, I can't. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
MP3 downloads aren't the same as a CD Audio CD. Not even close if you have an actual stereo system. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
Browsing book stores is impossible since there often aren't any.
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Of course, everyone was making the same predictions about downloadable music not so long ago.
Give it a few years; once tablets are as ubiquitous as iPods, companies have been pummeled with lawsuits after shutting down eBook DRM servers, and a major retailer is threatening to take over the entire market, publishers will start marketing "eBooks Plus" or somesuch.
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Just think. With the death of paper books and the move to only digital copies (most of which will be slathered in DRM) you can eliminate the concept of resale, ensure that old editions of books become unusable, and revise history on the fly. Region lockouts, EULAs, acitvations and time limits.
Of course that would be ignoring the fact that the same thing has happened with music and the largest distributors - Amazon and iTunes - provide most of it DRM-free.
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Music, and music only. Video and ebooks however continue to be wrapped in layers of DRM and little forward motion to push DRM out of those fields seems to be underway.
The Right to Read (Score:5, Interesting)
This.
Richard Stallman's famous parable about the Right to Read, and what will happen if intellectual monopoly laws continue to grow:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html [gnu.org]
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Repeat after me: there must be a free (as in speech) books movement. There must be a free (as in speech) books movement...
Or a Publishers nightmare (Score:4, Interesting)
Good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since after the EMP bombs all go off, no one's eReaders are gonna be working all that well anymore.
Doesn't *anyone* read science fiction anymore?
You people just aren't *near* paranoid enough.
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After the EMP bombs all go off, people will be searching for water, food, shelter, and weapons. They won't be searching for chunks of dead trees.
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After the EMP bombs all go off, people will be searching for water, food, shelter, and weapons. They won't be searching for chunks of dead trees.
Nonsense. In the winter it gets cold around here - lots of paper could be handy.
Re:Good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'd be really glad for my chunks of dead trees that have information about what plants are safe to eat, which ones are good for medicine, and so forth.
Granted, there will be an immediate scramble for survival, and I have no illusions that I'm in a good position to survive that, but in the long term there are lots of books that would be damn nice to have if you're lucky enough to survive.
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/me looks at eReader.
My nearest eReader is five feet away from any connected power cord, which is the primary means of propagation for EMP, right?
At 64GB, that's... at least 40K books in graphical format, more if it were text or other highly compressible format, or such?
Whereas, the nearest university library (exactly 2.5 blocks away) is just chuck-full of stuff that's going to go boom during an EMP event in the US, and then catch fire... I'm betting on my eReader.
Another End of Books Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
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Amen sir! If I had mod points I would mod you up.
Yet another tech prediction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, dude. Keep your prognostication within five, ten years, and you have a discussion on your hands. Stretch it out to the point where most people reading right now will be dead, and you're writing a bit of fluff that, by design, can't be refuted or argued with.
I'm skeptical. (Score:3)
The slashdot summary says: "[...]within a few generations, seeing a actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion." And how do we know this? Because Kevin Kelly says so on his blog. What evidence does Kevin Kelly give that billions of people worldwide are going to throw all their paper books in a dumpster? None.
Brester Kahle says: "A reason to preserve the physical book that has been digitized is that it is the authentic and original version that can be used as a reference in the future. If there is ever a controversy about the digital version, the original can be examined. A seed bank such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is seen as an authoritative and safe version of crops we are growing. Saving physical copies of digitized books might at least be seen in a similar light as an authoritative and safe copy that may be called upon in the future." This is not a great analogy. If you want to be able to grow a plant of a certain species, currently the only way to do it is to have a seed (or a cutting or something, but they don't tend to keep as well). But there are easier, more secure ways to verify that a book hasn't been altered. To verify that all the books in Project Gutenberg have been maintained in an unaltered state, all I need is a computer file listing a hash function computed on each of the books. This is cheap to carry out, and it's very secure. I can print the hash-function file on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere, and no hypothetical evil government can make the piece of paper go away if they don't know I have it. There is no single point of failure, because any number of people can store the hash function. Kahle's cache of paper books is a single point of failure. It can be destroyed in a fire or earthquake, in case of a revolution, etc.
A better justification for maintaining caches of paper books is that in case civilization falls apart, they'll still be readable.
Richmond, CA (Score:2)
How long does he think those books will last? (Score:3)
Where's the value in that?
Re:How long does he think those books will last? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? That's an interesting statement. Of course they're not "designed" to last for hundreds of years, but all new books I've bought the last 20 years or so seems to be of higher quality than the still-very-readable books I have from the 19th and 20th century, and I would expect my new books to last at least a few hundred years.
Damn! (Score:5, Insightful)
we are in a special moment when paper books are plentiful and cheap [...] but within a few generations, seeing a actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion
Ah, yes, I remember when lions were cheap and plentiful and virtually everyone saw at least a dozen of them on a daily basis. If only I had stocked up on lions back when I had the chance... :-(
You can actually own paper books (Score:5, Interesting)
When you buy a book you own it and can re-read it as many times as you want. You can let your friends and family borrow it to read, or can even give it to someone else as a gift.
I hate to see books follow down the path that is being pushed for other media where you don't actually own a copy of the media but you simply rent or license it.
If a paper book ends up on some ban list it doesn't get revoked. Who needs the firemen from Fahrenheit 451 when you can simple push a button and automatically remove a copy of an e-book off of all digital reader devices.
Re: (Score:3)
The End of Libraries (Score:2)
The End of Libraries? Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Authentication signature (Score:2)
Currently, dead trees are be used as a poor-man's (or, more accurately, 20th-century man's) cryptographic signature to the authenticity of electronic books. If it exists in paper, then it can be forensically examined to determine if it is a forgery (the first being the sniff test -- are the pages yellowed and does it smell moldy?). How long can this last? How long will it be until we have the TNG replicator of books that can produce an authentic-looking but slightly altered version of a book on demand?
Libraries? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the rationale here? That Amazon and Apple are going to buy and shutdown all the public libraries, including the Library of Congress? There's a fine line between being forward-thinking and being, well, nuts.
Re:Libraries? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the public-good-costs-too-much tea partiers / fiscal conservatives will eventually shut down all the public libraries without Amazon or Apple's help.
They'll say, "Why should taxpayers who never use the library pay for it? If you want to read a book go to the local Barnes and Noble; they have a reading section. If anything the 'public' library is hurting this private business." Then later when all the Barnes and Noble stores close, they'll just point out that "if we needed access to paper books, the free-market would have kept B&N open."
And I think the Library of Congress falls into the "go to the zoo to see a lion" analogy for a physical book. Sure, they aren't going to close. But they no longer take a copy of every printed book. Their funding will be cut, too, and their outdated collections will simply become a research library. And it's not like important libraries have ever been accidentally burnt down [wikipedia.org].
Archiving by Law (Score:5, Informative)
Physical books don't require "paper" (Score:3)
Heck, listeners are going back to vinyl recording right now. Not a huge amount, but it is one of the growing sectors in a shrinking market. And this is without an "on demand" production model.
As I sit here I am wearing clothes with cotton fabrics. Synthetic fibers did not make cotton obsolete.
I expect that there will always be the use of printed physical books, even if paper is not the physical substrate. Will it be the majority? Most likely not, but it will still be an important component.
Good plan, good plan, go - California?!?! (Score:3)
I was with them all the way up to where the warehouse was in California. What? The most seismically unstable place in the U.S.? Richmond is right on the bay opposite SF, so if CA sinks substantially (or AGW really does raise sea levels fifteen feet) there go all the books! Why not store them in Yucca Mountain with low level radioactive materials to keep the bookworms and moths and fire out?
They said the same thing... (Score:3)
About Vinyl when the cassette & CD came out... However Vinyl is still rather popular.
Many people insist on getting the Vinyl version of an album over the CD version.
Vinyl (Score:3)
Has the CD and digital distribution caused vinyl to die? Quite the opposite. The market for vinyls is small, but quite vibrant.
I'm sure there will be a market for physical books because some people will simply like them. Digital printing will make it possible to make a physical copy of any book relatively cheaply.
While I think that it makes a lot of sense to dump physical books I don't think they will disappear completely for quite a few more generations.
paginated layout (Score:3)
Will it also be the end of paginated layout?
/. on PRS-650? (Score:3)
Am new to this e-reader thing. Got a Sony PRS-650. So far so good.
Question: Is it possible to push selected entire Slashdot discussions incl. all comments (-1) onto the thing and read it offline? If so how would I go about it?
Idea is to select a few interesting stories before a long commute and read them/the discussions on the train...
Advice appreciated!
Kahle could have saved himself the trouble (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Text books will absolutely die fast. They'll die each semester, a couple weeks after the end.
You'll still pay the new price though.
Re:digital book needs to be screen reader open (Score:4, Insightful)
"Education" and its associated businesses are built upon the concept of captive audiences and extortion. The education industry is what needs to die.
Re: (Score:3)
Education Industry is sponsored by politicians with pet projects designed to make politicians look good while skimming money from the top down till what little trickles into a classroom gets used.Want to fix education, get it out of national and state politics where it doesn't belong., and bring it back local.
We are beyond Industrial now, in to the "information" age, why do we have a educational system that looks like a factory?
Re:digital book needs to be screen reader open (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Books have been around for almost EIGHT centuries
Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but books have been around for longer than that, at least if you count the codex:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Books have been around for almost EIGHT centuries.
Sorry man... but WOW... where did YOU go to school? lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus [wikipedia.org]
http://www.onlinedegree.net/the-10-oldest-books-known-to-man/ [onlinedegree.net]
-AI
Re:Library of Congress (Score:4, Funny)
Is this what the Library of Congress is supposed to be?
No, the LoC is supposed to be a unit of measure for the amount of information.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
. One hard drive crash can wipe out all your books.
One fire can wipe out all your books. And they provide pretty good fuel for the fire too.
A little harder to catch that USB drive on fire.
Can you fit those 100's of books into one firesafe?
Why would you have a flammable object not protected by a firesafe?
That's almost like having $500,000 in BC laying around in a file on your computer.
Wait... what?
-AI
Re:It'll be a sad day (Score:4, Insightful)
What are the odds of a file created toady being readable in a 100 years?
Pretty high. If your format is plain text, or plain text with extra markup (i.e. still readable without a viewer - like, say, HTML), then I don't see why it would go away. I have some text files around, authored by me, which are over 15 years now and still perfectly readable. With plain text, the only issue is encoding, but we haven't had upheavals in that department in quite a while - ASCII is almost 50 years old, and even Unicode has been around for 20 years now - and Unicode 1.0 was already enough to archive pretty much any work of Western civilization.
I call shenanigans (Score:4, Informative)
they will have deteriorated to dust long before the end of this century
I keep seeing this claim on this thread. I'm old enough to have some books around that are 30 years old that I got as a kid. They show no apparent signs of deterioration. I have some of my father's books from the 50's and only the cheapest of those (some pocket-sized cartoon paperbacks) show any signs of pages yellowing or becoming brittle. The regular books are all just fine. I have some books of my grandfather's, mass-market subscription "American Classics", cheap leather bindings, made from 1908-1912 that are similarly fine to read (they're up for sale if you want them).
None of these books have been stored anywhere but typical household bookshelves and cardboard boxes in attics. At my folks' place there's a library full of these, none turning to dust.
Re:It's true (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never seen a vinyl record or and 8 track cassette.
Really though? That sounds facetious... and improbable.
If you would have just stuck with 8-track, I wouldn't have
said anything... but it's next to impossible to exist on
this planet, not be blind, surface from the subterranean
cave you live in occasionally and NOT have seen a
record... somewhere.
Which you could say, if I've never seen one, how do I
know I saw one, if I did. And that's where I say... it's
called anecdotal knowledge. Such as the lion that is
involved in this protracted analogy. The roar and the
sheer ominousness of the creature you would see,
would lead you to believe it was a lion from supposed
knowledge that you should have at this point.
I can mail you an Elvis 8-track if you like. It's in stereo.
};-)
-AI
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The good thing is that the world will become more literate, and better informed. It is a travesty than even in this modern age, illiteracy is still a HUGE problem in the developing world. Ebooks and digitized media will be their salvation.
Literacy depends on having money to spend on education. A country that currently can't afford to buy a few paper books for its schools isn't suddenly going to be able to buy a load of ebooks and ebbook readers.
Re:Uhm... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is mostly the case now. Every modern physical ebook reader (Nook, Kobo, Sony, etc) supports EPUB with the sole exception of Kindle. Either Amazon will eventually bow to standards, or the Kindle will ultimately become irrelevant. Format changes have happened before. Barnes & Noble successfully switch from PDB to EPUB. Amazon could do it, if they wanted to. Right now they're in a market position where they don't need to. Of course they're also very, very careful about always referring to their offering as "Kindle books" and never "ebooks". These are not intended to be generic ebooks readable on any reader. They're Kindle books, only readable on devices with Kindle software.
PDF is evil and needs to die as an ebook format. That's already happening, especially for narrative literature. The remaining hold-outs are technical books and designers stuck in a paper mindset. The former will change as the epub standard evolves. The latter will change simply with time, as the old guard retires or dies and are replaced with people who understand how to layout books digitally (if you want a corollary for this, look at the web -- it's been a very long time since professional web sites have had "Best viewed at 1024x768 in Internet Explorer" recommendations, because the old paper-based designers who wanted pixel-perfect control have retired or died, or finally evovled).
Custom apps are simply money grabs, and will die as generic readers become more widespread.
There's plenty of movement on this front. All of the major stores allow publishers to sell their books without DRM. The old-guard publishers are the ones requiring DRM now, and they will eventually be forced to follow the example of the music industry. It's just a matter of time at thi point.
This is probably the biggest hurdle. The Gutenberg project produces high-quality epubs, but they can only handle copyright-free works. So long as there are luddite authors like J.K. Rowling who refuse to make their works available in ebook format, you will never be able to hit 100% coverage. But of course like all things, time will solve this one. In a generation or less, any author will find it unthinkable not to offer ebooks. Assuming they're even able to do so if they wanted.
Compared to what? But there are two ways to look at this one:
I agree, yet disagree. Ebooks still require editing, cover art, layout, marketing, etc. All you really get to save in the production area i
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a full standard (like Microsoft's .NET, only a subset of PDF is standardized). Flowable text requires manual intervention (tagging) that most PDF authors don't do, assuming they even put text in the PDF rather than just use images of text (the latter is all too common). Even when you do have pr
Re: (Score:3)
The Internet Archive is funded in part by the Smithsonian. It is, essentially, part of the National Library system. More than that, though, it's international in scope. Believe it or not (and I know that this is hard for some people to grasp), the world does not begin and end at the borders to the US. The IA's main backup is (appropriately enough) located in Alexandria, Egypt.