Save the Book!

[AuntShecky]

Save the book!

By that I mean the physical object, a "book" defined as a tangible object composed of printed matter on paper pages, and a binding as opposed to ephemeral digital data transmitted through the Internet or the Ethernet.

Yes, here we go again with books vs. electronic readers with brand names such as "iPad" or "Kindle." Here is a recent article that got my indignation aboilin' one more time:

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/12/26/2010-12-26_rest_in_peace_beloved_book.html

Of course the author of the article is perfectly right in that prose written to be disseminated electronically will lose much of its aesthetic appeal, in that the pacing will be less leisurely and that subtlety and fine nuances will become less important than speed.

And what about underlining or commenting with pencil in the margins?

I don't want to say that the whole idea of electronic books smacks of "anti-intellectualism," though one can find that lurking beyond every aspect of society (at least in the U.S., and far back into its history.) Certainly no one can deny that for all the technical advances of the Computer Age, the elegance of language and social discourse has deteriorated. And if you think "Spell Check" purges errors --think again. Clicking on the "User comments" sections of any web site will disabuse you of that notion.

Consider this on-line new source :

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090225/new-york-times-to-the-web-hands-off-our-t/#

The motto of the upstart site is "Read less. Know more"-- an oxymoron if I've ever read one, with the emphasis on the third and fourth syllables-- oh, I kid, I kid! Then again, the spokesperson seems to think it's okay to use meaningless phrases like "I could care less."

But there's one other danger of losing printing books to the onslaught of electronic reading material, and it's one which the Daily News writer
does not mention: the rise of electronic reading devices will further widen the already gaping division of education between the rich and the poor.

Many underprivileged people in the working class can't just run out and buy a Kindle with cash or a credit card or Pay Pal. Even if they did earn
enough to qualify for a credit card, they certainly can't afford the astronomical interest rates and fees that credit card companies are getting away with these days. But even if they did get a chance to have a Kindle of their very own, they'd be squeezed by the download fees required to get many, if not most, online books.

Poor people usually can't go to a book store and plunk down thirty or forty dollars for a brand-new hardcover book, and even paperbacks which used to be affordable, now cost fifteen or twenty dollars.

The only way poor people can get their hands on books (literally) is by borrowing them from the public library, or by purchasing them second-hand in used books stores or garage sales. How far into the future will it be when, apart from billionaire collectors of rare books, there are no longer any "used books" to be had? And libraries, that lifeline for the poor, may all convert to a 100% digital system, and if you can't afford your own personal Kindle at home, so much for curling up with a good book at home.

All of this may sound paranoiac to you, but like the Daily News author, I worry about the "vanishing" book.

I hope that the issue of hard copy books vs. electronic media will have a corresponding analogy with movies vs. television. Back in the early fifties Hollywood moguls were scared spitless at the thought of television, but here we are more than half a century later and theatrical movies are bigger than ever. Yet the movies themselves killed Vaudeville.

In the meantime, though -- Save the Book!

[Paulclem]

It's too late so why worry?

I take your point that Kindles are expensive, but they no doubt will come down in price. Not enough for the poor - but then, as you point out, books were never affordable. Perhaps libraries will consist of rows of kindles, or perhaps - when the price comes down - you'll be ble to borrow e-readers loaded with books. They will eventually flood the place, or perhaps they are just a blip before mobiles, palmtops and ipads get e-ink and can do the same thing. The poor may not have ipads, but mobiles are very common.

In the end, books will be around for us, but the ones we might worry about won't be worrying. They are already reading screens every day - perhaps every hour of every day. There'll be collections of books around, but by then they will be a historical artifact. That's, of course, if the world keeps developing as it is. There's no sure way to know it will.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

And what about underlining or commenting with pencil in the margins?


You can do this with pretty much every ereader.

I purchase books and ebooks, and while the ebook may one day take over, I don't think it will drastically change reading habits. If anything, it will increase reading, as people just lov gadgets.

[billl]

It's too late so why worry?

...


In the end, books will be around for us, but the ones we might worry about won't be worrying. They are already reading screens every day - perhaps every hour of every day. There'll be collections of books around, but by then they will be a historical artifact. That's, of course, if the world keeps developing as it is. There's no sure way to know it will.

Historical artifact is right. There is of course an environmental drawback to books, as well as the portability issue. However, especially with a world that keeps on trying to network everything together, I think another imprtant reason for books is to make it more difficult to change the actual texts. In a recent thread, there was discussion about a new version of Huck Finn, where one of the words had been changed. Well, at the moment (if people will recall the incident involving Orwell's 1984 on the Kindle (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=1), shortly after the gadget was released) Amazon has the ability to change the contents of any book on any and every Kindle that is turned on and in range of the wireless network. They have promised, in a legal settlement, not to do so in the future. But still. It's pretty early on to view this sort of concern as anything but paranoiac--but what sort of digital world are we looking toward, what with 'the cloud', subscription music services, and companies altering the contents of our hard drive every day (cookies, automatic updates...). We can talk of security, distributing things across various networks, and keeping some machines unconnected to the net, with original copies, etc.--but really. What beats a book? I'm not saying we need everyone to buy books all the time, but lets keep them around to some degree.

Again,

[Delta40]

I'm not sure that books will ever disappear. On the train to work each morning, I still feel affronted at those 'reading' an iPad. I do wonder what the effects of staring at a screen will have, especially reading one at night. I know the vast majority of primary school children have never, ever written a letter and posted it. They simply have no need to thanks to the computer age. Will we be less of society because of the change in communication and presentation of literature? I honestly don't know.

[Paulclem]

I'm not sure that books will ever disappear. On the train to work each morning, I still feel affronted at those 'reading' an iPad. I do wonder what the effects of staring at a screen will have, especially reading one at night. I know the vast majority of primary school children have never, ever written a letter and posted it. They simply have no need to thanks to the computer age. Will we be less of society because of the change in communication and presentation of literature? I honestly don't know.

It's true, and I rarely write one either.

I don't see why society will be less. If anything the car has iolated people more. I have neighbours who live three doors away who I've hargly seen due to them stepping from the front door into the car. Since the older residents died, I don't know who has moved in.

Good point about the environment Billl. I agree that books will still be around in the future. As for the Amazon change, there are projects like Gutenberg that are preserving texts.

I had a further thought. There are lots of types books published today, which we might perhaps think are not worth the paper they're printed on. Those seasonal books for example could be better on e-type, whereas we might concentrate on other types.

[TheFifthElement]

There is of course an environmental drawback to books, as well as the portability issue.
How so? Books are both portable and environmentally friendlier than an e-reader with its plastic casing and battery, power requirements and limited lifespan. Don't forget there'll be a server city somewhere powering the great Kindle machine. Last time I checked a paperback book was fairly portable, and I'd be less bothered losing a £7.99 paperback (assuming that's what I've paid for it) than my £100+ e-reader. Not that I own one. They don't smell right. And they're cold. And you can't flick through the pages to see how far off the next chapter is, with that lovely air-moving flicky movement you get when you flick through the pages of a real book.

I can't see e-readers replacing the book because they are not a design improvement. This is where portable music players and mobile phones have succeeded because they improve on the available alternative. The paper book, however, is already a pretty perfect design. You need only the ability to read to use it. I can use a book that was printed 1000 years ago (providing it hasn't fallen apart). No one can censor it, it will always be exactly as it was printed errors and all. I can pass it on to my children. I can share it. I can hide it (if needs be). I do not need a battery replacement or a power supply to read it. It doesn't just cut out mid-chapter. Sure a Kindle can hold 1,500 books, but who ever need 1,500 books in one go? I can see how the paper book and e-book will work in support of each other, but I doubt you'll see a situation where the e-book will replace the paper book. Not in my lifetime, anyway. Thank goodness :)

The e-reader has the same flaws as the paper book (durability - neither will survive a drop in the bath very well, though the paper book at least has a reasonable chance of recovery with sufficient application of the hairdrier) but in most respects the e-reader has greater flaws. The requirement for battery power, for one, being the biggest. The sustainability of it is another - it may be cheaper to produce and distribute books but how often will they be updating the e-reader itself? Will your books be transferable for the rest of your life? Can you lend them to a friend? Price - some books will be cheaper or free but how many of those cheap/free books do you actually read? And you must factor in the cost of your e-reader in the first place, and the cost to replace it/replace batteries/insure it. The book I bought yesterday (War & Peace) will still be in top readable quality when I die (I care for my books) but if I lose it on the way to work it's pretty cheap to replace it. Not so with the e-reader. And there's no risk of losing my whole library in one go, short of a house fire in which case I might have other things to worry about.

I'm not a convert. I can see the fun and the attraction in an e-reader, but as long as it's a gimmicky gadget, as opposed to a design improvement, it'll only ever be in addition to rather than a replacement to the paper book.

[billl]

@Fifth Element
You are right that the book is a superior technology as far as reading experience goes, but you can obviously take a lot more novels on a trip using a kindle than you can using a bookbag. While you make a good point that there are servers delivering the books to us via electronic network, wireless and otherwise, I would still be surprised if producing a book from trees or recycled paper, and then transporting the book to the consumer, ended up using less energy (given economies of scale). Battery life, though, I'm not sure how quick that adds up... Then there's the impact on forests. Obviously, paper comes from trees, but I don't know enough to say how much of that can be blamed on books and newspapers. At some point, though, the plastic-to-trees ratio probably starts to work in the favor of e-readers as more environmentally friendly. (But you make a great case, I'd like to see studies that show what you are suggesting...)

Anyhow, you make great points about the problems with e-readers, but I think the discussion has to eventually look at the future, and I think that battery life and durability won't be a problem forever; there's a good chance those things will be fixed in our lifetime. For me, the main issue would be comfort, but I think that advanced materials will eventually solve that. And, if that's true that Amazon won't help you out with new downloads of your purchased books in the event of the loss of your kindle, then I think that sort of issue will eventually be corrected as well. In fact (if you read the rest of my earlier post) one of the things that I think is most concerning is the possible move towards greater and greater reliance on subscription services for digital media and/or the use of online servers for personal data storage. Great advantages in portability can come from taking the data out of our hands...

For me, the toughest advantage to match that books have seems to be sticking my fingers between three sections and being able to look between the sections very quickly, basically simultaneously, that sort of thing. An e-reader could do it (and might track down the different sections quicker in many cases via 'search'), but sometimes just moving my hands among real pages is better than tapping at parts of a screen that's meant to represent such a mass of pages.

Also, there's something special about having a copy of a book for a number of years, loaning it to a friend, passing it on to a family member, etc. People are different about this, and I have ended up, during my travels, treating most of my books as 'disposable' (ie. donatable or sold-to-used-bookstore-able), BUT my copy of Emerson's essays looks like a disaster at this point, and I wouldn't want to read those essays via any other book or e-reader. If I were to loan it to someone, it would be a sign of great friendship from me AND simultaneously appear a bit rude to be handing such a decrepit object to someone. I'd be quite concerned about getting it back, too. I think this is a little connected to Delta40's point about how it's unfortuante that kids never write a letters anymore. I feel lucky to have postcards from my grandmother, rather than emails on a hard drive.

[AuntShecky]

Wow! Every one of the comments so far have been intelligent.

I agree with Fifth Element and also Billl's comment (#4)Yes, I heard about the Kindle HQ's deletion of 1984which would be scary if it weren't so ironically funny. Yet you've got to wonder if electronic deletion is this century's version of book-burning.

At the moment I can think of only two points for Kindle on the plus side -- the first is that yes, it will save trees, but as a previous poster pointed out, the components of electronic reading devices also bring about new environmental problems with their eventual disposal.

The other thing is that let's face it, books are "heavy" (in terms of poundage if not ponderous content.) They also take up copious amounts of square footage, as anyone who has to live in a cramped apartment may attest, or help someone move.

Years and years ago there was an excellent PBS miniseries, I, Claudius, based on the brilliant Robert Graves work. If you've seen it -- either on video or during its subsequent repeat broadcasts-- you may remember the
scene in which Claudius has his arms full with papyrus manuscripts on huge rollers. They were quite unwieldy to handle and to transport (in bundles) from place to place.

When I first saw that scene, I was so grateful that civilization graduated from papyrus to printed books!

So, I bet future generations will look at our books and think they're just like ancient papyrus rolls -
and wonder how we ever managed with them.

[prendrelemick]

The arguement over which is the superior technology, is interesting. Both e-readers and books have their advantages, it boils down to what your needs are.

I must admit that the space saving aspect of an e-reader is very attractive, almost a clincher for me, even though it may involve a compromise in the reading experience.

As to the bigger questions about changing the demographic of readers or anti-intellectualism. We can't predict the effect new technologies will have, there are always unseen consequences good and bad.

[Lote-Tree]

Sorry Aunty - physical tangible books will be museum pieces in the future.

Accept it.

Not fight it.