Book-burning?

Pages

Author	Topic: Book-burning?
mortification8 Warrior Member # 3417	written Tuesday, October 21 2003 18:08 Profile Homepage #25 X: Great point – there is no question that there are often-overlooked environmental problems in computer manufacturing that would need to be analyzed. My point, however, is that you'd only need one reader per person to read infinite books, as opposed to (theoretically) one book per person, which must be a larger number. There are literally billions of pages of paper printed annually in the US alone, and I'm willing to bet that the environmental impact of 300 million readers made once would be significantly less than the total volume of paper printed over 5 years (the average lifetime of a reader). Others: There really are several different projects underway for electronic ink and paper that acts like a computer monitor. The most famous is the MIT Media Lab project for e-ink, but most of the major photocopy companies such as Xerox are working on the technology as well. No glare, and contrast comparable to that of the printed page. The main limitation right now is resolution (which can be solved pretty quickly with better materials) and cost (which is a tougher problem that will take time and manufacturing research, not to mention market demand). Meanwhile Microsoft at least is betting on the Tablet PC as a mainstream solution, which has yet to play out as either a success or failure. I genuinely think that we are less than 5-10 years away from a publishing revolution, with a mass conversion to digital media as the primary product, and paper as an afterthought. I also thought of one more reason why paper might be better – collector value. There are a lot of people (like myself) who collect books as a hobby, and for the intrinsic value as a collectable. For example, I'm not sure how you'd get an author to sign a digital book as a keepsake. Anybody ever pay for and read Stephen King's exclusively on-line book that came out about a year ago? The project was not a complete flop, but I don't remember it being called a success either….. -------------------- This space intentionally left blank. Posts: 70 | Registered: Monday, September 1 2003 07:00
Namothil Infiltrator Member # 169	written Tuesday, October 21 2003 18:56 Profile #26 On the subject of cost: It is not neccessarily true that books are cheaper. (Actually, E-books are generally cheaper unless you factor in the cost of the reader. This is assuming that you do so, since that accurately represents the cost.) Assuming a person whose reading rate and tastes are comparable to mine, E-books are INEVITABLY cheaper. In the past few years, I have spent somewhere around $500 on E-books. Purchasing those same books in paperback form would have cost somewhere around $1000 (Assuming all purchased in paperback - which would have delayed a good half of those purchases, since the books in question were not available in paperback at the time I bought them. Many of them are still not so available.) It would have also presented an enormous storage problem. (Note: The comment about borrowing from a library holds true. However, I have been observing a decline in the size of SF&F sections at local libraries for some time now. I'd prefer to have the books myself, rather than rely on a library that may not have them.) The PDA I use to read books is also used for other purposes, however, even including it's full cost in these prices, E-books are still significantly cheaper for me. NOTE: Estimate of paperback costs based on a rough estimate of number of books purchased, assuming cost of $5 per paperback. This is actually a bit low, based on the typical prices I see online. I also lowered the estimate somewhat, to account for the possibilty that I miscounted the number of books purchased, and to account for those purchased that I didn't really want, but that were part of bundles containing some books that I did want. [ Tuesday, October 21, 2003 18:57: Message edited by: Namothil ] Posts: 422 | Registered: Tuesday, October 16 2001 07:00

Pages