We still have candles and candleshops. Candles are an old obsolete technology but they're still nice to have around.
Books Won't Die
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Books Won't Die
#12I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose. I work all day on computers, I carry a small one in my pocket that bothers me constantly through the day, so when I want to read. I want to read. I have no desire to have that experience coupled in anyway to the internet or electronics.
Re: Books Won't Die
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right about the problems of the existing e-book systems but going back towards felling of trees isn't the right solution. It is possible to build resilience and redundancy on web, either through open source or with a distributed design, and this is something a new player will have to bear in mind while building a replacement.
History proves that nothing is more resilient than dead trees. Plus, trees are at least renewable, compared to all the e-waste in landfills now.
> History proves that nothing is more resilient than dead trees.
That claim appears suspicious to me. Is there some data to back you up on that?
> …trees are at least renewable, compared to all the e-waste in landfills now.
While I agree that books tied to plastic hardware is bad, but felling trees isn't less evil either… it is only more so.
Re: Books Won't Die
#14I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose.…
Have you tried/heard of the Superbook [1] format? :-)
Re: Books Won't Die
#15I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose.…
I agree with so much of what you said, plus I have to say I love post-it notes for keeping track of notes etc, nothing is better and more convenient then flipping the page open and immediately having the content at your fingertips.
No slow crappy UI or micro keyboard to deal with, just what I wanted, the information.
Yes there are downsides, but it's what I find most enjoyable and efficient.
Re: Books Won't Die
#16I hope if you know spanish you can read my essay about "the end of books made of paper" http://minid.net/2013/02/07/el-inevitable-fin-de-los-libros-... if you don't I think Google Translate will do a good justice. Basically, it is clear that the concept of books will be difficult to eradicate. I find it hard to believe that we lose this great cultural format; the compilation of writings with a particular objective. R…
PDF readers are pretty pathetic. For example:
1. cannot recall where you were the last time you were reading the file
2. cannot display pages side by side in full screen (you know, like a book can)
3. herky-jerky scrolling because the programmers do not understand how to write concurrent display code
4. no way to create a 'stack' of temporary bookmarks so you can scroll around while keeping your place
5. no way to set a paper-like background
6. no way to open multiple pdfs at the same time and display them in different windows (even my 30 year old text editor can do that)
7. display the first page of the pdf as the thumbnail
8. make the thumbnails much, much larger - like the size of a paperback book
(Some pdf readers do one or two of these.)
It's like the people who program pdf readers never use them.
Re: Books Won't Die
#17I wonder if books would be considered a carbon sink? Or if the paper manufacturing process would negate it.
Re: Books Won't Die
#18I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose.…
For me, it depends on the book.
For recreational reading, I strongly prefer real, printed ones.
For reference materials, I strongly prefer electronic ones (stripped of DRM and converted into a non-proprietary format). I can keep my entire technical library on my phone and I can grep through the entire set of books for something in particular that I need to find. I remember the days when my technical library was in printed form. It took a lot of space and often I'd be unable to predict which book I'd need at home vs at work, and end up not having it available. On this front, electronic books were a total game-changer for me.
Re: Books Won't Die
#19I hope if you know spanish you can read my essay about "the end of books made of paper" http://minid.net/2013/02/07/el-inevitable-fin-de-los-libros-... if you don't I think Google Translate will do a good justice. Basically, it is clear that the concept of books will be difficult to eradicate. I find it hard to believe that we lose this great cultural format; the compilation of writings with a particular objective. R…
PDF readers are pretty pathetic. For example: 1. cannot recall where you were the last time you were reading the file 2. cannot display pages side by side in full screen (you know, like a book can) 3. herky-jerky scrolling because the programmers do not understand how to write concurrent display code 4. no way to create a 'stack' of temporary bookmarks so you can scroll around while keeping your place 5. no way to se…
> herky-jerky scrolling because the programmers do not understand how to write concurrent display code
Yes, PDF readers are bad.
What makes the problem worse is that the PDF itself, is sometimes a resource-intensive format as well. Finding information from a modern datasheet is a pain, finding information from a scanned 300 MiB datasheet from the 1980s is real pain. Lots of rendering.
None of the problem (other than keyword searching is not available) exists in a physical book, the human brain is a great pattern-recognizing machine. Nothing beats flipping through the pages and using fingers as markers yet...
Re: Books Won't Die
#20I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose.…
I'm the opposite, nothing beats the convenience of every book in the world in my pocket. I like my back lit ereader, I can read in bed in the dark and not bother my wife. If I don't have my ereader I can just use my phone. E readers and phones are all much lighter than books.