Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Digital books wear out faster than physical books

blog.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 453 posts

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#161

Post by lazyasciiart »

killjoywashere wrote: post #153
vlunkr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like you’re overthinking it to me. If you want your kids to read books, take them the library or a bookstore. They’re bound to find something they like with enough exposure. That’s got to have a bigger impact than whether they see you reading a physical book.

The libraries are getting rid of books. Especially bound journals. My alma mater has a fabulous reading room, and just enough shelving still in the building to partition the study cubbies. It's more about aesthetic than knowledge.

University libraries have notoriously poor childrens sections.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#162

Post by tkgally »

fideloper wrote: post #131

Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…

I’m helping to raise my grandson, who will turn three next month. I read only digital books myself, but neither my daughter nor I have any intention of exposing him to digital books any time soon. He loves having stories read to him from physical picture books, and he spends a lot of time flipping through his favorite books on his own. My daughter also takes him to the library and explores books together with him there.

On the other hand, he and I listen to recorded music together a lot. I don’t have music on physical media any more, so he is coming to associate recorded music with album cover images and song names on playlists on my iPhone. For some reason that doesn’t bother me so much.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#163

Post by mattmaroon »

This is a great example of how people in tech often get wrapped up in theory and just don’t junderstand how things work in practical reality. Yes, DRM sucks in theory, but in reality this is all rarely a problem.

I got the original kindle a little over 15 years ago, and I can still open the books I bought back then on my new Kindle and read them just fine. And in another 15 years, I will probably still be able to read those books just fine on whatever Kindle I have at that point.

Yes, I am aware that that may not be true, and I may have to re-purchase these books again at some point, though it seems unlikely. But in the meantime I get the benefit of buying them for cheaper, not having to devote a bunch of real estate to hundreds of books, and being able to text search since most of the books I want to open again after a long period of time or some sort of reference book.

Yes, these likely won’t outlive me. But if you’ve ever known anyone who died that had a lot of books it’s usually not a treasure trove but rather a bunch of crap that has to be shuffled off to good will.

I’m perfectly happy with this trade off. And that’s not even counting the environmental impact.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#164

Post by notRobot »

cachvico wrote: post #99
armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Physical books wear out in decades to centuries, computers break in years to decades. Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. Even without publisher/legal issues it's clear that preservation of digital media for even the next 10 years , and especially for the next 100 or 1000, is at risk. But I really wonder why is there no other major service like the Inte…

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK

> IA.BAK has been broken and unmaintained since about December 2016. The above status page is not accurate as of December 2019.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#165

Post by layer8 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #17
armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Physical books wear out in decades to centuries, computers break in years to decades. Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. Even without publisher/legal issues it's clear that preservation of digital media for even the next 10 years , and especially for the next 100 or 1000, is at risk. But I really wonder why is there no other major service like the Inte…

> Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. While that was certainly true at one time, Unicode text, HTML, XML, and ZIP files aren't going anywhere (or there'll be a collapse of society so thorough that print books are unlikely to survive, either). EPUB books are basically XHTML and XML zipped up along with any external assets (e.g., images). There are nuance…

> HTML, XML, and ZIP files aren't going anywhere

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those go out of use in a few hundred years, if not much earlier. There will probably be major conversion efforts going on at some point. The alternative, the above formats being maintained for eternity, would be somehow depressing.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#166

Post by thfuran »

fideloper wrote: post #131

Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…

>I also feel like Kindle is setting up a situation where my kids won't have the joy of discovering a book, or author, serendipitously. When the books are just sitting there on a shelf (they were in my bedroom as a kid, basically just as overflow because we had too many in the house), it's easy to get bored and pick up a book.

All the ebooks in the library (actually, all of the several library systems I have access to) are just sitting there in libby, searchable and filterable by multiple criteria.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#167

Post by thfuran »

midoridensha wrote: post #81
bragr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authors that published 10+ years ago don't have bills to pay? This is a weird moral distinction to me.

I don't get paychecks from work I did 20 years ago. Why should anyone else? Moreover, the copyright term used to be 20 years way back in the 1700s-1800s. If 20 years was good enough back then (before overnight international shipping was possible), it's good enough now.

I agree that modern IP protection lasts far, far longer in practical terms now than originally, even before accounting for actual extensions in wall clock time. It's pretty wild how long they are.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#168

Post by yieldcrv »

fideloper wrote: post #131

Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…

My primary concern is the curation. E-book platforms and their algorithms are just showing different things. Libraries and book stores had limitations in this way too, but there was more variety in inventory.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#169

Post by samplatt »

cachvico wrote: post #99
armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Physical books wear out in decades to centuries, computers break in years to decades. Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. Even without publisher/legal issues it's clear that preservation of digital media for even the next 10 years , and especially for the next 100 or 1000, is at risk. But I really wonder why is there no other major service like the Inte…

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK

>IA.BAK has been broken and unmaintained since about December 2016. The above status page is not accurate as of December 2019.

:-(

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#170

Post by unethical_ban »

lrvick wrote: post #92

The biggest issues are often DRM. Most ebook readers will lock out books if you cannot constantly ask a DRM server for permission. A great example is when Microsoft shut down their e-book stores, and the supporting DRM infrastructure. The books stopped working. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367 Then there was that one time in 2009 Amazon remotely deleted Orwell titles including, ironically, 1984. https://w…

I'm less bothered by a bookstore ceasing to carry a title than I am by them deactivating modifying books after purchase.

Every purchased book should be an unmodifiable snapshot, and any good faith updates should only replace a purchase of desired by the owner.

Owner being a stretch of a term, as we know.

Post reply on HN