Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#2Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure.
After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#3Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure. After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
Have you used a (non-backlit) Kindle or other e-ink display for any length of time? It's difficult for people who haven't tried it to believe, but it feels nothing like staring at a screen. I spend all day in front of a screen as well, but reading my Kindle at the end of the day is no harder on my eyes than looking at a dead-tree book.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#4Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure. After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
I understand where you are coming from, really, I do. My eyes are strained too and I recently got a Kindle (purposely without the backlight) and it is amazing. I'd recommend to give it a try - but I can't really speak for the backlit versions.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#5Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure. After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
I understand where you are coming from, really, I do. My eyes are strained too and I recently got a Kindle (purposely without the backlight) and it is amazing. I'd recommend to give it a try - but I can't really speak for the backlit versions.
Seconded. My (non-backlit) Kindle really doesn't feel like I'm reading from a screen. It's a totally different experience from reading on my phone or laptop.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#6Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure. After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
Have you used a (non-backlit) Kindle or other e-ink display for any length of time? It's difficult for people who haven't tried it to believe, but it feels nothing like staring at a screen. I spend all day in front of a screen as well, but reading my Kindle at the end of the day is no harder on my eyes than looking at a dead-tree book.
It really is completely different. It's like looking at an Etch-A-Sketch, which in the end, is not much different than looking at paper with ink or graphite particles in it.
E-Readers are one of those technologies that I'm completely unconflicted and wholly supportive of. E-books should be priced better though, to account for the inability to lend them out to people.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#7Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure. After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.
Have you used a (non-backlit) Kindle or other e-ink display for any length of time? It's difficult for people who haven't tried it to believe, but it feels nothing like staring at a screen. I spend all day in front of a screen as well, but reading my Kindle at the end of the day is no harder on my eyes than looking at a dead-tree book.
Yeah, I just had corrective eye surgery and the Kindle is just as easy on my eyes as a book. Easier, even because I can enlarge the text when my eyes get tired.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#8I stopped buying technical books approximately 15 years ago. Nowadays I much prefer (online) tutorials along with the (online) reference manual with user comments. In fact, you could quite easily crowd author and publish these things. We could use better software for that, though, because Wikipedia's mediawiki is only so so for that purpose. Furthermore, most reference manuals and tutorial collections do not sufficiently solicit user commenting and other user participation. Books printed on paper do not allow for user involvement at all. Even for novels, I would prefer to read them with user involvement in one way or another. I cannot imagine one type of book that would not benefit from user interaction.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#9The only thing I miss when using my kindle is going to the used bookstores and hunting for treasures (generally obscure sci-fi for $1 per paperback).
But my kindle 4 lets me stay in sync with my phone (which I can use in the dark and outside the house unprepared, both of which come up a lot). So I tend to read kindle books still, despite a rather large collection of unread fiction.
Re: Did technology kill the book or give it new life?
#10> Adult fiction - particularly romantic and erotic - has migrated strongly to the e-book, whereas cookery and religious books still do well in print, as do books with illustrations. All for fairly obvious reasons.
Like writing on a notepad, reading a physical book does a good job of communicating with body language what you're doing. And if you believe in judging books by their cover, the book cover provides further information about its subject. And you can leave physical books in public places to start conversations.
Additionally, large books like cookbooks and illustrated books often come in a large form factor that tablets struggle to match. That's not too surprising, given that humans have been making books for about half a century, but only making tablets for maybe a decade.
And it's mostly the books we don't want others to know we're reading (adult fiction) for which we use the e-reader, where others can't tell what we're reading.