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Chopping books in half

theguardian.com

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Re: Chopping books in half

#11

Post by peapicker »

hirundo wrote: post #3

Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8 track collection.

Until there is an EMP that blows away all those stored electrons - and backups. Books looks a lot better after that.

Re: Chopping books in half

#12

Post by adventured »

hirundo wrote: post #3

Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8 track collection.

The last time I moved I had to throw out a large collection of books. I tried to give them all to numerous organizations and nobody would take them, including a public library that didn't want them (for free). They were all in pristine condition. I love physical books and I just can't stand to lug them around with me when I move. So now it's all Kindle, for better and worse.

Re: Chopping books in half

#13

Post by anchpop »

peapicker wrote: post #11
hirundo wrote: post #3

Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8 track collection.

Until there is an EMP that blows away all those stored electrons - and backups. Books looks a lot better after that.

That seems less likely than, say, a house fire or a conventional bomb

Re: Chopping books in half

#14

Post by falcolas »

peapicker wrote: post #11
hirundo wrote: post #3

Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8 track collection.

Until there is an EMP that blows away all those stored electrons - and backups. Books looks a lot better after that.

I had this discussion recently. Here’s the hat trick of digital over paper: an ebook can be unpacked and printed on paper! All of the contents are human readable - it’s mostly HTML and CSS - and can be re-encoded into an ebook with no loss of fidelity. It can also be easily read (see aforementioned HTML and CSS) without any difficulties, even in its encoded format on paper.

Re: Chopping books in half

#15

Post by falcolas »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #9
yoz-y wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one of the reasons why is that there were no hard drives a thousand years ago. Sure, stone and to some extent paper might be more durable. But the replication and transfer capabilities of digital media can ensure that the knowledge will not disappear in a fire, as long as the civilisation persists.

And there probably will not be any hard drives in a thousand years from now. Books are not as flammable as all that and generally survive higher temperatures than magnetic disks can. And books are generally printed in thousands of copies so they are replicated and distributed too. They also don't suffer to the same extent from technological change. It is now rather difficult to find computers that have floppy disk dr…

> it only works if there is an archivist who maintains the archive by repeatedly copying the content to new storage systems and distributing the results.

Funny, that’s exactly the role monks used to play in keeping many of these afforementioned documents readable.

And “less flammable” matters little when we’re talking about house or library fires, during which sufficient heat to make iron pliable can be easily achieved. The advantage of digital backups there is that the (well planned) backups don’t live in the same place as the original.

And since we’re talking about Mass Market paperbacks, can we talk about how fragile those things are these days? Sure, one from 30+ years ago is in decent condition - probably better condition than a new one hot off the press. The glue they use anymore is terrible - having pages fall out during the first read is pretty commonplace anymore.

I’d give better odds to a 30 year old paperback that’s lasted this long than a new book to make it another 30 years.

Re: Chopping books in half

#16

Post by wbl »

BurningFrog wrote: post #10
wbl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have readable thousand year old documents. Hard drives not so much.

Those are some very rare exceptions, if we're going to take this argument seriously. Something like 99.999% of the books from 1020 are gone.

That is incorrect. The big loss was papyrus to vellum where the monks had to make hard choices. Anything written on vellum was expensive so carefully prserved: there weren't a lot of books.

Re: Chopping books in half

#17

Post by theamk »

wbl wrote: post #4
hirundo wrote: post #3

Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8 track collection.

We have readable thousand year old documents. Hard drives not so much.

On the other side, I have already lost all of the printed photos from 2000 (I moved houses a few times...) but I still have the digital files from that year. Same with audio recordings - I have lost the tapes, but mp3’s are still around.

Sure, digital is requires a bit of effort, but redundancy is amazing. Every 5-10 years I move the files on the new medium, and it becomes easier and easier. I used to need a fragile, heavy HDD that cost hundreds of dollars - and now all I need a $30 MicroSD card.

(And microsd cards are amazing.. I love the fact that they need no mechanical readers to get worn out, and that the protocol is so simple it can be implemented from scratch in a week with minimal documentation)

Re: Chopping books in half

#18

Post by brewdad »

anchpop wrote: post #13
peapicker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there is an EMP that blows away all those stored electrons - and backups. Books looks a lot better after that.

That seems less likely than, say, a house fire or a conventional bomb

Yet a citywide EMP seems far more likely than the next Great Chicago Fire.

Re: Chopping books in half

#19

Post by brewdad »

adventured wrote: post #12
hirundo wrote: post #3

Funny, I've flipped to thinking of my electronic copies of books as the permanent ones and the hard copies as just convenient printouts. With a few sentimental exceptions. Damaging a physical book is for me becoming less taboo than failing to properly backup my book drive. Every spare corner of my house is crammed with books but every year they feel more anachronous. Like an 8 track collection.

The last time I moved I had to throw out a large collection of books. I tried to give them all to numerous organizations and nobody would take them, including a public library that didn't want them (for free). They were all in pristine condition. I love physical books and I just can't stand to lug them around with me when I move. So now it's all Kindle, for better and worse.

That's a shame. My public library probably wouldn't take them for circulation but they will take any usable book for their semi-annual book sale to fund new purchases. Unsold books are offered for free to schools and a few other local groups in the days after the sale. Anything left after that probably gets recycled or sent to the landfill.

Re: Chopping books in half

#20

Post by dredmorbius »

falcolas wrote: post #15
kwhitefoot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there probably will not be any hard drives in a thousand years from now. Books are not as flammable as all that and generally survive higher temperatures than magnetic disks can. And books are generally printed in thousands of copies so they are replicated and distributed too. They also don't suffer to the same extent from technological change. It is now rather difficult to find computers that have floppy disk dr…

> it only works if there is an archivist who maintains the archive by repeatedly copying the content to new storage systems and distributing the results. Funny, that’s exactly the role monks used to play in keeping many of these afforementioned documents readable. And “less flammable” matters little when we’re talking about house or library fires, during which sufficient heat to make iron pliable can be easily achiev…

The reason monks played a role in the hand-transcribing (and error-inducing) manu scripts was because mechanical reproduction didn't exist.

Estimates are that in all of Europe as of 1400 there were on the order of 40,000 titles or editions, and about 15 million volumes, total. A large library might have a few thousand volumes (University of Paris ~1200 CE: 2,000, the Vatican, ~1400, ~5,000). As of 1800, the British Museum (now the British Library) contained only 50,000 volumes.

Individual books, scrolls, parchments, and cuneiform tablets (https://cdli.ucla.edu) can survive thousands of years. The larger problem for more recent woodpulp paper texts is one that's common to many digital storage media: poor chemical stability. Acid-treated paper will crumble to dust. Archival-grade cotton rag will last centuries or more.

So long as you're talking flame and heat, you might care to check the ratings of your CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, HDD, and SDD media before feeling too secure.

Quality of current-gen paper print media is indeed low. Hardcover, for a price, delivers markedly better durability. Keep in mind too that you're applying survivorship bias to your sampling of 30-year-old paperbacks -- the ones that wouldn't survive 30 years ... haven't.

(I've numerous old books which are now in pretty sorry condition. And others which remain robust. Details matter.)

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