Well, I for one dislike e-books (and honestly I don't care all that much for computers either!), so I could add a few things off the top of my head to this summing-up:
- Real books don't need power, are readable outdoors without eyestrain (more than can be said for the iPad and its imitators), and print is capable of displaying full color graphics at any resolution (unlike the grainy greyscale Kindle and imitators). This isn't "aesthetics", it's just pragmatic old-fashioned usability. Maybe technological advances will make e-books as usable as real books someday; I'm not holding my breath. - The "connectedness with history" thing goes forward as well as backward. I've lived through so many rapidly-obsolete technologies that I can't even count them, but I can read a fifty-year old book without even thinking about bit-rot, broken links, dead components, or emulation. I expect much longer lifetimes from my books than from any electronic device. - On the "simplicity" angle, one of the most superior things about real books, in my opinion, is that they don't have a "user interface". You just read them, and they behave like everything else in the physical world, sparing your cognitive resources for their actual information content. (Bret Victor has a nice rant about that at http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk) - Print technology is orders of magnitude more environmentally benign and affordable. - And don't even get me started on intellectual property and its abuses! If I want to loan, resell, or give away my books, it ain't nobody's business. - The relatively high expense of getting a book printed means that books are still generally higher quality sources of information than websites, although perhaps this is being eroded too with all the print-on-demand self-publishing. Anyway, I probably wouldn't have replied to this post at all except that I wanted to let you all know about an especially relevant project which is trying to raise money to publish a book. I joined Kickstarter just to support this thing, and I am very reluctant to "join" websites these days. If you were at SPLASH 2010 in Reno, you might recall Slim from his Onward! film presentation. I think he's really onto something, although his language is a little touchy-feely. Please, check it out. If you believe better design is a necessary part of better computing (as do I) then please consider a pledge. http://kck.st/whvn03 (Oops, I just checked, and he's made the goal! Well, I've already wrote this, and I still mean it, but perhaps with a little less urgency.) -- Max On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Mack <m...@mackenzieresearch.com> wrote: > I am a self-admitted Kindle and iPad addict, however most of the people I > know are "real book" aficionados for relatively straight-forward reasons > that can be summed up as: > > - Aesthetics: digital readers don't even come close to > approximating the experience of reading a printed and bound paper text. To > some folks, this matters a lot. > > - A feeling of connectedness with history: it's not a difficult leap > from turning the pages of a modern edition of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' to > perusing a volume that was current in Edmund Rostand's time. Imagining > that the iPad you hold in your hands was once upon a shelf in Dumas Pere's > study is a much bigger suspension of disbelief. For some people, this > contributes to a psychological distancing from the material being read. > > - Simplicity of sharing: for those not of the technical elite, > sharing a favored book more closely resembles the kind of matching of > intrinsics that happens during midair refueling of military jets than the > simple act of dropping a dog-eared paperback on a friend's coffee table. > > - Simplicity. Period. (Manual transmissions and paring knives are > still with us and going strong in this era of ubiquitous automatic > transmissions and food processors. Facility and convenience doesn't always > trump simplicity and reliability. Especially when the power goes out.) > > Remember Marshall Mcluhan's observation: "The medium is the message"? > Until we pass a generational shift where the bulk of readers have little > experience of analog books, these considerations will be with us. > > -- Mack > > m...@mackenzieresearch.com > > > > On Mar 7, 2012, at 3:13 PM, BGB wrote: > > > On 3/7/2012 3:24 AM, Ryan Mitchley wrote: > >> May be of interest to some readers of the list: > >> > >> http://nplusonemag.com/bones-of-the-book > >> > > > > thoughts: > > admittedly, I am not really much of a person for reading fiction (I tend > mostly to read technical information, and most fictional material is more > often experienced in the form of movies/TV/games/...). > > > > I did find the article interesting though. > > > > I wonder: why really do some people have such a thing for traditional > books? > > > > they are generally inconvenient, can't be readily accessed: > > they have to be physically present; > > one may have to go physically retrieve them; > > it is not possible to readily access their information (searching is a > pain); > > ... > > > > by contrast, a wiki is often a much better experience, and similarly > allows the option of being presented sequentially (say, by daisy chaining > articles together, and/or writing huge articles). granted, it could be made > maybe a little better with a good WYSIWYG style editing system. > > > > potentially, maybe, something like MediaWiki or similar could be used > for fiction and similar. > > granted, this is much less graphically elaborate than some stuff the > article describes, but I don't think text is dead yet (and generally doubt > that fancy graphical effects are going to kill it off any time soon...). > even in digital forms (where graphics are moderately cheap), likely text is > still far from dead. > > > > it is much like how magazines filled with images have not killed books > filled solely with text, despite both being printed media (granted, there > are college textbooks, which are sometimes in some ways almost closer to > being very and large expensive magazines in these regards: filled with lots > of graphics, a new edition for each year, ...). > > > > > > but, it may be a lot more about the information being presented, and who > it is being presented to, than about how the information is presented. > graphics work great for some things, and poor for others. text works great > for some things, and kind of falls flat for others. > > > > expecting all one thing or the other, or expecting them to work well in > cases for which they are poorly suited, is not likely to turn out well. > > > > > > I also suspect maybe some people don't like the finite resolution or > usage of back-lighting or similar (like in a device based on a LCD screen). > there are "electronic paper" technologies, but these generally have poor > refresh times. > > > > a mystery is why, say, LCD panels can't be made to better utilize > ambient light (as opposed to needing all the light to come from the > backlight). idle thoughts include using either a reflective layer, or a > layer which responds strongly to light (such as a phosphorescent layer), > placed between the LCD and the backlight. > > > > > > but, either way, things like digital media and hypertext displacing the > use of printed books may be only a matter of time. > > > > the one area I think printed books currently have a slight advantage (vs > things like Adobe Reader and similar), is the ability to quickly place > custom bookmarks (would be nice if one could define user-defined bookmarks > in Reader, and if it would remember wherever was the last place the user > was looking in a given PDF). > > > > the above is a place where web-browsers currently have an advantage, as > one can more easily bookmark locations in a web-page (at least apart from > "frames" evilness). a minor downside though is that bookmarks are less good > for "temporarily" marking something. > > > > say, if one can not only easily add bookmarks, but easily remove or > update them as well. > > > > > > the bigger possible issues (giving books a partial advantage): > > they are much better for very-long-term archival storage (print a book > with high-quality paper, and with luck, a person finding it in 1000 or 2000 > years can still read it), but there is far less hope of most digital media > remaining intact for anywhere near that long (most current digital media > tends to have a life-span more measurable in years or maybe decades, rather > than centuries). > > > > most digital media requires electricity and is weak against things like > EMP and similar, which also contributes to possible fragility. > > > > these need not prevent use of electronic devices for convenience-sake or > similar, but does come with the potential cost that, if things went > particularly bad (societal collapse or widespread death or similar), the > vast majority of all current information could be lost. > > > > granted, it is theoretically possible that people could make bunkers > with hard-copies of large amounts of information and similar printed on > high-quality acid-free paper and so on (and then maybe further treat them > with wax or polymers). > > > > say, textual information is printed as text, and maybe data either is > represented in a textual format (such as Base-85), or is possibly > represented via a more compact system (a non-redundant or semi-redundant > dot pattern). > > > > say (quick calculation) one could fit up to around 34MB on a page at 72 > DPI, though possibly 16MB/page could be more reasonable (with some > redundancy and ECC data, or a little space to provide info such that humans > can know "just what the hell is this?"). this would fit a DVD worth of data > (4.5GB) in about 300 pages. > > > > also, in worst case, at 72 DPI, it is at least possible that humans > could start decoding the data by hand if needed (since the dots could be > more easily seen absent magnification or a microscope). > > > > > > or such... > > > >> _______________________________________________ > >> fonc mailing list > >> fonc@vpri.org > >> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > > > _______________________________________________ > > fonc mailing list > > fonc@vpri.org > > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >
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