Wow, I really had no idea that a couple of comments of mine could ignite such a firestorm of conversation!
Anyway, I have a couple more comments to make. The first is the environmental cost of books. Lots of folks in this discussion have made the claim that an electronic reader is more sustainable than books. But I wonder what kind of hard data there are backing these claims up? The issue about trees being cut down for paper is particularly prickly because I know that trees can be grown and harvested sustainably. And I also know that there is no way currently to sustainably harvest the petroleum that makes the plastics which comprise the Kindle. The analogy between the automobile also riles me quite a bit. I think a fair argument can be made that America did /not/ choose the automobile. But that instead the automobile was forced upon us by an auto industry that ruthlessly bought out and closed down its mass transit competition and government policy slanted extremely heavily towards that industry. Check out the book "Divorce Your Car" for fully referenced documentation of these things. A book is a finished deal. I can read it. I can pass it on to my friend and they can read it. All without any further technology or energy needed. A book may cost more in energy terms to produce. But can that possibly be more than all the energy needed to produce and maintain all the infrastructure needed for e-books in perpetuity? We humans tend to have such a narrow view of things. I cannot believe that it costs more to publish a book than it does to produce and maintain the entire internet network and all the technologies that power it. ~Nick David Wright http://pedalingprose.wordpress.com/ --- On Sat, 2/28/09, Mark Roberts <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Mark Roberts <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: on paper (was: Re: Our Book and other book pictures) > To: "Pentax-Discuss Mail List" <[email protected]> > Date: Saturday, February 28, 2009, 1:33 PM > John Sessoms wrote: > > > > Electronic readers may displace books, but they have a > long way to go before they do so. They will require many > generations of improvement before they offer the utility or > the pleasure of the printed page. > > They'll *never* offer the pleasure of the printed page. > > In a couple of generations they'll have the utility > beat, though. > > That dichotomy is the key. The automobile *didn't* > replace the horse... for some purposes. It did replace the > horse for utilitarian purposes (unless you're Amish). > > The printed book will long survive as an aesthetic object. > Electronic books will replace it the way the horse replaced > the automobile, for day-to-day, practical, utilitarian > purposes. Reading a novel, getting a recipe, etc. > > Things like the $1100 Somerset-cotton-paper, letterset book > I bought last year will always be in print form, though at > increasing cost and scarcity. The Cormack McCarthy novels, > Coleridge poetry anthologies, Triumph motorcycle service > manuals, etc. that I bought last year will be the things > that go electronic, because it's the *content*, not the > form, I'm after. > > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link > directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
