On Feb 28, 2009, at 16:44 , Graydon wrote:
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 02:21:56PM -0500, [email protected] scripsit:
Okay, that's a point. However, if they use recycled paper (which I
suspect
many do, i.e. quality has gone down in some cases -- though in most
paperbacks, I haven't noticed it) not such a big point.
Books are heavy.
Electrons are not.
The energy cost of shipping the books totally obliterates the cost of
charging the reader.
I'm sorta hoping to avoid doing the math in public, but, really and
truly the 1 Watt/hour or so in a handheld device battery is the same
as
moving about 2 pounds at 4 miles per hour for an hour. If it goes
faster, the energy requirement goes up as the square of the speed. (8
miles per hour is four times as much energy, and so on.)
To get the books _home from the bookstore_ probably takes more energy
than that, unless you happen to live right above the bookstore. It
surely takes a lot more energy to get the book *to* the bookstore.
(and we'd have the internet anyway because we like talking to each
other.)
I really don't want to get into this, as I'm no longer a reader of
anything very lengthy (novels) or boring (manuals). If I need to know
about something, I use the internet (or PDML experts).
BUT. Graydon, you didn't factor in the energy cost of making and
distributing the readers, let alone the non-sustainability of the
sources of the component parts, nor in some cases the inability to
recycle those parts.
OTHERS have commented that many could not afford readers, or to
purchase the content to use them. I've spent a good deal of time in
the Seattle and other libraries here and in California. Computer use
is free. If you have an address in the locality serviced, you can
check out books, CDs, DVDs, Video Tapes, Audio Books, slide
collections, 16mm movies, and some art. If you are homeless, you can
avail yourself of all these items for free, you just can't check them
out. In the cities that I've observed, many homeless and very poor
spend a great deal of time in the libraries, and are welcome as long
as they don't fall asleep in the comfortable reading chairs or the
stacks. If and when "readers" take off, I'm certain the libraries will
have those on loan as well, tethered if need be for the indigent. And
content will be upload-able at stations within the building.
Books will become not as available over time, at least not the pulp
variety. I suspect art books, photographic collections, scientific
tomes, etc, will reside in major libraries and universities, as that
will become one of the duties those institutions are tasked with.
Of course, some measure of knowledge will have to be hidden, buried,
protected from the probable destruction of future wars. And that has
been underway for more than 50 years that I am aware of, probably
longer. Not everything that exists is in the stacks of the Library of
Congress. What is there is being converted to digital records that are
(at great taxpayer expense) being media upgraded constantly. One
thing that the Internet is doing for humanity is to spread our
knowledge out over hundreds of thousands of repositories of digital
storage all over the globe. It would be a good bet that every embassy
and consulate in every country of the world has digital copies of
everything "important" to that countries population.
Long Live Books. Longer than humanity will, most likely.
Joseph McAllister
Lots of gear, not much time
http://gallery.me.com/jomac
http://web.me.com/jomac/show.me/Blog/Blog.html
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