frank theriault wrote:
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Nick David Wright
<[email protected]> wrote:
<snip>
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?
<snip>
I think you've hit upon something here: The question is not merely
what is the ~true~ environmental cost of e-books (don't forget to
include negative externalities) but how long will this technology be
viable? Will it "catch on" and be standardized and be with us for
decades or even centuries? Or, in a couple of years will it be
obsolete? Knowing the electronics industry "the next thing" will be
on the market in a few years (or less), it will be completely
incompatible with current e-book technology, and millions of e-books
(and all their batteries!) will start filling landfill sites around
the world.
Remember when someone said that computers were going to be the end of
paper? Truth is that computers have led to more paper consumption
than ever. Who knew that printers would end up so cheap?
What scares me is the unforeseen and unpredictable consequences of
technology - we know what we're dealing with in books, we don't with
e-books.
That's why it' so important that the3 eventual format be open source
(well, one of the reasons). I'd wager ASCII (which is the basis of
what's encapsulated in an e-book format) will be readable for a *long*
time into the future. Probably longer even than JPEG.
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