Slashdot Mirror
The Future Of The Book
Detritus writes: "First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on, and about, the Internet, has published an excellent and thought provoking paper by Clifford Lynch, the Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, titled
The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World. The paper lays out and examines the complex questions raised by the migration from dead trees to bits, and the competing interests of authors, publishers, readers, libraries and society."
The article goes into thorough detail on the problems that could be posed if publishers are allowed to use the new medium to redefine intellectual property rights for text works. A scary portent of the future, and a distillation of those paragraphs would make a good thing to keep on hand to give (for example) your fellow students if your college wants to switch out of textbooks.
But, the article omits the importance of sites like Andamooka and the Gutenberg project, and also the significance of wireless technology and the Web. If I buy an ebook reader of some sort, it had better 1. do HTML, 2. do PDF and PS, 3. do ASCII, 4. let me make downloads of these from whatever sites I want. What does that mean? Any ebook reader must also be a Web pad to get me to buy it. I do believe that thanks to the Web and to sites like those two (and Nupedia, and many more), and thanks to upcoming Web pads, we have dodged a bullet here. (A Web pad with good handwriting recognition would be dreamy. Mmmm..)
Is this enough? No. We need more content on those sites, not to mention more effort to clue in Joe Sixpack about these issues. But things do look good IMHO. Since any ebook reader has to be able to navigate the Web (either through wireless or through a well thought out Web-suck program), ebook buyers won't be too eager to have to buy books with insane reader software and rights management software hassles.
- Can I toss an ebook reader in my pocket without worrying about sitting on it and breaking something?No, nor can you do that with any books other than paperbacks. Can you fit 3 of the biggest brand new hard covers into your carry on for when you're going on a long plane flight? No. But my ebook stays the same size no matter how many books I have with me.
- With books I own, they get torn up... They're bent, torn in places, the spine is messed up. Can I do that with an ebook?Why do you want to? Just because you can?
- What happens when the power goes out and I don't have any charge left in the tablet or whatever I'm using to view the digital text?What happens when the power goes out and you can't read your traditional book at all? My ebook is backlit so even when the subway car stalls in the tunnel and it's pitch black I'm still reading.
- Can I dogear parts of a digital book and go back to them by simply picking it up and opening it?Sure. My ebook always starts on the page I left. That's actually better than dogearing, because I don't crease pages, and my pages won't un-dogear themselves accidentally.
- Will I be able to read an ebook for hours like I can do with regular books and not have any form of eye strain?Good question. I read it for about an hour a day and don't seem to have too many problems. What usually causes the eyestrain people associate with ebooks is the fixed nature of a computer monitor, and not being able to move where the text is. The ebook is in your hands and you can move it around just like a regular book, changing the distance to your eyes, etc.
- If I like the book enough that I loan it to friends or family, will they all have to pay additional licenses or transfer fee just to read it?Finally, a good question. No, the proper billing/licensing model has not yet been determined. That's the big issue right now. Personally I feel it's the exact same as the whole Napster thing, but I can't get people to agree with me.
The arguments against ebooks always start by saying "Let's think of features of books that ebooks don't have, then think of why those features are good, and presto, ebooks therefore must be bad." I mean, sure, crisp page turning and getting ink on your fingers is kinda neat, but is it really necessary? In the days of typewriters (before word processors), you'd see typos, crossouts and whiteout on a typical page. We don't miss that, though, do we? I agree that the billing model needs work. There's actually a more simple problem with billing right now, and that's price setting -- if the new Stephen King hardcover comes out for $22, the ebook costs $22. 6 months later when it's in paperback at $12, the ebook costs $12. That's hardly fair. I'd rather see them fix that problem first and get more people to buy the dang books, and THEN worry about how people are going to loan them to each other. Personally I have hundreds of books, but it's not like I'm a library. I might loan out a small handful a year. It's just not that big a deal to me.www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Well, I'll always go for books myself, even with the Gutenberg (sp) project. Books don't give you that I-want-to-gouge-out-my-eyeballs headache like a CRT can.. and when was the last time you curled up in a chair next to a crackling fire with your pc in your hands? Somehow that doesn't strike me as the next Rockwell style painting..
But how is this step any different from those we've seen thus far? This is not a paradigm shift, it's the reflection of the impact of technology and innovation on a process.
The revolutionary shift has to do with the fact that a book can now be archived electronically. With the aid of digital communication and file sharing technologies, it is now possible to copy and transmit an entire book almost instantly to someone half way around the world. And that's not all. It does not take any special sort of expertise to do so: the entire copying and transmission process can be done with just a few mouse clicks.
This changes things dramatically, in my opinion. It will have pronounced consequences not only in the continued viability and enforceability intellectual property laws but may also affect the financial livelihood of content authors and distributors, and the way they market their wares.
In the race to computerize everything, we forget that the best solution is not always the most technologically advanced. I mean, we've got e-commerce, e-money and even e-toilets in Singapore! Dear Lord, what will they stick a computer in next?!
A book is close to the ideal form for people to digest information from. It's portable, durable, and doesn't rely on the vast amount of necessary infrastructure that the net, or even just a single computer, does. Hell, in California at the moment, you'll be lucky to be able to read a book without some kind of powercut! :)
And more to the point, people feel comfortable with books. They know where they stand. In America, where there is a very healthy streak of techno-skepticism amongst the general public, the book is what they want, not the latest fancy gadget from MIT that promises to "revolutinize" the way you read. And publishers and authors know where they stand when they produce a book - who gets paid and so on.
No, the book is here to stay for a long time. As of yet, I have seen nothing that has any compelling reasons to change. Don't let a techno-fetish blind you to the obvious solution to such a non-problem.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
However, why is taking the printed word off dead-trees necessarly equivelant to the end of the 'printed' book?
The process of 'printing' has changed dramatically over the years. Once, scribes copied from a master by hand. Then, Gutenberg brought the press. Then, we got automated typesetting. Then the dot-matrix printer. Then, bubble, laser and thermal. Now we're talking about 'setting' pixels on flexible digital LCD-like displays. But how is this step any different from those we've seen thus far? This is not a paradigm shift, it's the reflection of the impact of technology and innovation on a process. Just as books today aren't hand-written on parchment, books a few years down the road will not be printed on pulp.
Also, the leading paragraph sets up a straw-man. So what that Star Trek has embedded images of paper books as rare collectors items in the public's mind? The public's mind is generally vacuous and what's been impressed upon it is no more permanent than what's been drawn on an etchasketch (sp?).Can I toss an ebook reader in my pocket without worrying about sitting on it and breaking something? With books I own, they get torn up... They're bent, torn in places, the spine is messed up. Can I do that with an ebook? What happens when the power goes out and I don't have any charge left in the tablet or whatever I'm using to view the digital text? Can I dogear parts of a digital book and go back to them by simply picking it up and opening it? Will I be able to read an ebook for hours like I can do with regular books and not have any form of eye strain?
And I guess the most important question on my mind:
If I like the book enough that I loan it to friends or family, will they all have to pay additional licenses or transfer fee just to read it?
I think for now, you can count me out for electronic books
-C
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
(at 4.30am no less)
My company publishes PDF's. Me and some of the sales guys are tight and they tell me that they suspect a lot of clients are sharing their publication with the rest of their network effectively pirating our materials. We're relatively small with only about 100k readers so every buck counts. The future of secured (notice I didnt say secure) text would be of a lot of use for me and other small publishers like mine.
Novelists IMO have nothing to worry about, no one likes to curl up to a laptop/e-book when they can't sleep. Besides, if ain't disposable for us, it ain't profitable for them.
BOSTON SUCKS!
E-books _could_ have several real advantages:
1. Cost: Stamping a CD costs a few cents, less than the cost of shipping it by US mail. Downloading it (if available on-line) and burning your own CD also costs less than a dollar. Printing, binding, and shipping a book costs a few dollars. (Authors only get about 10% of the cover price, the rest is expenses, advertising, and profit to the publisher and bookstore.) Of course, you also have to figure the cost of the reader--but in 20 years that should be about $10.
2. Availability of unusual editions: Specialized books such as college texts often cost around $100 if you can get them at all; a large part of that is the cost to the printer of setting up for a short run, and to the stores of storing less-popular books. On-line, these could be distributed at the cost of download & burn, plus maybe a couple of dollars for the author. Writing stuff like this is motivated more by "professional standing" (ego?) than by financial considerations, so the authors might be happy to give their book away if they know no one else is going to make money off of it. And once a book is on-line, it costs nothing to keep it there even if only one person a year downloads it.
3. Searching. In any electronic text format, you are no longer dependent on the author to anticipate what you want to look up and put it in the index.
4. Readers for the blind.
5. Storage space: I've got a whole room overflowing with printed books. A stack of CD's would be much tidier--and I suspect the cheap paper on a lot of those books is not going to last as long as a good CD-R.
Against this, of course there are several obvious disadvantages: battery or power cord, less portability, and (for at least a few more years) lower readability. But if with e-books I can find more books meeting my particular tastes and spend less....
This makes me wonder though.
Are the environmental hazards of disposing an obsolete electronic device (such as a laptop, a palm, or an ebook) equal to, or greater to that of the loss of a few dozens of trees to produce the paperback books?
I'm all for doing most things to help the environment, but with computers filling up landfills at record numbers, along with the toxic chemicals that they and their monitors contain, it makes me wonder if the ebook is really an environmental solution, since that would just cause consumers to purchase more electronic devices to use them on. Which ALSO implies that they'll junk the product in about 4 or 5 years for a "better" model.
Tress grow back. Lead stays in the water.
This is a great overview, and it goes in some interesting directions. I think it is right to look at the copyright issues as being of primary interest. (Multimedia books: yeah, in limited instances. In most cases, narrative text is still the way to go!)
There is a model, still prevalent in IT, of giving away the razor (hardware) and making money on the blades (software/content). The early stages of radio took the opposite approach: commercial-free radio was supported by the manufacturers of the radio sets.
Hardware is never going to be free, but I think we need to make content free. MIT's efforts to open up course materials are a good step in this direction. There really isn't a good middle ground. We need to recognize that any limits to copying screw things up. And we need to fight to un-screw them.
We need to do what with books what has already happened with genetic foods and with music. We need to scan and release as many books as possible in order to make it a technological imperative. We need to push the genie out of the bottle.
I can still read paper written on 2000 years ago. Try and do that with *any* digital technology...