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The Evolution of Reading In the Digital Age
Doofus writes "'Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused.' is the subtitle of Craig Mod's thoughtful discussion aboutthe evolution of reading material from printed dead-tree to flowing digital content. I stumbled upon his blog post from a related NYTimes article, Former Book Designer Says Good Riddance to Print. He breaks reading material down into two basic categories: 'Formless,' in which the content and meaning of the writing has no dependency on presentation, and 'Definite,' in which layout and presentation play a role in conveying meaning. Mod makes the point that as digital presentation improves, devices such as the iPad will bring authors newer and improved platforms upon which to display Definite content. Despite this, he says, some works will be better consumed in physical print because 'They're books that embrace their physicality or have stood the test of time. They're the kinds of books the iPad can't displace because they're complete objects.'"
Like pop-up books. Or scratch-n-sniff.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Also known as PDF and anything but PDF. PDF and fixed layout where it's needed, but please stop producing novels as PDF. They don't reflow nicely on smaller screens.
Except for the print dinosaurs that are little more than scare merchants for fretful mothers and defenders of the status quo. The dead tree merchants are the only ones confused. And they think they only need a re-branding when what they need is what they will get - nothing. You will become history because of your sad performance.
Save the books..... burn the ipads!
The main problems with e-readers is A) books are expensive B) there are no libraries. How many people actually -buy- all the books they read? Yes, occasionally there is the odd book where the waiting list in the library would give me a copy sometime in the next decade and I will buy a book. Or the odd book on sale at Barnes and Nobel for $3 that is a hardback, and occasionally I wish to annotate a classic work of literature so I will buy it, but for the rest, I just go to a library. As for newspapers, I generally don't read any. I don't see the point. Any community event traditionally advertised in the local paper is easily found via Facebook or Twitter. National or international news is best found online where you can see all sides of the story rather than the one or two expressed via print media. It allows for more specialized interest stories, good luck finding a newspaper with coverage as complete as even Endgadget. Newspapers also rarely follow up stories or allow for user feedback except for some cherry picked editorials.
In short, E-Readers aren't going to replace print media when it comes to literature and print is already dead for most people under 40 for news.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"'They're books that embrace their physicality or have stood the test of time. They're the kinds of books the iPad can't displace because they're complete objects.'"
Depends on how cheap e-book readers become, doesn't it? iPad, now, he's right.
But I've sometimes bought books that cost $100. While a single-purpose/publication e-book reader would be ridiculously extravagant right now, I'm not confident that will always be the case. If cost came down sufficiently maybe I could end up stacking my e-books on the shelf beside the paper ones. "Buy the book and get a free, reusable e-book reader" isn't *that* far off, I think.
Um, I don't think any "merchants" are confused. It is the publishers that are confused. Book stores as a whole have embraced E-Readers, look at Amazon and the Kindle and Barnes and Noble and the Nook. Other than Borders and a few other stores, the rest basically specialize in cheap books, something that E-readers lack (and pre-1920s works only get you so far) and book exchanges.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
From TFA: We’re losing the dredge of the publishing world: disposable books.
Sounds like "dregs" I guess--if you talk like Sean Connery. I stopped reading right there. That's just a bit too much illiteracy for an article about books.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Of all the recent discussions / ruminations on the apparently inevitable replacement of bound paper by ebooks I think this article is one of the more insightful.
It is midway down in the article (around figures 7 and 8) where I think Craig really gets to the thrust of his argument. Few books (and no traditional novels that I am aware of) have attempted to break out of the "two page spread canvas" convention. The coming dawn of larger-format (and colour) "readers" of all sorts, however, will allow content creators to create nearly unlimited canvas types - even if only in abstraction.
If we get to the point where leaving your reader behind in a public place isn't any more likely to result in theft than leaving a book, readers will be well positioned to overtake printed books.
I think that day is still far off.
Mod makes the point...
Well, what kind of point? Insightful? Funny? Interesting?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Electronic books are probably one of the iPad's killer apps. Maybe not the ones we'll see immediately -- the ones basically just ported from the Kindle or something -- but the next generation of books, or the ones after that. Interacting with the book is where the technology will really shine. Think about A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (from The Diamond Age).
'They're books that embrace their physicality or have stood the test of time. They're the kinds of books the iPad can't displace because they're complete objects'
A) Leave the iPad out of this. We're talking about consuming text which isn't printed on paper, and we've been doing that since even before the *gasp* kindle.
B) Is this some kind of metaphysical crap? "they're complete objects"? WTF does that mean? I've been reading Descartes' Discourse on the Method off the screen of a netbook. Does this mean that somehow the information that I've consumed isn't "real enough"? If I printed that out on paper, read it, and then burned the paper, would that have made the content "embrace its physicality"?
Either I'm missing something, or this is a serious case of "get off my lawn".
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Sometimes content includes presentation, but not always content needs it. Most books in particular, as flow of words, of ideas, not of something physical, should be independent of presentation, so any way to transmit it, comfortably enogh for the receiver, should be equivalent, so either audio, reading in a cellphone, pdf, computer montior, printed book or wallscreen should be more or less the same.
There are some special books that pushes the possibilities of that media, that does some trick with the material, the pagination, what you should see at once in that physical form, etc. But for most of them don't matter that much how you "read" them.
Do people get paid to throw Apple branding around like this? Are any of these issues in any way unique to, or only now forthcoming because of, Apple's late entry into the tablet computing market?
Better known as 318230.
Although the format change is a big part of this, the real change afoot is the amount of effort it takes to publish something. In the past, with the exception of self-publishing, the only way to get your work out there was to pitch your idea to a book publisher, who would then decide what was and was not print-worthy. Today, I can go to blogspot.com, sign up for an account, and spout off about anything I want, making it accessible for the world to see.
That means big changes for the publishing business. I'm actually not thrilled about paper books going away; it's not easy for me to read a sceen, even a Kindle screen, for hours on end. But the publishers and bookstores are really terrified. I could defintiely see Barnes and Noble or Borders turning into something like a coffeehouse/social club, marketing e-books and e-media, and still making money off of ancillary stuff. Problem is that you can't support thousands of places like that. Time, Random House, McGraw-Hill and all those guys in New York are probably shaking in their boots. Eventually, they're going to have to find a way to make money on something that's easy to disseminate and hard to resell. It's similar to the music industry...they've been on the same talent search --> contract --> album --> hit song(s) --> concert revenue --> album business cycle forever. Now publishing has to switch to something else from talent search --> contract --> book --> sales revenue --> book.
It's also going to be extremely difficult to make a living writing material. I really love to write, but I know it's not a sustainable career. Those of us with the itch to write have had magazines to submit articles to, but even that might dry up. The worst change IMO is going to be journalism. Instead of a newspaper of record, we're going to have thousands of bloggers, all with their own agenda, Twittering and blogging all over the Web about current events. I really think investigative journalism is going to go downhill, which is bad. You need to pay reporters to go out and spend the time digging up actual facts, not posting opinions. That's how we get the conspiracy theorists sneaking into the mainstream with things like Obama's citizenship being questioned.
I love eBooks and readers a lot. I have over 100 books loaded onto my iPhone. But a paper book or journal doesn't go blank after a few hours reading. I want to read in a dark tent at night after 2 weeks backpacking in the Rockies.
Keep Doing Good.
tl;dr ;-)
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Until e-book readers come with batteries that can be replaced, and some standard battery format for these rechargeable devices emerges similar to the good old AAA battery, e-books will be a total loss. Imagine sitting down for an multiple-hour wait in a hospital, pulling out your e-book, and the battery dying. That doesn't happen with paper! What we need is some kind of standard, replaceable battery so you can put a totally charged, fresh one in your e-book reader/MP3 player/etc before you leave. The real flaw in all these devices at this time is they have a totally contained battery that can't be replaced, so the only way they can be recharged is to be taken out of action during the recharge. There is no way to recharge an old battery by itself and put a fresh one in the device that has already charged. Until this is fixed, I wouldn't even consider an e-book reader. My paper book is always available. I already bought a digital camera that used AA batteries instead of the batteries that can't be removed, so if I am outdoors photographing and the battery dies, I can just put new batteries in.
(1:47) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZRhlcqPef0
Having read the article (yes, I know that's not a Slashdot procedure), two things strike me;
i Its a piece of puffery in favour of the latest piece of Apple product.
ii He has a point.
I won't bother arguing about i because you'll either like or dislike Apple product and either have a use for the iPad or not.
Point ii is more interesting. The thing is, as defined in the article, books that fall into the "formless" category are those that people buy to read on holiday, at a whim and so onb, but they won't necessarily want to tote a piece of electronics about to consume them. Book v1 doesn't need a power source or access to the internet to enjoy, in most cases it doesn't matter if they get left out in the rain or fall into the bath or get lost. Most people can lose quite expensive things quite easily. The photographer Roger Deakin was sacked by Vogue magazine for repeatedly "losing" Rolleiflex cameras in taxis. Its cheaper to lose the latest boink/blockbuster airport novel than it is to lose your Kindle or iPad. And you can lend it, or give it to a charity shop or whatever.
Even in his "definite" category, booklike publications score higher in usability and utility than an electronic version. And again, once you've finished with a technical book you can sell it, lend it or give it away. Try doing that with a DRM encumbered software for an iPad.
The only form of "definite" product that his analysis does support is for the consumption of magazines and newspapers. These relatively disposable products are ideal fodder for a jazzy colour display though you'd have to be quite mad to want to pay for the medium of display and STILL fork out fot the product subscription!
Of course, I'm of the older generation and my attention span is longer than that of 20-30 yos who are the target audience for product these days.
Objection, you're out of order!!!!
Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused.
Yeah. Everybody. Except everybody. ;)
Really only publishers are confused.
That’s all there is to say.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
In the present age when resources are becoming scarce and we have to conserve more, I see the value of the electronic reader. I prefer reading in print to reading on a screen because I have the freedom to highlight and make notes in margins. But, seeing as trees are very important, it may be time to make the adjustment. I am sure the cost to operate say, a kindle, is far less than the cost to the environment to produce the paper, the ink to print, and the energy to run the presses. The trick to making the e-reader environmentally friendly is to slow down the pace at which they are being rendered obsolete. Whereas a book lasts centuries, we may be adding to a silicon garbage pile at the rate of our present innovation. I will adopt the e-reader when there is no DRM and there is a standard so I can freely move what I rightfully purchased between devices.
B) Is this some kind of metaphysical crap? "they're complete objects"? WTF does that mean?
I don't know why people are talking about pop-up books: all books are tangible. Your "copy" of a book is forever linked to a physical object that, as time passes, becomes different from all other instances of that book.
Can you imagine someone paying $1m for a first edition of an ebook download? (that's just a recent, extreme example that happens to be a comic book - people cherish rare editions of books of all kinds, even when the content is widely available elsewhere).
Imagine you were giving someone a gift or a presentation? Which would be better: (a) hardback copy of their favorite author's latest work with a suitable inscription or (b) an iTunes gift card.
How will future authors cope at book signings? Hey, Mr Pullman, could you validate this X.509 certificate and write it back to the SD card? Its not for me, you understand, its for my daemon...
My 1979 paperback copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide" (the yellowed and dogeared one) is certainly a "complete object". It's still got the price tag on the back (80p!?)
...and what is that funny stain on page 30 of "American Gods"... :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Crowd: YES! Everyone is confused!
Me: (raises hand) I'm not.
Crowd: SSHHHH!
'Definite,' in which layout and presentation play a role in conveying meaning.
But... wait... I thought the CSS purists said we're supposed to separate layout and content and spew semantics all over the place?
Nobody is confused, but not for the reasons you give.
The digital option is attractive for texts that will only be read once, or for texts that are expensive and bulky in their dead-tree form. I have a lot of the latter in the form of biochemistry and molecular biology textbooks which never followed me very far from home because they were/are too fucking heavy to carry.
On the other hand, digital reproduction has to be REALLY GOOD and detailed to be even remotely useful for that kind of text. I have never yet seen a digital text of this type that really passes muster. It's just a pity that the technology just wasn't there when I was doing my undergrad degree, but then I guess I have no right to complain when preceding generations didn't even have the advantages of the internet.
But for novels, poetry or anything I read for actual pleasure, dead trees are still where it's at for me. The feel and smell of the paper and print are part of the experience.
And not the other (AT LEAST) 33 other, much better (IMHO) ebook readers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_readers
I have the Astak EZReader Pocket Pro and the
Ectaco JetBook Lite
And I've been collecting ebooks from various sources in many formats for at least fifteen years.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I like reading a newspaper more than reading news online. I like reading paper books more than ebooks. To be honest, while I do read online news, I'd never really consider buying an e-reader, unless I was going on a hiking trip or something where I expected to read 3-4 books and didn't have the space to pack them.
Some primary characteristics of a book: it can loaned to a friend; it can be resold; it can be purchased second-hand; it can be purchased once by a library and read by many people; it has a useful life of at least twenty-five years (for the cheapest paperbacks) to well over a century (just about any hardbound). Although there are minor changes in e.g. typefaces, punctuation, and other stylistic elements, the format is stable enough for a century-old book to be easily read. If you are able to read a Macmillan books, you can read a Houghton Mifflin or Random House book; there are no vendor compatibility issues. If you can read a book when it was published, you can continue to read it after the publisher goes out of business and shuts down all of its operations.
These have been characteristic of books for centuries. They are a fundamental part of the definition of a book.
Modern so-called "eBooks" have none of these characteristics. They are not books at all. It's self-indulgent to fuss about things like "formless" versus "definite" content. First things first: we need eBooks that are books.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
My wife and I read about a book every few days, sometimes every other day. We buy pocketbook versions of books we know we will reread and hardcovers of books we know we will want to reference and which will be hard to find otherwise. I think we have around 1500 books in our apartment.
We go the library every few days. We take out fiction, non-fiction, and a lot of DVDs. The local library system allows us to search for books and place holds online, they ship the books to whatever branch we want etc.
I see DRM and E-Books as a bid by the Publishing industry to try to produce books they can sell, that appeal to their customers because of convenience, and which will eventually kill off the library system entirely due to their DRM. A lot of publishers seem to view libraries as the next thing to criminal because they hurt book sales.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Part of the joy of reading (at least for me) is the physical act of holding the book, opening the book, turning the pages, even the act of actually sitting in a bookstore with the book and a comfy chair giving it a test read before I buy. I really am not a fan of 'digital' readers. I don't even read tech manuals online; I print them out, because I actually take notes, use a highlighter, mark important pages with post-its, add them to binders, etc.
Aside from that, I wear bifocals; I've yet to find one of those readers that is comfortable to read for long periods of time; nor can you lay it across your face when you take a nap in the hammock :)
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
So, it's great that we see more & more eBooks (by which I mean PDF files) potentially replacing dead-tree printed books (hear at least).
What I don't get, however, is WHY the Adobe folks don't have a simple check-box that would preclude inclusion & (possible) printing of
BLANK pages, eg, if anybody intentionally or accidentally prints an eBook.
Blank pages take time to skip, ie, while reading the book, and would cost trees whenever the eBook is printed, later.
Adobe, PLEASE make it easy to save eBooks (as PDF's without BLANK pages), thanks. :-/
"We live in a different world now, one in which that scarcity is purely artificial."
Of course you're not advocating the absurd position that just like there are an infinite copies of a book, there are an infinite number of authors capable of producing content worth copying. Nor that the process of weeding out the bad and rewarding the good is likewise infinite. Or even that this process of infinite copying is being backed by infinite physical resources. Hmmm, so what scarcity is left that's artificial then?
"We live in a different world now, one in which that scarcity is purely artificial. The purpose of public libraries -- to use public funds to provide public access to books and the like -- remains the same. Our notion of copyright, however, has shifted from that of an incentive to contribute towards a society's creative output to a sense of entitlement"
I think some of you live with a rose colored view of history. Making a living was always there, it's just that technology has made it possible for more to be contributors than say the privileged few who even knew how to read. As for your point about entitlement, that cuts both ways. The difference between now and then is that technology makes it easier to satisfy that desire.
"Please, I beseech you, do not think of DRM as an "enabler" of public libraries. Rather, see it for what it is: an artificial restriction on public resources designed to wrest control from the public, to limit access to societal contributions, and to discourage the distribution and dissemination of culture -- all in the name of maximizing profits for the select group of individuals responsible for manipulating the legal and public concepts of copyright."
So where's the flood of OSS model books then with quality and quantity comparable to what the "artificial scarcity" system is producing? All the above is saying there's a systematic system that doesn't want to compensate those who work hard to create the content they feel entitled to and dresses it up in academic sounding arguments of "my culture". Saying it's their culture is like saying "My Flag" or "My Constitution", named as beneficiaries but not actually playing any role in it's maintenance. Maybe after this there will be discussions of societies responsibilities towards that culture beyond, being consumers of content?
Like pop-up books. Or scratch-n-sniff.
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I have been reading ebooks for ten years, since acquiring my first Palm Pilot. I've evolved my devices to a Toshiba Pocket PC PDA, then a Samsung (Palm) smartphone, and now a Palm Treo Pro (WM). My sources are RSS feeds, Gutenberg classics, free ebooks, and occasionally books downloaded from usenet. About 90% of my reading is electronic, excepting technical books and new fiction I borrow from the library. The small screen sizes have never bothered me nor have I suffered any eyestrain in my 60+year old eyes, which have actually improved with age. I have enjoyed many happy hours reading in lines, in airports, on trains, backpacking, etc. while others fretted or were bored. The only thing I have lost is viewing images and maps, sometimes of value in travel books or some fiction, or reading electronically at a beach, for which I have a supply of paperback "beach" books. However, I can curl up on a sofa or bed and read quite comfortably, without a lamp, or when someone else is driving. Although I do it a lot, I don't "really like" reading online using my 6 lb. 15" notebook and have considered moving to a netbook. But today's smartphones give me nearly everything I need in single device that fits in my shirt pocket, including music, and even limited TV and a basic GPS. However, physical size and professional layout is necessary for most technical books, such as Tufte's, with maps, diagrams, images, etc. So I suspect I will always need some device with the resolution of paper or a bigger screen, until such time as direct eyeball projection devices are perfected and comfortable.
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