Books vs Internet/Digital text
Monday, February 9, 2009
I was reading the dotLife blog, over on the BBC website, at lunchtime, and the question was asked: Do you still read books?
Of course I do. I post there as Dark Side of the Goon (an online name which happily combines the geniuses of Spike Milligan and Roger Waters). Here's what I said:
The book still has advantages over electronics.
For example, if I decide to read in the bath, I can. If I drop the paperback, I'm out a tenner. If I drop a Kindle, it's a lot harder to replace.
Books don't have batteries. They work in power cuts and in places where there wasn't any power to begin with.
They don't overheat. A publisher will never send one out with a faulty battery that explodes. You don't have to worry about a book getting a virus or just failing to work altogether for no obvious reason (unless you're the author).
Your book will never decide to update itself and then autonomously restart when you're in the middle of something important. It won't go "bing!" at you because it suddenly doesn't like the page you've arrived at. And no matter how many times you riffle through the index, it will not surprise you with porn as the result of what you assumed was a perfectly innocent search. Unless it was that sort of book to start with.
Also, books are more or less DRM-proof. I bought a book, I own the book. I can always write things in the margins if I feel like it.
We're coded for books, programmed for them. No matter how digital we go, books are part of the language. The police will never .doc a criminal. At the trial, the judge will never throw the .pdf at him. Being brought to Kindle has some rather Inquisitorial associations and you'll never place a bet with a .txtmaker.
I think the book is probably safe for now.
9 comments:
I'd say there's room for both, and both are here to stay.
All being well, i will have a review of the iRex iLiad ebook reader up on www.AdrianGraham.co.uk soonish. As it happens.
I shall certainly check that out.
and the iRex iLiad does push a lot of Geek buttons for me, but really what it comes to is:
DRM
- because a book will never root-kit my bookshelf and tell Harper Collins about all the old Earthlight scifi sitting on my shelf,
- the DMCA doesn't apply.
- the RIAA won't sue me for having second hand books.
Although getting Project Gutenberg volumes on a reader might just make getting either a Kindle or the iLiad worthwhile. In a couple of years. When the price drops significantly.
Aha, mine wasn't full price - display model. And for me the biggest benefit is not having to turn pages, which in an arthritic hour is getting tricky.
There are an awful lot of free ebooks out there, txhough not usually the latest release from any except new hopefuls. Often an author will put the last book out as a freebie, to increase the fanbase for the next book. There are also an awful lot of sample-chapter exerpts to be had.
And i'm using it a lot for stuff (long blogposts, Wikipedia pages, events calendars, book reviews, etc) that i would have printed to read offline - just as easy, quicker if anything, saves paper, and i can't lose the documents as i always do hard copies.
I even pdf my own work for revision, which saves LOADS of paper.
(Plus of course the geek factor, but that's not the big deal with the iLiad.)
My major things about the eBook readers are the initial cost. For $300 I can buy a reconditioned laptop that does a lot more than a book reader - it'd read books, for one thing - and spending so much money on a unitasking item seems like a waste. Especially right now.
The other issue is that there isn't yet a median version of the device. My mp3 player is midrange, midprice, midsize and not made by Apple; all these things were selling points. Cheap is generally nasty. Expensive means 'State of the art' and that generally means buggy. I'd like to early-adopt, but can't justify the spending.
Plus, books are far more than just a collection of text and I am a serious case of bibliophilia.
I just REALLY dislike iBooks or eBooks or whatever they're called. They feel unnatural.
The physical existence of a book reassures me. And I like the covers. (I know, I know - you can't judge a book... but the Penguin cover is a design classic!)
It will surprise you that i actually agree with both of you...
More depth when i get the review done.
This debate about books and internet is widespread and very heated today. Although I don't understand the reason. Let's face it. People use the internet a lot, but they also have their own bookshelves at home to read.
The disadvantage of having lots of books is that they are hard to be stored. But I've heard that a self-storage unit might be the perfect solution for this.
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