Browsing an article about revolutionary new products and stuff, I noticed something called a Sony Reader, a digital book. The first thing I think is, why is a ‘digital book’ still a revolutionary idea? I was hearing about the concept last decade.
Then I wonder how this technology will affect books in general. Since you don’t have to chop trees down to make them, they’re more environmentally friendly than books. They take up much less space than a collection of books. As long as they’re not a strain to read — and this Sony Reader allegedly has the same resolution as print and an anti-glare screen — I don’t see how they’re not superior to books in every way.
The only problem is piracy of books, which I think is a problem for two reasons. Firstly is the loss of profit to authors, although I only think this is a problem to the most popular authors. For smaller authors, to have their work available over the internet would be a huge boost to exposure, although this in turn presents the problem of oversaturation — if you went to a library that had every book ever written, how would you ever find anything interesting to read?
The second problem with piracy would be the anti-piracy mechanisms they’d build into the digital books. Anti-piracy measures are generally so incredibly infuriating that they’d vastly reduce the enjoyment of reading. Since books only have copy protection until they’re retyped on a computer, the digital book would have to be restricted to reading ‘authentic’ files, so you’d only be able to read books that are available through the online shop. I don’t think most people would want a digital book unless it could display anything they want to read.
I don’t think that digital books will ever replace paperbacks, though. The bicycle never replace walking and the car never replaced the bicycle. Especially when it comes to literature, there’s far too much online and not enough indicators of quality — at least in a bookstore or a library, everything there has won the competition to be published.
March 14, 2007 at 3:31 pm |
I think books, like vinyl records, will always be available in physical form, but periodic literature such as newspapers will eventually be replaced by the electronic version.
Have you seen the new series of Bloomsbury reprints of popular books such as the first Harry Potter and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell? Each book comes with a brief reading guide, and the cover is white with a photograph of a copy of a recent edition, like a T-shirt with a picture of a T-shirt on it. If you arrange the books in the right order, the photos overlap each cover slightly. Just thought that was kinda cool.
April 21, 2007 at 5:16 pm |
How can you replace the feeling of the paper under your fingers, its typical smell and consistency, while lying in your bed or at your desk with the awesome novel you found at the bookstore?In my opinion, books devoted to “pleasure” should remain in paper form.I think the digital form would be a great solution for works like dissertations, theses and the like, that often don’t do much more than wasting precious trees.Moreover, this kind of publications are often free, so piracy would be a lesser problem.