Encyclopedias are still useful, but I find it’s only with more specialized ones. For example, I believe there’s an Encyclopedia of Diaspora in the works, and I’ve already seen one article. It would be very helpful to have all those references and citations in one source. Theoretical alignments, technical terms, and important researchers would all be there, waiting to be looked up. And all that information would be too specialized to be found on the Internet and too general to be found from just reading books on different diasporas.
There are several things in science fiction–especially older science fiction–that I’ve never really bought. One of them is the idea of the complete loss of books (the rest would be a Cafe Society hijack.) I think the idea can partially be blamed on microfilm–who now uses microfilm if they can get the same thing in PDF? I hate microfilm–it costs me more money to print it, more time to spool it up and find the right section, heck, even more time to go to a library. A PDF I can just print out if I want to read it in-depth or skim through it on the screen to see if it is something useful. But I think at the time everything was getting converted to microfilm, the hard copies were getting tossed, and the idea of something like PDF wasn’t even conceivable. Of course, PDF is just the new microfilm, but it is easier to deal with. You can open it up in the privacy of your own home and you don’t need anything you don’t already have. True, the idea was that you’d have your own large microfilm library and home reader, but I never saw how that was a good idea.
I also blame it a bit–especially the older stuff, like from the 50s–on the emergence of TV. I get this vibe that a majority of the population would become effectivelly illiterate due to the emergence of TV or one of its successors. Nobody will want to read if they can watch it. I’ve never really bought that idea. Personally, I don’t like audiobooks–it takes far longer for me to listen to a book than it does for me to read it. I’ve only found them to be useful in specialized situations, not for sitting at home. And television is such a different media from books that I can’t imagine replacing books entirely with TV.
Of course, the idea in the OP is basically using a PDA to store many many books. I have a lot of books, some of them really OOP and even somewhat falling apart from age (about 30 years old) because they weren’t made in a very high quality. I might use a PDA, but several things have to be the case. First, it can’t be like scrolling lots and lots of text. I either can’t or don’t like to do that, I’m not sure which it really is. Second, there can’t be any eyestrain. I can read a book for several hours straight and never get eyestrain, but I can’t do it with any current screen. Third, there can’t be a lot of–preferably zero–DRM. Right now, I buy a book and can do just about anything I want with the physical copy. I won’t accept a lot of restrictions.
I don’t think books will disappear in my lifetime.
Reference books are different IMO than novels and other books that people read straight through. Reference books are perfect for electronic storage; most people don’t want to read them, they just want to quickly look up certain topics. For storage of huge amounts of factual information for quick retrieval in small amounts, electronic trumps book hands-down most of the time, except for some home uses. Reference books, to a large extent, were only sitting around in print waiting for computers to come along, and the same often applies to technical journals (though I agree that the fees for once-free journals are a shame).
Ordinary books, however, are used completely differently. We want to take them anywhere and read them in many different situations, be able to page back and forth easily, scribble on them, mark them up, and lend them to our friends. For reading purposes, a paper book is the simplest and most satisfactory technology that works. It’s more compact and easier to handle than a scroll, and often lasts longer, so it supplanted scroll technology, but it’s simpler, so far cheaper, and far more durable than a PDA, so it’s not going to be supplanted anytime soon. For many uses, the simplest technology that does the job wins, and that’s still a book. (The pencil is still around for the same reason, while quills and dipped pens were more complex to use and so died out when simpler ballpoints came along.)
Also, even the worst-quality books from 30 years ago (not to mention 200 years ago, but paper wasn’t so acidic then) are mostly still around, which is not the case for electronic data. Digital storage is still not as long-lasting as we need it to be; it degrades too soon and the format goes out of date too quickly–and then the information is essentially lost. You don’t need the right retrieval device to read a book, but a tragic amount of valuable information has been lost because it’s no longer readable by current devices.*
Anyway, my main point is that the simplest technology that does the job satisfactorily wins–and the PDA has a long way to go in many, many ways before it does the job better than a cheap paperback book does.
*For example, my grandmother made recordings of oral histories of other family members I would love to hear. Sadly, she did it on tapes that played on a particular machine. The power cord, with an odd configuration, was later lost, and another has never been found. It’s not at all a unique situation, but if the stories had been written down too we’d still have them.
Book repositories will be a thing of the past. Books with be printed on demand only. Token memorial libraries will be more an aesthetical construct than a practical resource.
Then where will we go to make JFK-assassination-related jokes and references?
I still see a place for hardcopy archiving. You have to have something like the LoC holding hardcopy in case of memory loss.
The C++ Class-y Gnoll?
cite? Low end printers these days easily do 300dpi, higher end ones go above 600 dpi. The biggest resolution I’ve seen on a PDA is 640x480 which is barely 1/3 of that figure. And resolution isn’t everything, what’s the contrast ratio of the best LCD compared to paper? I think it’s over 100 times worse atm.
Well, I’ll have no problem either way if you can give me an electronic gadget that is just as portable as a book, just as sturdy and just as hard to damage, and gives me an image that doesn’t hurt my eyes (for example I read a lot at the SDMB but if I read a whole novel on the computer, or one chapter of a novel where I was reading line after line for several minutes nonstop I’d get serious eyestrain) then I really won’t miss them that much.
Books are cheap, don’t require a power source, are easier on the eyes, don’t require peripheral technology, don’t crash and require calls to a disinterested tech support person half-way across the world, and can be carried to sandy beaches, dirty parks, and other places you wouldn’t dream of bringing your laptop.
When your computer acts up where do you look: The manual, printed in handy book form.
Magazines are still around, even though there’s little love for them as artifacts. people like their convenient portable ephemeral form.
The death of the encyclopedia is an argument for why books will still be around, oddly enough. The printed encyclopedia died because it was bulky, expensive, and could not be updated. The CD-Rom and the internet do the job of the encyclopedia much better. The key here is that people want their info in the most convenient and efficient form, and don’t much care whether that form is electronic or not. For many purposes the book is the most convenient form, and I can’t see that changing in the near future.
If it does change, well, fine. I complained a little when vinyl records died, because I did like them as an artifact. A few years later I didn’t miss them at all, noting how much less of a struggle it was to deal with CD’s (even if CD’s were overhyped in almost every area.) If someone is able to develop a new tech that is as easy or easier to deal with than the book, in the same way CD-Rom’s and the internet are better than printed encyclopedia’s, that’s great. It’s the content that matters, not the form.
I think you’re giving PDAs too much credit. If I had a nickel for every person who asked me what mine was in the past year, often thinking it was something like a gameboy, well, I’d have no trouble buying a new one with all the bells and whistles. Even well-educated people (all my coworkers have college degrees and most questions have been from them) largely have no idea what PDAs are, or what they do; the majority of people who actually know what they are seem surprised that I can do more with it than keep track of dates, and I haven’t met a person yet who wasn’t shocked I use mine as an e-reader. And I don’t just mean older people, but other people in their 20s have had the same questions. Cell phones, MP3 players, people know all about them. PDAs, not so much. Hell, until a friend convinced me last year I might get some use out of one, I didn’t know anything much about them either.
Books will still be around when everyone in this thread is dead and buried.
Well, let’s be fair, the gizmos have advanced hugely just in the last five years and unless you make a point of reading trade magazines (and maybe even then), you can still be surprised and impressed when you learn about the features of new device.
Or maybe you just live among the Amish. Either way.
“Please navigate your e-hymnals to hymn number 41, and sing along with the choir:.
Amazing Grace
How sweet the sound…”
Some clases of books will be very resistant to e-ifying.
E-books have too many negatives and too few positives compared to paper books (w.r.t. reading for pleasure, not research, in the area of research I personally rely on electronic forms much more).
Most of the pros and cons have been listed already so I won’t rehash them, but the one factor that would push e-books on us is if they could be produced for less money than a paper book, in which case the publishers would of course push the technology regardless of pros and cons.
It’s not about “cite”; it’s about “sight”.
Have you *seen * the new PDAs, like the iPAQ hx4700? Can you see any jagged edges in the text? The pixel density is substantially higher than that of most monitors.
Just to chime in as someone who’s almost completely replaced paper books with ebooks for reading for pleasure. It’s one of those things which you can’t imagine doing without doing it and can’t imagine doing without once you’ve done it. It’s really a whole lifestyle change.
First of all, you literally have your entire library in your pocket. People couldn’t imagine 40gb of music when the first ipods came out, after all, thats a significant fraction of a years worth of music on one device, yet people jumped on them, not because they expect to listen to every song, but because they like having that level of control over their music choices.
Secondly, you find time to read in the 5 minute segments of the day that were previously wasted. I cannot emphasize how much more reading I get done this way, waiting for a bus, waiting for a friend, hell, even when I’m waiting for my computer to boot up. A PDA is on me every single hour of the day and I takes 1/2 a second to turn on. When I used to carry books around, they were always in my backpack and took about a minute to find where I was at.
Third, you can read in bed. I’ve not found a single paper book greater than 200 pages long which allowed me to read in bed comfortably. You end up having to support the weight of the book in mid-air 1/2 the time. A PDA allows me to read in a whole new number of positions which for paper books, are impossible.
Fourth, you don’t have to turn the page, autoscroll is a blessing because I can be doing other stuff while reading. I usually take my PDA with me when brushing my teeth for example, autoscroll lets me brush and read at the same time.
Fifth, it allows you to read away from home base. I went on a 3 week jaunt of europe and had my entire library in my pocket at the time. I took 2, 600 page paper books as well for emergency situations and finished those on the first week there which means I would have needed to lug around about 15 paper books to be able to equal my ebook. And I would have needed to be psychic to figure out what I was in the mood for reading. As it was, I tried to keep read books in keeping with the theme of the place I was visiting.
Heh. Actually, several people in our congregation–including my own dad–do this. Our church’s hymnal is up for free download, along with all the scriptures and the commentaries used in classes. Me, I prefer the paper hymnal.
Strange cross-posting, Shalmanese.
I, too, went on a trip and took along several e-books. I experienced all the same advantages you did.
However, the screen is small compared to a printed book so less text can be viewed at one time, and (obvious flaw) you can’t view pages from two e-books at the same time.
Reading an e-book on a Tablet PC is much nicer, except I find the computer to be too heavy and clumsy, although, if you’re going to be using your computer for other things anyway, then it’s not as much of a pain.
Still not there yet. But not 50 years in the future either.
And of course other churches replace frequent use of hymnals with overhead projectors, powerpoint presentations (usually involving just the words) or printing the words in the bulliten. While the e-hymnal may be unlikely, I think the likelihood exists that future editions of the United Methodist Hymnal (to pick on one) may sell fewer editions, because many churches already find that they use them too seldom to justify replacing them.
On the whole, I can’t see wholesale replacement of books by electronic formats. Admittedly, people, even those better qualified than I to predict, have traditionally been bad at predicting major paradigm shifts.
E-books may well make up part of the market- and probably a larger part than I’m prepared to give them credit for, especially if someone figures out how to solve the browsing problem.
e-reference books are likely to be popular because they are often easier to use (or easier to access from home) than traditional reference books- and people assume that they are more up-to-date than print materials.
Indexes and Abstracts are much easier to access online.
e-journals are easier to store and access-though issues of copyright, ownership and access to backfiles (and price) are not going to go away.
Paper (and microfilm) are much easier to guarentee that they will be there in the future than anything electronic.
Yes, books will mostly be replaced. Some will be left because they are attractive, retro objects.
In 200 years, machines will be built into the very walls that can project any text we like into the air. Voice-recognition technology and AI will be able to adjust the text to any configuration you desire.
For example, you could just lie in bed while a 2’ x 3’ screen appeared a comfortable distance before your eyes presenting to you any text you desire.
Books are on media that can survive and be used with little adaptation, i.e. an aide for interpretation, and can survive many environmental extremes. I have some 8-tracks and albums with really good music on them but cannot listen to them, I don’t have the technology. I have some 5.25 disks with good information on them, even a book that I started writing 20+ years ago, it is all lost to me. Books will endure because they are durable. In my minds eye I can see some anthropologist in the future, maybe even only a few hundred years from now, wondering what important facts exist on the box of 3.5’s he has found.
Electronic media is convenient, fast, and easy, but its technology becomes quickly outdated and is often rendered useless. Also electronic media is easily altered. As a civil engineering student I am interested, if a survey conducted with a data collector and drawn with a CAD and the same survey done on paper with notes and a plat drawn by hand were compared which would stand up in a court of law.
Books will endure because books are durable!!!