Letters to the Editor
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I'm with Opus
There ain't nothing like a book.
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Actually...
...the current generations of readers aren't painfully bright, are quite legible, and have a "page turn" time roughly that of a middle-aged cartoonist. The business model still sucks though. Then again, so does publishing, so what exactly are we being nostalgic about again?
When they get the money end of the e-book right I'm looking forward to ditching many, many shelves of paperbacks, which don't exactly add gravitas to a room, and just keeping some artistically bound hardbacks for show. And I will have control of my space again.
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can't this same cartoon be made about any tech advance?
Ahh, the warm glow of a candle...
The soothing drip, drip from the ice box...
The comforting sizzle of fat burning out of the marrow of a mammoth femur...
Ahh, the good ole' days!
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I use a whale oil lantern
To read my parchments.
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Whatever
Whatever the method or technology Opus uses to read, I appreciate his choice of material. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my absolute favorites.
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In case anybody actually wants to know
I hate to be the pedantic tech geek, but e-book readers use reflected light, just like ordinary paper. They don't emit light. That's actually kind of the point.
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APPLAUSE
Thank you, BB. You totally get it.
To the techies carping about this comic: the light is not finally the point. There's more to a book than just the print. Books are warm and intimate, as opposed to the cold plastic of a computer. You can handle them, turning each page with your fingers. You can write notes in the margins. You can lend them to friends. Each one has a physical identity. Saying it's the same is like saying that being in a chatroom is the same as getting together for conversation over a pizza - no way.
Besides, e-book readers may be fine - until you lose them, or they get stolen. Then not only have you lost the device, you've lost every book you had in it, along with all the money you spent on them. If I leave a book behind at a restaurant or wherever, I only lose that one book.
See, sometimes there are advantages to doing things the old way.
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And...
with a book, you can mark a spot you want to come back to, mark the end notes all without random scrolling that wastes more time than going to what you have marked already, in a real book.
A book is both a tactile and a visual experience. It is not ephemeral electrons jiggling on a screen so long as you have power. Part of what I love about a book it the ever so slightly raised printed text beneath my fingers. Sorry, I'll stay with real books.
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Futurama never to arrive.
Whatever happened to the paperless office?
or the flying car in every garage?
Dick Tracy watches, anyone?
New stuff gets added to the old, the old doesn't go away.
Steve is just another techno-huckster.
< training to be more be-bop-o >
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Durability
The main point is the social aspect of the book. However, there is another point. The printed book will last a thousand years or much more. Electronic text is convenient but is of questionable durability. Will it last a century ? Maybe. A Blue Amberol is an Edison cylinder record. The ones I own have lasted nearly a century. Tapes and CDs may last that long but not much more.
BlueAmberol.
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at least it addresses the issues
Movies are the literary salvation, which is not to make light of the accomplishments of the authors who have come and gone since Gutenberg. If anyone bothered to read McLuhan anymore, they would get it in spades. The ebook is like an electronic buggywhip. The iphone is a leash, which keeps you constantly in touch with your master. Most technology should be avoided, especially high definition television, which destroys the iconic quality and depth involvement of early television. Personally I blame high def TV for the war in Iraq, and the red state blue state conflict which is principally the divide between cable tv, (rural america) and internet connectivity, the coastal urban areas.
Its certain that ebooks will change the way people read, it's just not certain yet how. And of course the ebooks may soon merge with graphic novels, which makes more sense.
This comic strip is barely scratching the possiblities, but at least it addresses the issues.
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Books Aren't Going Anywhere
Books will never go the way of candles and ice boxes, as the above reader suggests. While you can wax romantic about these anachronisms, their replacement technologies were stark improvements. What great benefit do I get from switching to an E-reader, another costly device I can feel anxious about possibly losing? (You know, the "oh shit, where's my Ipod?" feeling; I'm already on my third one)
I'm not sure having all your books with you at once has the same allure as with music: I don't find myself just having to read that particular passage of Dickens the way I need a quick listen to a song in order to expurgate it from my head. It would be convenient to quickly order a book online and then have it in front of me in minutes, but, once again, this is a small convenience not worth the disadvantages: a book will never leave me hanging because of a dead battery, for example, or malfunction because of spilt coffee or some beach sand.
The only true advantage to an E-Reader, as far as I can tell, is considerable, but not applicable to those who read for pleasure. It would have been a boon to have all my books needed for research during my college years stored neatly in a small device. But this is assuming that the device allowed notation and, of course, I didn't lose it.
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Let your lud light shine
Eh, Luddites, the lot of you :)
Actually this cartoon was great. Kind of like the old Bloom County days, great drawings, nice pacing.
The idea though is really beyond silly.
Aristotle thought that books were a bad move. He preached that real knowledge was only what you could memorize and recount.
Now, there are theories even now about the power of the spoken word and memorized stories in pre-literate societies, and so on, but I ask this: Who among us wishes that Ari had won the day and prevented books from becoming widely accepted?
None of the commenters here, apparently. Singing the praises of books, left and right. And with good reason! These new-fangled book things that Aristotle didn't like were early external storage devices, essentially, allowing us to greatly expand the knowledge at our disposal. You couldn't access it all in your own head, but you could by simply picking one of these new thingamabobs up and reading it.
Curling up with a warm paper-based book will always be different from any e-reading thingy, of course. You can just keep going back though, as someone snarked earlier, and read scrolls in bed, or insist that everything be carved in stone. On real stones. Librarians would have to be big beefy weight lifters, of course, but so what?
The one thing that's truly silly in the cartoon is "the dismal future of reading". This decline of reading myth is, well, myth. The electronic age has only increased reading. contrary to common wisdom.
And now, off to put this in cuneiform, so then I can box up and send the tablets to Salon.
When they're dry.
You should be reading them in a couple of weeks, tops.