Letters to the Editor
Bill Owen
Published Letters: 508 Editor's Choice: 6
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Education, the environment, and e books
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Someone said here that books and e books can co-exist, and they will. TV did not destroy radio, and e books will not destroy the paper book. They will however largely supplant them, they will do this whether or not people "prefer" paper. Seriously, think about it, get past your selfishness - our destruction of millions of hectares of forest simply to print a book, newspaper or magazine is unsustainable. Unsustainable means just that, at some point the trees will be gone. One edition of the New York Times, Sunday Edition kills 75,000 trees. It takes 3 barrels of oil and 7,000 gallons of water to process one ton of wood into paper. Does any of this bother you? Does it make you think you consider an e book or are you too busy driving your hummer over small animals?
Yes, the Kindle is horribly ugly, I don't know what they were thinking of, but they will get better. Content is what is important here, not format. Do you really care whether the words are on paper or on a screen? Really? Why?
There are so many other advantages to an e book, and many have been mentioned here, so apologies if I repeat. An e book allows you make the text any size or font you like, this is amazing for someone who needs glasses. With an e book you can look up unfamiliar terms or words, you can search the text to refresh your memory on a character who just popped up after 200 pages (very useful for War and Peace). Pictures or images will be free to add, so look for more and better illustrations, animations and video. With an e book there is no need for bookmarks, it just remembers where you are, and yes, there is or there will be many ways to add notes, underline favourite passages et al. As for losing it, give me a break - there are such things as back ups. I could go on...
Aside from saving millions of trees a year, e book will revolutionize education. In Korea they are already issuing students with Fujitsu note pads, filled with all their textbooks. Textbooks which are much cheaper and always up-to-date! Students will benefit from the searchable text, the illustrative videos and animations et al. No more 50 lb book bags either, killing all those backs.
All the arguments I have heard boil down to selfish people saying, I don't give a rat's ass about the environment, I want my book, I want my habit, I don't care about you or society. The good news, is that like the quaint film cameras of the last century, this tech is so clearly superior that in ten years, you won't be able to buy a book, not a new one anyway. Oh there will be a few special editions for the hard core Luddites, and there will always be a place for large format coffee books and the like, but the paper book, especially those cheap annoying paperbacks, will no longer exist except in museums. And that is clearly, a good thing.
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@Dr. Locrian
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wanted to shake people out of their complacency and for that one needs to be agressive. In my opinion the amount of paper we use in the west is truly obscene. Paper and it's production is one of the major culprits in environmental destruction. The people that use paper unthinkingly need to think and educate themselves. The ones who understand the problem, but go on to say, "so what, I don't care, I want my paper and screw you" need to understand that are part of the problem and should be ashamed of themselves. So I label them as I see them.
Your point about computers and the environment is a good one and well taken. My point is that as bad as computers are, the universal adoption of e books would be a net gain - 400 grams of plastic every few years versus the literally hundreds if not thousands of pounds of dead trees that people who still use paper throw out. And as I pointed out in my post, it is not just the paper, it's the production, transportation, storage and finally, the disposal of all that waste, that poses such a terrible problem for us all.
If someone agrees that paper is a huge environmental problem and then goes on to effectively say, "I don't care, I like my paper, if it is a problem, so what?" This to me is a good description of a "selfish" person. I call em like I see em. That will offend some people, but from my point of view they (as in knowing, willful polluters) are not just offending me, they are defecating on me, themselves and future generations. I don't like people like that. Sorry.