If by some feat of silver tonguery a young fellow has persuaded a beauteous lecturer in philosophy to return to his place following a dinner date, is it possible to replicate the time-tested practice of artfully punctuating his living space with copies of Kant, Sartre, Spinoza and Montaigne with the Kindle..with e-books...? I fancy not. Until such time...
I agree 1000% You can't smell an old, e-book. Can't find them in the library or bookshelf. They require batteries and cords. Can't feel the dustjacket. Most don't loan their e-books to friends. If you lose your Kindle, you've lost serious pocket change--misplace a book you're out a few bucks from a 2nd-hand store. You can't get autographs on an e-book. I haven't seen anyone lining their e-books on e-book shelves at home. E-books will not stand the test of time, real books already have!
I doubt this will prove to be true. Unless society experiences some sort of regression in level of technology, I expect eBooks are here to stay.
You can't be serious?? Technology outdates itself as quick as I finish this post. Do you still own an Atari or Nintendo 64?? Ever tried playing a PS1 game on a PS3?? The e-book is nothing more than a fad. I'll stick to real books.
Simmer down before you strain something. You're talking about specific formats. I'm not. Nintendo 64 or PS1 may be out of date, but video games in general are still going strong. Likewise, my comments was about eBooks generally, not any specific format of them.
Ok, I agree the e-book idea will be around, but I don't feel it will ever make the printed page obsolete--not in my lifetime anyway.
I doubt it will either. I still like traditional books better. But I now have over 1500 of them in my home, and given the cost of an expansion to the structure, the Kindle has proven to be a handy way to store a few more
It's interesting how video games and movies are aiming to become more realistic in comparison to the lived experience. Obviously, a book that is similar to a lived experience is either a really well written book, or a movie. So if technology is going to continue this realism trend, will it end up trying to use ebooks to recreate the experience of reading an actual book? Holographic books, maybe? Hmmm. (It's 3:30am, so while this makes perfect sense to me, it may come across as sleep deprived lunacy. If that is the case, feel free to totally ignore me )
:At 6pm on my side of the world, it makes no sense at all. Novels are the written word. And the words will always be a vehicle to conjure images in your mind. The moment those images occur somewhere else they're not novels anymore. PS: I'll try reading your post at 3:30am to see if it makes any more sense.
Plenty of e-readers are working on screens that have the same sort of friction as paper, as well as having really realistic page-turning sounds and such. I mean, really the only difference is that an e-reader is probably slightly lighter.
Holographic books that feel like actual books? Aha! Interesting. Seems like a lot of effort has gone into replicating something that already exists, and is readily available. To each their own, I guess.
Man, you are tired. xD I mean e-readers. Not holographic ones. xD Holographic stuff freaks me out. It looks like particles, is actually photons, and doesn't make sense. It's non-sense. Nonsense. I don't get it.
Well, a holographic book would give you the experience of reading a real book. It would look like it had actual pages and stuff. I was kind of adding my own idea to what you said about ebooks, in a rambling and incoherent manner.
There is a thing called the "Cave Man Principle," which boils down to the concept that we haven't actually evolved since our prehistoric days. If this is true, then we would have the same psychological tendencies as our cave-dwelling ancestors. One tendency is the need for "Proof of the Kill." It was much more impressive to bring home a medium wild boar slumped over your shoulder than to say you nearly killed one twice that size. We need tangible evidence. Perhaps that is why a book is so appealing; we can feel the texture of the pages as we flip through them, and we can smell the glue that holds it together. It feels real to us. And because it is real, we trust it. It can get soaked in rain or get run over by a boulder, but the information stays in tact. We don't trust technological substitutes as much. If it gets wet or smashed, all of our information is lost. If our ebooks are stored on an internet database, we wonder, "Where is the information stored? What happens if I lose access to the database? What happens if Al Gore un-invents the internet?" And, overall, we still cherish a "real" experience even when we can easily have that experience synthesized. This is why amazingly realistic movies like Avatar haven't replaced live theater, or why we still play tennis while Wii Sports synthesizes this experience through video game play. This is also perhaps the reason why we empathize with Pinocchio in his quest to become "Real." Are synthetic versions of real experiences becoming increasingly more dominant? I'd say so. But it doesn't look like we're going to lose live theater or tennis courts or hardcopy books any time soon. Perhaps if we can, as Dizzy suggested, someday replicate the tangibility of a book completely, how it feels, smells, and even works (such as the simple act of turning a page), then we may lose our hardcopy versions. But my guess is that the mere fact that it isn't "real" will nag at us from the back of our minds. On a side note, this does make you wonder about books in the first place. Doesn't a novel create a synthetic experience in the reader? But perhaps it is only a substitute for experiences we wouldn't have on our own. If I could meet aliens from Alpha Centauri or deliver The One Ring to Mt. Doom just as easily and safely as I could turn a page, I suppose I would.
I'm hardcore, so I purchase the real thing and strain my eyes like the pioneers used to. Btw, did pioneers even read books? In all seriousness, I'm sticking with real books. I don't care for special screen ink nor do I care that it's "lighter". I don't care if the e-book is more portable nor do I care that it's cheaper. I'm incredibly hostile towards them, especially as a writer. I can see people downloading any book that I publish for a few bucks when I can get much more. Besides, I don't trust technology. Next thing I know I drop the thing and have to go get a new one. Forget that. If I drop a book, it won't freaking smash to pieces or glitch out like everything else does around me. Books have been around forever and I'm a traditionalist. I could hope that this ebook craze goes away, but I know that it's just gonna stick around like reality TV, so I might as well get used to it. I'm just offended that people are willing to sit down and just quickly download something rather than take a trip to the bookstore. The experience of grabbing a book, reading the jacket, and feeling its texture on my fingertips, at times, makes up for even a bad book. I remember while I was in a bookstore with some friends, I met my old elementary school friend and we'd caught up with a lot of things. Personally, ebooks is a lazier, cheaper way out. It's hardly the real thing and I wouldn't care if they put in the sound effects of turning a page or even the feel of turning the page, or simulated its heaviness or whatever. Ebooks just need to fade out. We're getting too advanced for our own goods, in my opinion. On a sidenote, I love Nintendo 64 games. I still have some left from my childood and I always play them. I always get excited whenever people mention it because I feel less alone when it comes to retro games. Everyone seems to just be into the modern online shooters like COD or Battlefield now, so when if ever I mention Mario, I'm bound to be called a casual gamer as opposed to the "hardcore" party. Don't even get me started on the graphic/console wars. People have forgotten their roots. Everyone knows Nintendo is where it was, is, and always will be at.
Real books are very important to me; they're almost like a living thing. They have leaves like a tree; a spine like us. Words, ink like blood. When you turn the page and hear that little whisper; the book is breathing. You can love a book, write notes in the margins, highlight your favourite bits, leave old postcards and bookmarks within the pages, press flowers- share it with your friends. For me, I need the physical thing in my hands, I need to smell the new paper scent of books; or the old one of paper-mould. Some of my books are so well-read their spines are all bent and creased; corners bent and the covers peeling- dog eared and all. You can tell when a book is well-loved. I just don't think it's the same with e-books. You can't do any of the above with them. See, I have hundreds of books at home; which, admittedly take up most of the space in my bedroom but I feel I need to keep them so I can pass them on to my children. It upsets me to think that one day we might lose our interaction with the physical book entirely; though if this happens I hope it's long after my old bones have been blown as ashes to the wind.
Quite apt. Mind you, having looked at Amazon, on average the Kindle/e-book version tends to be slightly more expensive than the hardcopy. Probably not true for everything but at least I can go: 'Hah! You keep your technology, and I'll go buy a cookie with the 0.40 I saved by buying a real book' *congradulates self for being old-skool and flounces away quoting Shakespeare*
Actually probably not true for most things. Most of the time the electronic version is cheaper. I mean it has to be. It costs nothing to send a few kilobytes to a kindle, but printing a 400 page book has a considerable expense.
I have a lot of classics on my Kindle. And there are services that push articles and other content to your device. That's always nice.
Maybe you could just have a reproduction of Jeremy Bentham's severed head in your living room. That would be a conversation starter.
I got a kindle for my birthday in March, and I LOVE it, I find I read a lot faster on it than I do with a traditional paperback, and it doesn't hurt my eyes like I thought it would.
