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Originally Posted by ahammer
that is what I ment when I said the way of the scoll they where somthing that where only on them for a while but after 10-20 year I dont think that they will be putting things out in book form for the most part..did not know that there where laws saying that you have to sell in that area so there maybe a area where it does not happen.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ahammer
lot lower prices in about 5-8 years. based on moore's law.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by desertgrandma
Please. There are people who can't even afford to eat.
They aren't gonna care about "a lot lower prices".
There will always be a market for paper books.
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You're both right with those points but there are already changes of state to both situations.
The reading devices so far are objects of luxury and those building them want them to stay so. It would take a democratic type of movement to change that. This movement can not start because the portable computer does the job better than the reader; for instance you can't get magazines on readers yet.
And then again, the portable computer and wireless internet are opening poor regions to education that could not so far have teachers, schools and writing paper. The same way villages without phonelines have cellular booms.
Readers, so far, are way out of the education spheres, the ones that promote democratic movements.
Some books, like art books, can only be had "printed to paper".
And then you need power sources to use the computers and the ways to access books for readers. In the last ice storms when power was out even portable units soon became unusable. You can make an analogy by comparing the relationship between reader and paper to an electric furnace and a wood stove. Someone predicted after the wars that electric and oil burning furnaces would replace all wood burning stoves. But guess what? They're selling and installing more woodstoves than ever.
Society is always searching for the "One and only" solution to every problem. Energy wise, what did that bring? That 'one' solution, oil, (pun intended) we now find is killing the planet. So what are we then to do? We go to multiple sources of clean energy. Not one but many.
Text wise, the same it should be. Books, papers, magazines, educational printed books and software, ebooks, emags and all we have now. Not one media but all mediae. All types of distribution of the written text should be used. The best way for each application is still in the air.
Oh, and to those that would say that books kill forests I'd say stop wiping your butts! The biggest draw on our forests is the wood pallet crate, and the wrapping and commodity papers.
