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Old 08-13-2003, 03:09 AM   #1
Colin Dunstan
Is papyrophobic!
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Talking Rant against eBooks and how we counter it

Abram Katz from the Pakistan Daily Times writes:

Quote:
The year is sometime in the 2020’s, and an amazing discovery has been made. Basically, people of the future have rediscovered paper. The Egyptians, as you may recall, invented paper, around 4,000 years before the common era.

They wove strands of papyrus into mats and then pounded the material until it was thin and flat. In 105, our years, a Chinese courtier took a mixture of bark, rags and water, and beat it to a pulp.

Then he squeezed the water out of the stuff, squashed it flat, and let it dry in the sun.

Paper finally settled in Europe in about 1000, when Arabs built a paper mill in Spain. In 1680, the Spanish built a paper mill in Mexico. Paper must have originally been a luxury affordable only to the wealthy, who were also probably among the few who knew written language.

Now the average person in the United States goes through almost 800 pounds of paper a year, including paper packages, paper plates, paper towels, toilet paper, paper cups, notebook paper, office paper, stationery, periodicals and books.

Many people thought the computer would spell the end of paper, but it turned out that computers beget printers, and printers gobble up paper and spit it out. Modern offices actually use more paper, not less. Paper was a smashing success. Yale has a distinguished rare book library because high-quality paper can last for centuries. The modern reader of English could, with a little difficulty, read plays written by William Shakespeare and published about 400 years ago.

Right at the moment, the future of books is in doubt. Now that almost everyone in North America and Western Europe has access to a computer and the Internet, books are beginning to seem superfluous. Unlike paper, information stored in a computer cannot be used up. An inexhaustible supply of ephemeral signals means no demand for paper.

Minus the book, the information continues to exist in a disembodied state, assuming that someone converts the print into a digital file. It’s not that there’s an infinite stock of compact disks. The information itself is eternal. (Presumably.)

Distributing information over the World Wide Web at little or practically no cost has not proven to be a cultural panacea, however. You can’t own 1’s and 0’s, which means there’s no way to collect royalties on the 1’s and 0’s that you wrote or recorded. This makes artists like Lars Ulrich, drummer of Metallica, angry. Ulrich believes that whoever it is that likes Metallica should purchase Metallica disks for $15 instead of downloading the songs for free. Of course, free isn’t really free. “Free” here means putting aside the cost of the computer, the cost of Internet access, and the cost of electricity. Not to mention the desk that the computer is on and a chair. And a place to put the desk, chair and computer.

So actually, you’re not getting anything for free. It’s just that the owner of the intellectual property is nowhere in the loop. Companies that make computers, software, modems, and cables and provide Internet service, make whatever profit there is to be made at poor Lars Ulrich’s expense.

Anyway, after everyone is forced to buy e-books and has no choice but to depend on the Internet Service Provider and possibly a computer, information becomes less and less accessible. Now you really will have to purchase a newer computer every six months.

Then one day, someone realizes that paper is cheap, relatively durable and is portable. It can be folded and placed in a pocket. It can be written on and erased over and over. And it’s so cheap; once you’re done with one piece, you can just recycle it. Of course, by then, that special someone will have had to look up “paper” on the Internet.
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