Quote:
Originally Posted by brecklundin
Thanks for that...it has been on my mind for quite a while.
....
Book readers are a special breed of device, at least in my eyes. They are replacing a very reliable and long lived platform, the printed book/word. The infrastructure is very efficient and a book will last your entire lifetime if properly, or heck, even if improperly cared for. We buy books fully expecting them to live forever, at least as far as it will matter to us. I know I don't buy a book expecting it to be unreadable in a year or two or even twenty.
And to be honest, I am not certain there is a net environmental gain in the production of reader devices. People often overlook the true "cost" of building these synthetic devices. The toxic chemicals used are awful with toxicity lifespans in terms of centuries in many instances. And if the toxic byproducts are properly destroyed/detox'd there is energy involved which usually exceeds the energy to produce the devices/components themselves.
Books, however can be produced with a fairly well known and managed environmental footprint. Sure there are also toxic or environmentally damaging by products from production of paper and those too need to be dealt with properly.
....
|
Excellent analysis.
Personally, if liseuses started supporting (and offering) a sufficiently wide variety of books, with professional typography and the devices themselves had strong durability and a life-expectancy (perhaps with reasonably priced annual or bi-/triennial servicing that can be performed even by third party servicemen/shops), I would have no qualms about paying paperback prices for eBooks.
- Ahi