The Future of Print

[QuantumIguana]

I don't think I've met anyone who prefers VHS over DVD, the advantages are just too overwhelming. It's not just the picture quality, but the ease of access to the content. With VHS, you can only fast forward or reverse, but with DVD you much more powerful means to navigate through the content. There are some people who will still watch VHS tapes, but that's mostly because the picture quality isn't important to them, and they are happy to only pay 50 cents for a movie.

VHS does have one advantage over DVD, and that is that you can record to it, but that has nothing to do with watching prerecorded movies.

On the other hand, there ARE people who prefer paper books over e-books, and it's not just old fogeys. New technology only elimintes the old when the new technology's advantages are overwhelming and when the two cannot coexist. Paper books do have certain advantages. Forget to plug in the e-reader, and you're not going to be reading until you can get it charged up. The paper book doesn't need charging. I keep a couple paper books in my trunk, just in case.

[twowheels]

VHS has another advantage over DVD... it retains your last location. Yes, DVD does too, IF you put it in the same player, IF you haven't (in the interim) played more DVDs than your DVD player remembers, and IF ... with VHS you could take a movie half way through and then decide to finish it upstairs and pick up right where you left off.

That said, that's such a small advantage that it is overwhelmed by the rest, and this advantage is now lost to online streaming, which can do it even better.

[Phogg]

I have a series of poetry anthologies from Penhaligon's Press.
They are in box slipcovers and printed on paper that is almost cardstock.
After nearly 25 years, there is still a remaining scent of the perfume they were impregnated with.



Ebooks can't do scents yet. For poetry, the perfume is an enhancement.

[tompe]

Another advantage with VHS is that with the right player you can watch things in double speed with sound. I have not found a DVD player that could do that.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by tompe

Another advantage with VHS is that with the right player you can watch things in double speed with sound. I have not found a DVD player that could do that.

Some software players can do that... I believe that VLC can.

[crich70]

My point was that one form of media often pushes another form out of existence or at least into a small corner market. Most people either download their own music or buy CD's now rather than records for example, though I understand there are still some stores around that specialize in old records.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But DVD was clearly an improvement over VHS. The DVD gives better picture quality, lasts longer, takes up less space (think of the difference between a complete TV series on tape and on DVDs!) Only real reason for VHS now is that some VHS material hasn't been released on DVD.

An e-book, though, is not a clear-cut winner over a physical book. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

You make some good points Catlady, but some of them might be seen as pretty subjective. Any viewpoint on any topic is likely to have an element of bias involved I think because people have a bias for or against whatever is under discussion. I may think that Obama is the best President we've ever had for example while someone else might think he's among the worst we've had in office. Alec Guinness said it well in The Empire Strikes Back, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view."

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by crich70

You make some good points Catlady, but some of them might be seen as pretty subjective. Any viewpoint on any topic is likely to have an element of bias involved I think because people have a bias for or against whatever is under discussion. I may think that Obama is the best President we've ever had for example while someone else might think he's among the worst we've had in office. Alec Guinness said it well in The Empire Strikes Back, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view."

When you're talking about VHS or DVD, the output is the same--moving pictures on a TV screen. I think it is entirely possible to say objectively that the pictures on the screen look better when the source is a commercial DVD rather than the comparable commercial VHS. It's also objectively true that tape degrades more quickly than shiny discs and that DVDs take up less storage space. These are not opinions.

The problem with trying to make an analogy with books is that words on a page and words on a screen are vastly different. You can look at a TV screen and perhaps not be immediately sure if the movie playing is from a DVD or a tape, but you can't possibly mistake a physical book for an e-book or vice versa. The physical book has some advantages, the e-book has some advantages. These are indeed subjective, which is why it's hard to imagine e-books ever supplanting physical books.

[Harper Kingsley]

Originally Posted by Phogg

I have a series of poetry anthologies from Penhaligon's Press.
They are in box slipcovers and printed on paper that is almost cardstock.
After nearly 25 years, there is still a remaining scent of the perfume they were impregnated with.



Ebooks can't do scents yet. For poetry, the perfume is an enhancement.

Oh, those are nice

[DarkScribe]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I do admit that i find it exceedingly difficult to read in the dark.

I wouldn't admit to such a thing, people would look at me strangely.

Well, you could either train your cat to read aloud to you or buy candles and go really retro. Trade up to a Nook Glow? Wait for Amazon to release the Kindle glow?

I have a portable solar battery charger that will charge all of my devices when I am out sailing or kayaking in the bush. Even without access to power I can still function.

There is another big reason why old technologies are hard to dump: cost.

VHS hung around for a long time because of the expense of replacing both equipment and media. When people started dumping VHS big time, video libraries suddenly became affordable to people who couldn't afford it before.

Books are facing the same problem, only a few hundred years worse. It is taking tremendous efforts and the vast finances of major corporations and universities to digitize existing libraries. Even once that's done, libraries and individuals have huge investments in books that can't be replaced inexpensively (because copyright). Oh, and print books are still orders of magnitude cheaper than ereaders. You can easily pick up 50 to 200 books for the price of a low end ereader. An ereader that will cost you even more money if you want to buy books, because books don't exactly grow on trees in the digital era.

[Kumabjorn]

They lurk in copper mines.

[StoryEnthusiast]

I think print will always remain -- though as a small segment.

[crich70]

It doesn't help when a site goes for quantity over quality either. I found a copy of "The Pirate" by Sir Walter Scott over at Internet Archive (just about the only place I could find it) and I had to go through it top to bottom to correct all the scanning artifacts and broken sentences that littered the book's text. I might still have missed some for all I can be sure. They apparently don't take the time to proofread what they scan in, just scan and move on to the next book. At least Project Gutenberg takes some pains to make sure their ebooks are fairly clean of such mistakes, though I imagine some do still creep in even there.

[xg4bx]

silly idea time. in the future when e-ink is so cheap to produce that its near disposable, i think "print" books would make a return. individually sold physical ebooks. cover art, all that, but when you open it up there are 2 e-ink screens, both on the left and right. it gives the sensation of a book, the heft of a book,and the display/shelving ability of a book, only its e-ink and it only contains that book.

i think the digitalization of everything is still a fresh, new idea and everybody is gung ho for it. however there will always be "retronauts" who will yearn to experience what their parents and grandparents did, to the best of their ability. we even see minor forms of it now with kids buying vinyl albums, retro labeling on packages, fashion, etc. digitalization doesn't mean we can't have "nice things" and not everything goes the way of the dodo, sometimes its just updated with modern technology. i think there will always be some form of physical books, just not necessarily paper.

its 5am and i'm in "need sleep" bizarro world so bear with me .