What? No 'smell of books'? - Page 3

Alisa · 02-09-2009, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

so you are saying that within 10-20 years, everyone in the world will have access to e-book readers?

Hows that gonna happen?

That leads me to a bit of a scary thought. If paper books become rarer, and hence more expensive due to the low volume, that could create a real problem in the developing world where poor people might have even less access to books than they do now. I could see a fairly long transition time between when most people in wealthier countries have access to ebooks and the time when folks in poor nations would be able to afford devices and computers that are cheap by our standards. Hopefully programs like OLPC will help that.

Justy · 02-09-2009, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alisa

That leads me to a bit of a scary thought. If paper books become rarer, and hence more expensive due to the low volume, that could create a real problem in the developing world where poor people might have even less access to books than they do now. I could see a fairly long transition time between when most people in wealthier countries have access to ebooks and the time when folks in poor nations would be able to afford devices and computers that are cheap by our standards. Hopefully programs like OLPC will help that.

I can see a requirement for Solar Powered eBook Readers to meet that need. Then they could download PG eBooks using their OLPC or equivalent.

desertgrandma · 02-09-2009, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ahammer

lot lower prices in about 5-8 years. based on moore's law.

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.

yvanleterrible · 02-09-2009, 03:34 PM

Quote:

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ahammer

lot lower prices in about 5-8 years. based on moore's law.

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.

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.

Phogg · 02-09-2009, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Readers, so far, are way out of the education spheres, the ones that promote democratic movements.

That is entirely moot.

At my son's school, textbooks are moving to an electronic format anyway (to be read on laptops). Since textbooks are leaving the paper realm for the electronic realm already, it doesn't really matter that there are not yet dedicated readers in use at the school.

The students will get in the habit of thinking of writing as just an electronic file anyway.

yvanleterrible · 02-09-2009, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phogg

That is entirely moot.

At my son's school, textbooks are moving to an electronic format anyway (to be read on laptops). Since textbooks are leaving the paper realm for the electronic realm already, it doesn't really matter that there are not yet dedicated readers in use at the school.

The students will get in the habit of thinking of writing as just an electronic file anyway.

You are very right in assuming so. But I would point out though that we are still a far cry from a democratic movement for now. To that regard, there are still numerous schools whose kids have no access to computers.

yvanleterrible · 02-09-2009, 04:47 PM

What bugs me the most about it all is not who's going to win, book or ebook, but the fact that some generation, sometime, will never learn calligraphy.

Calligraphy is the first way of learning the fine motricity skills that will tell one if (s)he's an artist, an artisan or a surgeon for that matter. I know my drawing skills come directly from my first realisations I could manipulate a tool, in this case a pencil. Further down the road I took to the gouge and I love carving and it is not very different from drawing.

Who cares about handskills nowadays anyway...

Ecarving? Hmmm! I guess they call it CNC programming now.

delphidb96 · 02-09-2009, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

What bugs me the most about it all is not who's going to win, book or ebook, but the fact that some generation, sometime, will never learn calligraphy.

Calligraphy is the first way of learning the fine motricity skills that will tell one if (s)he's an artist, an artisan or a surgeon for that matter. I know my drawing skills come directly from my first realisations I could manipulate a tool, in this case a pencil. Further down the road I took to the gouge and I love carving and it is not very different from drawing.

Who cares about handskills nowadays anyway...

Ecarving? Hmmm! I guess they call it CNC programming now.

"Calligraphy" or "Penmanship". AKA, torture as defined by the Geneva Convention. Yep. I'm *ALL* in favor of torturing every single future generation of rugrats. Gives them a sense of futility and failure. (Having seen many artists who can't even write the sentence "A Quick Brown Fox..." in a legible fashion, I'm gonna have to dispute the artist, artisan, surgeon concept.

Derek

Phogg · 02-09-2009, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by delphidb96

"Calligraphy" or "Penmanship". AKA, torture as defined by the Geneva Convention. Yep. I'm *ALL* in favor of torturing every single future generation of rugrats. Gives them a sense of futility and failure. (Having seen many artists who can't even write the sentence "A Quick Brown Fox..." in a legible fashion, I'm gonna have to dispute the artist, artisan, surgeon concept.

Derek

Surgeon's who can write?
Hasn't that been determined to be a genetic impossibility?

yvanleterrible · 02-09-2009, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by delphidb96

"Calligraphy" or "Penmanship". AKA, torture as defined by the Geneva Convention. Yep. I'm *ALL* in favor of torturing every single future generation of rugrats. Gives them a sense of futility and failure. (Having seen many artists who can't even write the sentence "A Quick Brown Fox..." in a legible fashion, I'm gonna have to dispute the artist, artisan, surgeon concept.

Derek

Any skill training can be viewed as torture. That definition is all set by the teacher. (You seem to have met terrible ones) Hey, graphic arts are not the only ones. Music, martial arts, woodworking. Every skill is built by a repetition of a movement towards a concious perfection. There is no mastery without it. How about writing coherently? Could one become a genious at it without practicing?

delphidb96 · 02-09-2009, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Any skill training can be viewed as torture. That definition is all set by the teacher. (You seem to have met terrible ones) Hey, graphic arts are not the only ones. Music, martial arts, woodworking. Every skill is built by a repetition of a movement towards a concious perfection. There is no mastery without it. How about writing coherently? Could one become a genious at it without practicing?

"Genious"ly not?

Derek

Fledchen · 02-09-2009, 07:18 PM

I think it's a mistake to assume that the ability to draw characters with a stylus is the same as being able to write--that is, to express oneself using using visual or tactile symbols that represent thoughts. I have an acquaintance who can neither speak nor hold a pen, but has written some of the most moving and thought-provoking things I have ever read. It's as irritating as people who claim that reading and writing braille isn't really reading or writing.

yvanleterrible · 02-10-2009, 08:05 PM

Woah! woah! I wasn't thinking of 'writing' there in that post. I was, if you read it again, pointing that the use of a pen builds the skills of a burgeoning graphic artist. All references to different arts point to the necessity of building skill by practice. Whatever skill. In my case, calligraphy trained the motor skills, the fine eye to hand controls, to make me a fairly good carver.

Fledchen · 02-10-2009, 08:25 PM

Eek. Reading over my post again, I see that it was hostile in tone, and I regret that. I wish that I had phrased it more neutrally. Yvan, I'm sorry for snapping at you.

yvanleterrible · 02-10-2009, 08:27 PM

Apologies accepted, I knew in your case it was probably a teeny weeny oversight.

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02-09-2009, 04:47 PM	#37
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	What bugs me the most about it all is not who's going to win, book or ebook, but the fact that some generation, sometime, will never learn calligraphy. Calligraphy is the first way of learning the fine motricity skills that will tell one if (s)he's an artist, an artisan or a surgeon for that matter. I know my drawing skills come directly from my first realisations I could manipulate a tool, in this case a pencil. Further down the road I took to the gouge and I love carving and it is not very different from drawing. Who cares about handskills nowadays anyway... Ecarving? Hmmm! I guess they call it CNC programming now.

02-09-2009, 07:18 PM	#42
Fledchen Guru Posts: 663 Karma: 84658 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Minnesota, USA Device: PB360+, Sony950, VR Stream, iPod Touch, iPad	I think it's a mistake to assume that the ability to draw characters with a stylus is the same as being able to write--that is, to express oneself using using visual or tactile symbols that represent thoughts. I have an acquaintance who can neither speak nor hold a pen, but has written some of the most moving and thought-provoking things I have ever read. It's as irritating as people who claim that reading and writing braille isn't really reading or writing.

02-10-2009, 08:05 PM	#43
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	Woah! woah! I wasn't thinking of 'writing' there in that post. I was, if you read it again, pointing that the use of a pen builds the skills of a burgeoning graphic artist. All references to different arts point to the necessity of building skill by practice. Whatever skill. In my case, calligraphy trained the motor skills, the fine eye to hand controls, to make me a fairly good carver.

02-10-2009, 08:25 PM	#44
Fledchen Guru Posts: 663 Karma: 84658 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Minnesota, USA Device: PB360+, Sony950, VR Stream, iPod Touch, iPad	Eek. Reading over my post again, I see that it was hostile in tone, and I regret that. I wish that I had phrased it more neutrally. Yvan, I'm sorry for snapping at you.

02-10-2009, 08:27 PM	#45
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	Apologies accepted, I knew in your case it was probably a teeny weeny oversight.