Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society

[anamardoll]

@Redcard, that was beautiful.

[QuantumIguana]

The digital media will not last for millenia. Also, digital media tends to become obsolete.

[Rhialto]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

The digital media will not last for millenia. Also, digital media tends to become obsolete.

You missed Redcard's point. The digital media won't last millenia, but the ease of duplication means that it is trivial to transmigrate it every decade or so.

Furthermore storage is continously getting cheaper and more commodious, accelerating this trend.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by Redcard

The problem you have reading digital files a few decades old is similar to the problem we have reading books a few decades old. Materials degrade.

The real problem is, languages change. This includes computer languages, for a pretty flexible definition of "language." Media changes; there are mission records on magnetic tapes from the Apollo space program that are probably uncrecoverable because nobody has a drive that can read them any more. If they are recovered, it'll cost millions.

However, in the networked 21st century, the actual files are trivial to transfer from one computer to the next as you upgrade. I have stuff from my very first computer, back in the DOS days, on my current computer. And it all works fine, because it's in a format that has survived. Good choices have to be made. (It seems unlikely that either epub or mobi will become unreadable withint our lifetimes, since both are based on HTML.)

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

The digital media will not last for millenia. Also, digital media tends to become obsolete.

Do you think that there will be LP (vinyl) media players in 200 years? (That's analog, not digital.)

Digital preservation falls in to 2 major categories.

1. Willingness to copy to new technology. Laugh if you will, most of the "lost" data, (from places like NASA) was because nobody was willing to pay for the new media and the cost to copy. Nobody was using it, so why waste the money? True...

But technology keeps advancing and what was $10,000 in 1990 is now $.10...

2. Ability to access the data in it's native format. All that takes is either a lossless conversion program (to convert to the current format) or a reproduction program.

Data conversion programs are easy to write and simple to run. And they can be easily passed along as PD programs and used by anybody. Think Calibre, or PKZIP, or WAV to MP3 or FLAC files. (I'm ignoring DRM, a completely different issue.)

If that is insufficient, emulators can be written to execute the data using old programs. I can run under Windows XP any version of MS-DOS, all the way back to DOS 1.0, Atari 400/800, Apple II software, 68000 Mac software, AMIGA OS, Atari ST DOS, TRS-DOS, CP-M, MP-M, (and on and on). If the application software is not hardware dependent, (unless a replacement driver emulator has been written), I can run any non-DRM software for any emulator I run. (Free programs from ANTIC magazine, anyone?)

Millions of dollars? No. Virtually all free. (The Virtual PC 2004 cost $100, it's what will run any DOS back to 1.0)

But YOU must do the archiving. Nobody else is going to do it for you for certain. (Maybe common stuff, but really obscure stuff, you protect.)

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Redcard

I think what Franzen is most afraid of is that he and the "haves" of the publishing industry are losing grip on their control of what people read.

He said nothing of the kind.

He's talking about the alleged superiority of paper as a book medium, and believes that paper has a level of permanence that he believes is not available with ebooks.

Originally Posted by Redcard

when he says it's about "permanence", what he really means is " in my eyes ,THE WRONG people have the ability to change things."

No, he doesn't want anyone to change anything about a book once it's published.

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

He said nothing of the kind.

He's talking about the alleged superiority of paper as a book medium, and believes that paper has a level of permanence that he believes is not available with ebooks.



No, he doesn't want anyone to change anything about a book once it's published.

But he, as an author, has to know that the history of books SHOWS things change when publishers have control over them.

Look at it this way:

Say I write a book. Redcard's Book. And I put it out on the net, and six thousand people download it.

They share it with 2 people each, and those people share it with 2 more.

Now, 24,000 copies of Redcard's Book is out there.

Now those people share it with ten people. 240,000 copies.

Now someone decides to be a jerk, and change one of the copies. He (and everyone else) shares it with ten new unique people. 2,400,000 people now have my book.

10 of them are wrong, 2,399,990 are right. Now imagine everyone gets together to talk about my book, and someone pipes up with a quote, incorrectly, from one of the ten that are wrong? The remaining nearly 2.4 million people shout them down! We can verify Redcard's meaning, look at all these books that say this, look at these TEN that say that. Obviously the ten are in error.

Now, let's play the same thought experiment, but with a heavily paperbook centric world Mr. Franzen imagines. The 6000 people buy the book. They like it. They share it with people, who want it, too, but they want their own copy. Meanwhile, the publisher decides to change a forward to meet the needs of a current presidential election. 6000 people have the book with one forward, 12000 people have it with another. Then let's say this repeats, but this time, one of the main characters who is gay is .. well.. let's say gay's not in in this country that the new 12,000 people are in, so that character gets changed to a female. 6000 people have the book with one forward, 12000 have it with a gay male lead, 12000 have it with a straight hetero lead.

Continue on and on.. times changing, morals changing, the publishing company altering things here and there to "tighten up the story" or "mesh with the movie deal" or whatnot. (If you don't think this is done, believe me, it's done more than you might think. Ask Philip K Dick's estate about it.. or JRR Tolkien's.. Or C.S. Lewis') And with the horrid quality of paper used in modern books, everyone likely has to go out and buy a new copy every 30 to 50 years.. so even THAT changes. Add to that, the increasing terms of copyright.. and well, the book may NEVER enter the public domain.

The fact is, this happens. It's why there are multiple translations of the Bible. It's why companies have copyrights on the Bible, for God's sake. (Ironically, the Koran is not 'official' if translated, so it's largely remained the same text, even though the language changed underneath it.)

So the question is, who do you want in control of your ideas and language? The few, or the many? Because the texts DO change. That's why there are ten to fifteen different versions of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (I collect them) .. IN ENGLISH.. and they all are just a bit different here and there.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Redcard

But he, as an author, has to know that the history of books SHOWS things change when publishers have control over them....

I'm sorry, but your post doesn't really make sense.

I see no particular reason or likelihood for millions of people to correct each other about textual variations. Publishers don't change the sexual orientation of main characters between printings; at best they might correct a few errors.

Public domain versions of texts tend to be full of formatting and text errors, that gradually get changed and updated when volunteers are sufficiently motivated. We've already seen authors take a public domain book about the attempts of upper-class English gentry pursuing advantageous marriages, and adding in zombie attacks. Is this a bad thing or a good thing? I can't tell from your post.

Public domain books are a constant source of derivative works, which vary greatly from the original. West Side Story was a famous rewrite of Romeo and Juliet. Apocalypse Now -- a critically acclaimed film -- drew freely from and radically rewrote Heart of Darkness. The aforementioned Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was quite the sensation last year.

Copyrighted works also produce derivative works. Sometimes these works hew close to the original material (e.g. the Harry Potter films), other times they are recruited to the exact opposite point of the source (e.g. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a strike against treating simulated humans as humans; Blade Runner. argues that androids should be treated like humans).

Meanwhile, no one has edited the novella of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to match Blade Runner. It's not going to happen.

Originally Posted by Redcard

So the question is, who do you want in control of your ideas and language? The few, or the many?

This is a straw man.

First, ideas can't be copyrighted. Specific arrangements of words yes, ideas no.

Second, no one individual or organization truly controls language.

Third, Franzen isn't saying anything at all about public domain. I seriously doubt he'd be glad to hear that the entire ouvre of Shakespeare is available for free at the click of a mouse. He's protesting a culture of instant gratification, and claims that digital works lack the same permanence of a paper book in one's own hands.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I think people like Franzen also overlook the reality that keeping a large and permanent paper library is still an economic privilege for many people. I live in a city where real estate is very expensive and I will never be able to afford a single-family home unless I get an inheritance or win the lottery. They just posted a story in the paper about a two-bedroom home that was badly in need of renovations and was right beside a train track, and even that fixed upper was half a million dollars! So where does Franzen expect I am going to store all this permanent paper in my cramped inner-city apartment? Ebooks have opened up the concept of 'owning a library' to people like me who would otherwise be borrowing the books they read from the public one.

It is fine to say he does not prefer them, but to imply that those who read ebooks are less 'serious' readers is downright offensive.

A very good point. Through Gutenberg and it's DVD's I have a very large library at my fingertips (though I have to convert the text files to Kindle myself) that I wouldn't have otherwise. I have always loved to read but had a fairly small library of my own books when I was younger because I didn't have the space or the $ for a larger one. ebooks allow me to have that.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Apache

So true. If others are like I was then those who state "Oh, but I am all about how it FEELS in my hands" have never actually used an ebook. After I was given my first one I found that I liked the advantages of an ebook more than the feel of a "Real Book".
Apache

While I agree that ebook devices like the Kindle are small I don't have the problem of feeling that my Kindle doesn't feel right in my hands because I have a cover for it that adds a little bulk so that it feels about the same as a pbook does. The only thing that is different is that I press a button to advance rather than turning a page. And ebooks have another advantage over pbooks. With pbooks if you have anything on your hands (including the natural oils that leave fingerprints) it is transferred to the paper of the book. So you can get unintended smudges of dirt, chocolate, coffee stains or the chemical interaction between the oils your fingerprints are made of and the paper (which contributes to the eventual crumbling of the paper in the book since a lot of books (at least in the past) weren't made with acid free paper. With ebooks you don't have that problem, nor do you have to worry about your bookmark falling out thereby losing your place in the story. And the convenience of delivery is not to be forgotten. It's 12:32 am here now. I could buy an ebook and be reading it by 12:34 am if I so wished. You can't say the same for a pbook. Shops are closed this time of night so you can't get one that way, and if you order a pbook from a store like Amazon or Barnes and Nobles you still have to wait for several days for delivery. Plus they add on s/h costs for the book or books.

[crich70]

The fact is, this happens. It's why there are multiple translations of the Bible. It's why companies have copyrights on the Bible, for God's sake. (Ironically, the Koran is not 'official' if translated, so it's largely remained the same text, even though the language changed underneath it.)

While I can't speak for the Koran from what I have heard there are a lot of copies of the Bible still extant from very far back plus there are the dead sea scrolls and the variations in the text are more a matter of spelling than outright word changing. Someone might have written Jon rather than John for example in a particular copy. That's one of the things in fact that makes the Bible stand out. It was written down over a period of 2000 yrs by a large group of men and is remarkably self consistent in its text despite that. The matter of copyright for different versions is solely related to translations. The text was translated from its original languages into English around the 15th-16th centuries and of course English has continued to evolve. Now of course not everyone speaks English and so translations had to be written for Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Nigerian etc. so that people could understand it in their own native tongue. And the translations are copyrighted by the publishers, not the original work itself.

[Barty]

One thing he's right about is the temptation to keep tinkering with the book will be too high given the ease. The reader doesn't need to ask for an update, it can be pushed to the device automatically.

In the movies world, we have the theatrical cut, the extended cut, the director's cut, the definitive director's cut, the 30th anniversary cut. With ebooks, the cost of producing different editions is nearly nil. We could have n-word free huck Finn, or more creationist friendly science books to appease the local parents. Or authors deleting embarrassingly off predictions.

Btw I read his novel Freedom on the kindle.

[TGS]

I thought the thread title was Jonathan Franzen e-books are damaging society, which might have been an interesting discussion.

[QuantumIguana]

I'm not saying that e-books are bad. I wouldn't have a Kindle if I thought that. I am only saying that there are advantages to both paper and e-books. If a 100 year old paper book is sitting in a box somewhere, someone might pick it up and look at it. If that same book sits on a 100 year old digital storage device, would anyone go to the effort of figuring out a way to get that connected to a computer just so they can see what is on it?

[LuvReadin]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

The author must be too young, or very fortunate, to not need reading glasses. Ebooks are much better, because you can make the font bigger. I still have thousands of paper books, but many/most of them are no longer readable for me, due to my bad eyesight.

Precisely. It's the same attitude that drives people to make scathing comments about electric can-openers or kettles that don't need their lid removed to fill them. They're not designed (primarily, anyway) just to suit lazy people - try doing such tasks with a missing limb or even bad arthritis. Large-print books are fantastic, but they can't come close to the font size that can be obtained with an e-reader.