The Atlantic: Ebooks Are an Abomination

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Printing without moveable type predates gutenberg in Europe. Chinese movable type and printing is older still.

I know what a manuscript is. Clue in the name. Though I've not worked like that since about 1979.

Duplicators that could use a typed stencil are from the Victorian era. Some could print a smaller number of copies from specially prepared handwritten sheets.

In the 1850s it was still cheaper to go to the play than read the book. Carnegie donated libraries as he realised that made books available to poorer people. Even rich people had taken advantage of libraries before that, also sharing books. See Jane Austin.

The founder of Gutenberg.org (in maybe 1972) realised the importance of electronic texts.

And Ben Franklin was at least associated with one of the first libraries here in the U.S. I believe.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by crich70

And Ben Franklin was at least associated with one of the first libraries here in the U.S. I believe.

He's famous for a book collection. See Carnegie:

A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Serbia, Belgium, France, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Fiji.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

There are a lot of US Libraries named after Benjamin Franklin, but I think he, himself, only founded one. http://www.benjamin-franklin-history...nding-library/

The Franklin Mint (no connection really to Ben Franklin) published books from the 1970s for nearly 30 years.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The Franklin Mint (no connection really to Ben Franklin) published books from the 1970s for nearly 30 years.

For thirty years they published books from the 1970's

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by AngryD

I don't mind the ability to add page animations and make it look like more of a book, but I don't think most eReaders need most of the stuff they have.

What are some features current ereaders have that you think are unneeded?

[Quoth]

I turn off page animations on Android and Desktop apps.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

For thirty years they published books from the 1970's

I wrote that badly. They re-published older titles (maybe all PD) between the early 1970s and the start of this millennium. That's about 30 years of book publishing. All the gory details inc Princess Diana dolls on Wikipedia.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by AngryD

Have you read The Reluctant Swordsman by David Duncan? Excellent series. Wally Smith dies of spinal meningitis and wakes up in the body of Shonshu, a swordsman of the seventh level on an alternate world. He discovers that the World of the Goddess doesn't have writing. It doesn't even have words for it. He tries to ask a girl how to spell her name, and it comes out, "How do you make marks-of-saying for that?"

Wally is the POV character, and he even ruminates on how everyone's memory is so much better than his, and how he's basically an illiterate in their world.

I strongly recommend the series. (There was a time when the SciFi editor of Del Rey books had the same taste that I do. He also always used Darrell K Sweet as a cover artist. I learned that any book I saw with his artwork on it was going to be something I liked. So I discovered the American
publications of Sir Terry Pratchett, David Duncan's Reluctant Swordsman and A Man of His Word series, Terry Brooks's Magic Kingdom of Landover, and a few others.) Sweet also did the artwork for about 2/3 of Piers Anthony's Magic of Xanth. He has a very distinctive style.)

What blew my mind is when Wally comments that the invention of writing hampered memory, but it also made knowledge cumulative, and that without it, societies couldn't truly evolve. (Writing is a part of the Goddess's mission for Wally. I don't want to spoil it for you.)

No, I had never heard of it before. Sounds interesting! I'll make sure to check it out. Thank you for the recommendation!

[luqmaninbmore]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

That's all well and good, but none of it makes e-books an abomination.

That's just stylistic hyperbole. I think a number of people on this thread are making the mistake of treating a literary essay (a well-written one, in my opinion) like a research article. I ended subscribing to The Atlantic after reading it because I had reached a tipping point in my appreciation of the articles I had been reading from it.

[usuallee]

Well, it's a persuasive article, so as such, the author cherry picks information that supports their argument, and excludes information that does not. The whole "bookiness" conceit is utter nonsense and seems retrofitted to support his point.

And as others have noted, the "dim grey screens" allusion is so not relevant to modern ereaders. My Libra H20 can be lit up with whatever temperature and brightness of light I desire. At any font and font size. Whereas I sometimes struggle to get suitable lighting when I read a dead tree book. It's akin to saying "I won't drive cars because I hate the wooden spokes that all car wheels have". I mean seriously, lol. At least come up with arguments relevant to today.

One particular sentence baffled me though as it is so completely, demonstrably false: "Skimming through pages...remains impossible in digital books." Huh?? Unless he's clinging to the archaic notion that "pages" can only be made of paper, and absolutely nothing else, ever. I mean...you can obviously skim through an ebook if so desired.

"Perhaps you've noticed that dead tree books suck. They take up lots of space, are unwieldy to hold, you're wholly dependent on ambient lighting, and you're stuck with whatever font and font size the publisher chooses for you. Trees must be destroyed to create them." See, I can write an equally persuasive hit piece on paper books. Maybe I should write for the Atlantic :-D

[AngryD]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

What are some features current ereaders have that you think are unneeded?

Hiya, Zod. ("Kneel before Zod!")

I probably wasn't very clear in that post. It's not eReaders in general, it's eReader apps that I feel have some unnecessary features, such as page turn animations and reading timers and the like.

I also should point out that my only "complaint" about these is when they take away from the basic functionality of the eReader. When I was on the Android platform, for example, I had an eReader whose name escapes me that had about a dozen randomized page turns and wipes-- but often couldn't display RTF formatted text properly. It seems to me that the basic function of an eReader is to display the eBook for reading, but the developer was more interested in how many different weird ways he could turn a page for you. (Moon+ became my go-to, then. and I loved it.)

Just because I don't like a feature doesn't mean it shouldn't be there. That might be your favorite feature. I don't time my reading, so that's a pointless feature for me, but for someone who is trying to read more, that might be critical, and that's fine!

[luqmaninbmore]

Originally Posted by usuallee

One particular sentence baffled me though as it is so completely, demonstrably false: "Skimming through pages...remains impossible in digital books." Huh?? Unless he's clinging to the archaic notion that "pages" can only be made of paper, and absolutely nothing else, ever. I mean...you can obviously skim through an ebook if so desired.

You can in theory skim through an ebook but the experience on most ebook readers leaves a lot to be desired and isn't anywhere as convenient as leafing and skimming through a physical book. There's less immediacy to the experience because you have to navigate through an interface as opposed to a physical book where you have direct, immediate access to the pages. You can get a similar experience scrolling through a PDF on a computer but that facilitates a different type of experience and comes with all the issues bound up with both PDFs and computers as eReaders.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

You can in theory skim through an ebook but the experience on most ebook readers leaves a lot to be desired and isn't anywhere as convenient as leafing and skimming through a physical book.

I find it more convenient with an ebook actually. The physical act of "leafing" through a physical book has very little to do with skimming, in my opinion. Skimming is letting your eyes glide over words and paragraphs without actually reading every word (though picking up a few relevant tidbits). Something that's very easy and effective for me to do with ebooks. I prefer it to skimming through a physical book, actually. Leafing is letting a bunch of pages fly by without reading much of anything at all. That may be helpful when looking for pictures in a big book, but it certainly never helped me accomplish anything else in my pbook days.

[Nonya]

This article is what's known as "filler".
It's a piece that was probably written many years before and could be printed/re-printed with only a slight edit to update any lists it has.
Think about it - the only ereader he mentions is the Kindle DX.
An ereader released more than a decade ago and is no longer in production.
The author mentions no other ereaders at all even though the market has absolutely exploded since then. He also mentions Wordperfect and Wordstar, two document creation programs that for the most part have ceased mainstream use for the last 15 years.
And absolutely zero mention of the 2020 pandemic or that ereader and ebook sales have risen as a result? Yeah, this is a formerly-rejected filler article.
Methinks The Atlantic was desperate for something and pulled this out of their rejection files.
And look at the actual words used throughout the entire article - tons of filler words that add nothing to the actual premise of the article. It's like he's screaming out "look at all the big words I know!" but I think he just uses them to increase the total word count.
That article was probably written back when the DX was released, initially rejected by an editor who saw it as obvious wordy filler and just filed away for future use as filler when someone else missed their deadline and they needed it.

[spacepope]

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in the thread, but e-books are really important for accessibility. You get to change the font and font size (I'm sure that Open Dyslexia is awesome for any dyslexic reader). And, for people like me who have no way to get to a library/english bookstore, an ereader is a godsend.

Living in Japan, English books are few and far between unless I'm willing to go to a bigger city - and then I better be ok with 50-100% markup on paperbacks, with a rather sad genre book selection.

I would much, much rather stick with ebooks.

(I do sympathize with the writer, as I thought I was a physical book snob before, even though I had my kindle. I didn't understand at the time that books went on discount quite often, and you could link your library card to your ereader. Now I always hunt for a nice deal on my next book and/or read from the library, without having to lift a finger... and I read so much more thanks to that!)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by spacepope

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in the thread, but e-books are really important for accessibility. You get to change the font and font size (I'm sure that Open Dyslexia is awesome for any dyslexic reader). And, for people like me who have no way to get to a library/english bookstore, an ereader is a godsend.

The current state of the research suggests that Open Dyslexic is not much if any of an improvement for the majority of dyslexic readers. The British Dyslexia Association appears to have dropped their recommendation for it. See their Dyslexia friendly style guide. One of the nicest features with ebooks is that dyslexic readers are able to try different fonts and, hopefully, find one that allows them to read with less effort.