E-books are easy to post and allow authors who could never before get published access to significant audiences. I like e-books -- I have two e-books on Amazon myself.
I love the blogosphere. My blog -- for better or worse -- has taken thousands of hours of my time to create.
Electronic photographs are great. I have hundreds on my phone and I can share them around the world in a matter of moments.
So why am I whining that we need hard copies of books and printed photographs?
Remember Super 8 movies? Yes? Well, if you still have them, can you play them?
That's the problem.
Today's e-book readers will not be here to read today's e-books for very long. My blog will be off-line and unreadable in a matter of a decade at most. The Blackberry that holds my electronic photographs will be replaced by who knows what and the photos, will be like dust in the wind... .
The point is our e-documents will not last unless we make them into hard copies that need no interface to read.
9 comments:
With all due respect, I think you've got your reasoning backwards here. The virtue of digital media is that it can be endlessly copied without degradation. Copying is how we preserve things. The interface may change, but the CONTENT - so long as it is digital - could in principle last forever. There is no reason (again, in principle) why your blog cannot live forever, even though it took you thousands of hours to create, because it is digital and therefore easily copied.
In the Dark Ages, Irish monks toiled for countless hours meticulously copying the texts of civilization. If they had been interrupted in their efforts, who knows what the world would look like today. Certainly physical copies are good insurance, but so are digital copies.
@ M@tt, Have to disagree with you. I just bought a new laptop. It comes with Microsoft Windows Live. Guess what? All my old email files from Microsoft's Outlook Express can not be transphered into this new Microsoft Windows Live. They don't interface! Apparently, we will see more of this. Makes you wonder what Microsoft's point is but from now on, I print out every email I feel could be important. Now I'm back to wanting my important documents in files in a filing cabinet. Remember those? Insert primal scream here.
M@tt, I sort of agree -- e-copies are good. But we need the hard copies because otherwise when the machines to read the (perfect) e-copies are gone, so are the copies.
As humble as it may be my opinion is that in order to live in perpetuity an individual's name MUST be in "print". While my son, a programmer @ Twitter, has brought me,more or less, into the "digital" age, albeit kicking and screaming, where "anything" IS possible. Remember now that this "generation is also 100% convinced "technology" will fix all global ills and "fix it" so that we will live much longer lifespans too. Maybe digital is the tool being utilized by contemporary society. Furthermore, digital definitely is NOT a tangible commodity, I say "can you touch an icon"? Consider "tangible" to a "future" explorer. I have always maintained that if we ever completely lose our ability to generate electricity we as a species would be doomed! Digital is "easily transferable" regardless of geographical difference, that is an empiricism, does it offer perpetuity; that gentlemen (not to assume a sexist perspective) is the proverbial sixty-four dollar question, I expect not, however, that is a question which, none of us unfortunately, will ever know the answer to! Welcome to life 101 and have a terrific day, ;}
I agree with you James. What bothers me about e-books is that I have a fear that I will pay good money for a book that in a few years I won't be able to read.There are steps I can take to backup that copy to a different format but that might technically be illegal and I might back it up in an obsolete format.
We are all aware of the ease in which old hard copy books can be re-read.I can either give them away, borrow one or buy books for a few pennies. Does anyone see this happening in 20 years with current e-books? I suspect if I do end up with thousands of e-books in a reader 20 years from now (assuming they still can be read)it would probably have to be obtained illegally.
Looking back, it wouldn`t have been a bad thing if germany had of been victors. Look at the state of the Western world now. We`re governed by limp wristed lefties and being over run by immigrants and parasites. Our streets are becoming more and more unsafe. Filthy outsiders, junkies, permenantly unemployed, scammers, theifs. The list goes on. The Nazi party had the right idea. Myabe just a bit too right.
@HokiesAndDawgs, just a small correction -- the Nazis were socialist -- granted National Socialist but it's unfair to tar the Right with the Nazis. As for the rest, I totally disagree...
What we need is to make sure we always use open standards for our electronic media, specifically ones that don't include any sort of digital locks/restrictions nonsense. An archive format PDF will probably be readable as long as we have computers.
Of course this is NOT in the interest of big business - they want to be forever selling you new things. Amazon for example can reach into your Kindle and remove or change a 'book' after you buy it. Funnily enough, they did this to an edition of 1984 that the seller didn't have global rights to. If your data is in their proprietary format or locked inside their proprietary hardware, it's not safe.
Anon -- totally agreed -- open standards are best and have a chance of lasting more than 10 yeARS!
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