The latest thing in gadgetry is the e-reader and e-book. Whether it be Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony reader and I’m sure as I write another brand has come out for yet another company or bookstore. They are handy little things. Stick them in your purse, or briefcase, and you can slide it out and pick out any number of books. It has neat features like making the print larger, bookmarks, etc. The newer Sonys have an e-reader perfect for students and business people which will download just about every format such as PDFs. They can mark on it – make notes, just like on real paper. Even some palm pilots will accept e-books with the same features as the newer Sony (remember palm pilots? – dig your old one out).
Paper is not ecological. Forests are stripped not only for the lumber industry but for a great, great deal of paper.
Every one said computers were supposed to eliminate paper completely. Oh yes, everything will be on the computer and paper will become a thing of the past. We didn’t realize that hardcopies would, well, need paper. And most people, unless it’s e-mail, want hard copies. How many hard copies has your printer screwed up, and you’ve had to chuck 52 pages to recycle? (At least I hope you’re recycling). Recycling or not they don’t grow more trees.
And so the e-readers eliminate paper. Oh no! Many people will exclaim! But I LOVE the feel of a book in my hands. Well so do I. But it takes a lot of paper to clunk out a Stephen King novel of 1,000 pages in millions of copies. A lot of trees.
I have five rooms in my house with the walls covered in books. I don’t mean they have little book shelves in them, I mean the walls are covered. Some of the shelves have had to be doubled up with books. Many of the shelves are so high I have to use a stepladder to get at a book. Most of these books I don’t want to give away – I have already culled most of the books I will never refer to or read or lend and given them away to hospitals and libraries (although I’m not sure what they thought of my collection of sci-fi erotica – I’m hoping some little old lady is laughing her butt off while hooked up to a bunch of tubes). At any rate, my house is basically – a waste of paper. Not that the books themselves are a waste – but I hate to think how many trees went into providing me with a problem of storage. And each book represents thousands if not millions more copies filled with – paper.
Meanwhile those that lament the state of the ecology, global warming etc. keep buying paper made books. Because they’re more ‘real’.
The e-book however, provides paperless access to a multitude of books. The number will grow, and the websites that you can download books from is expanding exponentially. Not only will this be good for little known writers (who won’t suffer the banishment to the back binder of a bookstore shelf, while Dan Brown gets a full display as you enter the front door) but it will eliminate PAPER.
Bookstores don’t seem to be concerned about e-books. The Kindle is offered by Amazon. You still have to BUY the books. Sony has a site specifically for e-books and I understand Barnes and Noble will also follow the route of the e-book as will many independent websites. I can predict that the versatility of the e-readers will only improve.
We didn’t yell and scream when the iPod came out. It was cool. Even though it largely limited the need for CDs (more plastic). The iPod has evolved from a music maker, to a video tool, and an applications product. No more CDs in the wrong covers piling up in your den or living room. Books are however considered more sacred. An intellectual property that you can look at an admire (and have your friends’ admire your good taste in books). Enough already.
Be smart. Consider an e-book. Consider all that paper. And no, I do not work for Sony or Amazon.
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Comments
R~
I donate my used books to book sales. I buy from used book sales (good source of English language books). It's a form of recycling.
But I still worry about the volatility and sustainabiliy of electronic storage. Could you once have imagined anything but floppies for long-term storage? The last laptop I bought, I had to get a floppy drive peripheral because so much of my stuff was on the things.
The technology changes and changes and changes again. But I have some excellent books published in the 19th century that I can pick up any old time.
At the same time, I love the feel of a good book in my hand, and certain works - such as Mark Danielewski's amazing "House of Leaves" - will always require a proper physical form to be fully appreciated.
Barnes and Noble has had their e-book reader, the Nook, on the market for a couple weeks now. It's a damn sight better then the best Kindle. Right now everyone's waiting for Apple's foray into the market, for a possible full-color screen so they can port magazines and comic books.
most paper manufacturers create sustainable paper mills - that is, plant the very same trees they cut down - just so they don't run out of the resource they're trying to sell. Imagine you build a paper plant, cut down all the trees around it, and now have to get your pulp from another forest across the country. No, they (mostly) plant more trees nearby to have them close at hand.
Make no mistake, milling paper is _far_ from ecologically friendly. But recycling paper for print is even worse, from a toxic standpoint. They have to de-ink the paper, and all that ink sludge has to go somewhere. Even printers who tout their environmentally-friendly soy-based inks don't account for the toxic chemicals required to remove them from the paper.
And what's more ecologically unfriendly than that? Computers. Lead, cadmium, mercury... all those heavy, toxic metals that end up in landfills and contaminating ground water after you've thrown all those outdated shiny things away.
Some things, e.g. magazines, just don't work with the current crop of electronic devices. I have one of those new phones that does everything (including allow me to post here), but I still have a paper calendar and notepad. I don't have to wait for a 3x5 card to boot up, and I can keep reading a paperback without fear of finding an outlet.
R
I can reuse (a variety of ways, some of which I shan't describe), burn (for warmth, of course) and even eat (if I had to) a paper book.
What are many of you going to do when your lithium-ion rechargeable battery runs out, your mercury-filled screen cracks or the new shiny reader format comes out and doesn't work with your device any more?
Yes, I agree that digital distribution can create a much wider, and more accessible audience, and that now almost anyone can publish a book. Just like a blog.
Fudu, the disposability of electronics is far less an evil than the destruction of our forests in my humble opinion. Now there are special depots for electronics which strip them up, reuse parts and no lithium batteries get into the ground soil. Sorry bub, no sale here.
I'd prefer to see fewer old TVs left on the curb for pickup with old futons. It does (here) all end up in landfill.
The other dark truth, is that even those electronics collected for "recycling" often aren't. They're sold to disposal companies, who then just find some poor, developing nation that needs the cash more than they need clean soil and dump it all there. The NY Times has done a couple of pieces on the mountains of electronic waste in some poorer African countries.
As I said, paper milling is _not_ environmentally sound, but for the toxic runoff it creates. Most paper mills plant sustainable forests, to keep their supply of pulp. Most of the deforesting being done in the world is done for other reasons. (building materials, furniture, grazing land, urban development...)
Thanks for all your input - I've learned lots new. I still like my Sony reader though...and my books.
My big beef is that ebook publishers tend to release only in a locked format that won't work on my machines, and charge almost the cost of a paperback... So thus far, my approach is to go onto #bookz (look it up), grab & read HTML copies of books I'm interested in, then acquire hardcopies of the ones I *really* like -- usually through Bookmooch, the local used bookstore, or in rare cases from a brick-and-mortar bookstore.
There is one advantage I've found to reading paper-based books: regardless of the settings, lighting, or technology, I can't use electronic devices comfortably when I have a headache/migraine, but CAN read an off-white paper-based book. (Also, when the brain anomaly causing the pain also makes me drop the book or drop something on it, it doesn't break. Shame the same can't be said of that Clie I had, though it did survive being soaked in tea once.)
.. after all.. it's only virtual code... or is that ethics?
Virtual environments.. defined.. "Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name"..
So there is no tangible proof.. or as the definition continues.. "Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination."
Virtually adaptable.. that lacks the courage of an tangible published product. Ideas become open to modification without remorse..
Are you so sure tomorrow's text will say the same thing you read yesterday? Yeah I know.. paranoid.. huh?
So I'll go.. begrudgingly. Confident that the Amazon case of deleting "1984" was an exceedingly exquisite symbol indeed.
GeoCities just went bye-bye.. "So Long, GeoCities: We Forgot You Still Existed".. PC World...
Forgot.. hmm.. there were some that mourned an era of information that was just deleted.
What will be forgotten if it's all virtual?
nothing to discover in the attic.. no ancient texts to uncover..
just..
deleted.