Re: Lulu
- From: James Eades <jeeades@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:23:24 -0500
On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:47:39 -0700 (PDT), constantinopoli@xxxxxxxxx
wrote:
On Mar 12, 4:17 pm, James Eades <jeea...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:27:42 -0700 (PDT), constantinop...@xxxxxxxxx
wrote:
On Mar 12, 2:22 pm, zebo...@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:
Chuk Goodin <cgoo...@xxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:46:15 +1000, James A. Donald <jam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
On Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:55:06 -0700, Alma Hromic Deckert
For many people like me, who spend a large portion of
our lives before a computer screen, leisure reading on
a similar screen holds absolutely no appeal whatsoever
- and that is over and beyond the feeling of holding
an actual book in your hands as opposed to something
that approximates one. The world may well change all
the way and the printed book could very well disappear
- but somehow I don't think so, not ever, not quite
completely, and certainly not in my lifetime.
The typewriter is gone. The encyclopedia is gone.
Printed newspapers are at death's door.
The typewriter isn't gone. I can see one from here.
Nor are encyclopaedias. My library has lots of them, both in print and
electronic, and the messiness of the reference collection testifies to
students finding them as useful for background reading as we say they
are.
And there are doubtless, here and there, punch card readers and carbon
copiers still in operation.
It takes a while for the body to decompose.
The role of the encyclopedia has been usurped, and of the typewriter.
And what happens if -- or when -- the infrastructure which supports
electronics and communications breaks down... whether for economic
reasons or natural disaster?
We depend on infrastructure. Most of us would starve to death if we
lost infrastructure. Ignoring non-book effects, if we lost
electronics, it would become much harder to publish anything,
considering the extent to which book publishing relies on electronics.
Without communication, most of business would cease to function,
including, obviously, Amazon, but also ordinary brick and mortar
booksellers. Without electronics and communication, we would no longer
be able to use credit cards, and on top of that we may not be able to
take our cash out of the bank, so we would be unable to buy even the
books left over from the catastrophe in the candle-lit Barnes & Noble
- assuming that there would be anyone on hand to sell them.
You might want to be more specific in your question.
Granted, my question was unfocussed. I just got to wondering, what
with the doom and gloom I keep reading about in the media (can't help
it. the stuff is like pretzels. great fiction-fodder), our world has
practically re-invented itself in the past fifty years.
While physical changes have not followed exactly the forecast given by
science fiction writers (personal airpods, commute to the moon, etc)
the changes in communications have been staggering. Children today,
even in backward places like my hometown, expect cell phones and noise
makers they can slip in their pocket, stuff that we couldn't carry
around in a suitcase when I was their age. They're being raised to
operate complicated thumbnail sized devices that can connect them
around the world that we old-timers never even envisioned. All we had
were dead-tree books, movies at the theater or pictures on a console
TV.
The very notion of 'publishing' is changing -- it used to mean months
of editing, still more time to review proofs, frantic calls to get
last-minute corrections in on time, tons of paper, printing presses,
and a gala sendoff with the trucks rolling. Dead-tree publishing had
its own infrastructure. It was stable, it was conservative, it had
too much inertia to change as suddenly as the new version of
publishing.
The new infrastructure is built on the internet without the fanfaire,
the heavy machinery or the leagues of people involved. The new
publishing has its own inertia, only its momentum is constantly
growing with its own dynamic. This improvement, if you will, in
communications relies on a technology that is still in its infancy, on
a state of on-going change that obsoletes itself between the time a
concept is conceived and the time it becomes reality.
I can think of a number of disasters that could unhinge the electronic
revolution, most of them highly unlikely. However, not too long ago I
would have said that the economy would never again get as bad as the
1930s, and now I must admit that it could. If it does founder, then
all aspects of life would be affected, but I wonder, which would be in
worse shape -- the millions and millions of paper books already
printed (which need only an adequate light source to read) or the
millions of e-readers which need expensive batteries/electricity
and/or which have to download their content from an internet that
might be too expensive for most people to afford, anymore?
That is the question I should have asked, in a nutshell. I've rambled
enough in this message. I leave it to you to advise me if you think
I'm a nut for worrying about it.
This flux in stability is, I am convinced, of a transient nature and
should settle down as soon as the concept of pervasive communications
matures and we can have more durable readables.
--
JamesE
.
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