Comments on: Is the book a crucial cultural artifact, or just an outdated container for content?

By: Md Hasan

Md Hasan — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:14:14 +0000

Its interesting that Science Fiction is so varied an example here

By: Angus Swan

Angus Swan — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:53:44 +0000

One factor no one has brought up is economics. Market substitutes tend to push out their forbears if they offer an equivalent product experience at lower cost. Physical books are fundamentally much less efficient than their electronic counterparts. This is because of the manpower and energy required to generate and transport the raw materials for printing and assembly, and then the impact on fossil-fuels for delivery to the distribution point and then to point of sales. Frankly, it is ludicrous to continue to mindlessly ship around physical representations of media that can be copied and shipped instantly electronically at infinitesimal cost. Books will continue to be printed and acquired, but will become more a luxurious curiosity.

By: Angus Swan

Angus Swan — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:43:31 +0000

Ebook reader clients provide the ability to bookmark, and also to highlight with notes and aggregate those automatically for instant access, and even share these socially with other readers, so i don’t follow your point about physical books having an advantage in that regard.

By: phi tran

phi tran — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 08:59:30 +0000

I totally agree, and I will add that many readers I know value books in all forms. Pursuing and creating books and artefacts in as many forms as possible is just another tribute to the story itself. Digital encyclopedias have seen tremendous improvements and I will never go back to it in its ridiculous paper volumes. As far as fiction goes, I still lug my giant Tolstoy novel around all day next to my laptop. I also love pop-up books, which is a great medium in itself.

I think Mathew should check out Ben Popper’s great insight on the Verve about how animated gif teaches teens the art of silent film – I think we haven’t seen the last of anything just yet.

By: Rann Xeroxx

Rann Xeroxx — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:28:07 +0000

What I have seen when browsing through B&N is that there are a lot of crappy books. I think what will happen is that “disposable” books will to the e route while there will still be printed books of quality. Note that I am not assigning quality to books I like, just what any segment might assign to a book or work.

Photographs did not do away with paintings and neither will ebooks do away with printed books. Both will cont. to have their place.

By: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:04:53 +0000

Fascinating topic an one that hasn’t really reached wide distribution yet. There are those that hold that the loss of books equates to the loss of history, but I struggle to see how that’s the case when we’re saving everything..meaning history becomes a database of facts and ideas rather than a ‘view’.

By: yt75

yt75 — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 10:32:45 +0000

The economic and associated interactions environment is as important as the format and also part of the medium.
And about this what is happenning is first an extreme concentration around a few “vertical monsters”, and the fact that ones bookshelf isn’t private anymore.
Seperating “private bookshelf holder”(only references or contracts), and creators/sellers/hosters would probably do more in favouring new content, why not simply websites to be bought (access to) “for life”, for instance.
http://iiscn.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/concepts-economie-numerique-draft/

By: Allen Lau

Allen Lau — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 23:40:29 +0000

Storytelling existed for thousand of years (since the caveman probably). It survived many transitions including the movable type. I can’t see why it can’t survive the digital transition.

Whether “book” will survive, it really depends on how narrowly “book” is defined. Encyclopedia still exists in the form of Wikipedia, but this net-native version of encyclopedia killed both the paper and digital version of the old (Britannica and Microsoft Encarte).

The net-native version of “book” is still in its infancy. I believe it will kill paper books and e-books (in its current form) in similar fashion.

By: Droidkin

Droidkin — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 19:42:33 +0000

Were you born yesterday! The Dead Sea Scrolls may just be written on old paper….but with out that paper…the Dead Sea would be…well just the Dead Sea.

By: brunoboutot

brunoboutot — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 18:43:49 +0000

Civilization is about more choices, not about replacement. What is ending is the monopoly of the book, not its existence. Digital creation and display add a quasi infinite series of possibilities for storytelling with words, images, sound, video, from Twitter to 3D immersion. Great. The paper book and the book as digital format will stay, only marginalized among 1000 other choices. The book is dead. Long live the book.