Please do not remove books

Please do not remove books from our world.

Little children love picture books and older children love reading. A lot of other people of all ages love reading. The elderly love reading. My local library is always full of people at the shelves.

I see a huge danger that technology is wrecking life as we know it. Keep technology, but do not wreck other things.

For example, how many children want to take a walk in the natural world when they could be playing the latest tech game?

Technology is ruining people and the world, but if it was controlled, it would not.

This is what I see.

I disagree we shouldn't be chopping down trees when electronic formats are better in every way although I don't mean pdf which most people will automaticly think of but there are good formats that receive very little press such as djvu.

All we are really waiting for is for e-paper to take off and for someone to make a standard reader that simply does the basics without unnecessary bulk like mp3 playing or connecting to the internet. There is no reason for readers to be as expensive as they are right now but I expect some company will appear from nowhere at some point and take the market by simply using common sense.

Any books we have now should be scanned electronicly for viewing and the originals stored safely and any new books or newspapers should only be distributed digitally.

reply to post by Teknikal

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We used to have soul in this world. I hope we still do.

Your attitude has no soul.

We have to get beyond developments and think humanely.

There is something special, almost magical, about holding a book, feeling it's heft, smelling the odor of the paper, and the tactile sense of turning the pages.
I am pretty tech savvy and read a tremendous amount of time reading online, but nothing touches the heart and soul like a good book.

Nice environmental way to look at it but when you have no electricity, you cant read. My books still work fine in daylight or campfire light. If the Ancients had e-books, how much more would have been lost? (Oops, dont make batteries for that anymore) Dont forget, they can take your "files" away on a whim (amazon/1984 "copyright" foul up).

Nah, if you want your ebooks then thats fine. I want my library with the dust mites and my "old folks" with yellowed pages.

I love my kindle, but I also love my book collection. Both have their pros and cons. But if I had every book I've ever owned, I'd have a library, not a home. Please donate your gently used books to your local library.

The single most important buildings on this planet are libraries.

If we were to stumble across an alien planet and visit its surface, the first building we would be looking for would be its libraries.

Therein lies all of its information on that species:
Its history.
Its religions.
Its nature/wildlife.
Its scientific advances.

EVERYTHING.

Every time one of our libraries closes, a little piece of us as a species dies

Well in my mind e-paper is every bit as good as real paper you can read it anywhere you can read a normal page and as for needing power you only need a tiny amount each page change.

E-Paper wiki link

A small solar panel could keep one going pretty much forever not to mention how much flash storage is getting bigger and cheaper.

Even now you can keep thousands of books in your pocket with very little space plus benefit's like automatic bookmarks and the technology is improving.

Would you rather pay thousands to keep a library open or few hundred for a server were the copys were completely unlimited and you never had to wait for a book to be returned.

In a decade or so I believe e-paper will have completely replaced paper and for the good of everyone.

I love print books.

And given the fact that I just spend a couple hundred on them for school, not e-books, I have a feeling that books aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Maybe in the future more NEW books will be in electronic form, but I doubt people will just dispose of all the books already in print in homes and libraries around the world. Maybe they will be collector's items, I don't know. I collect some old books, the oldest I think is from 1918.

(Which isn't very old for a book, but very good for finding for $2 at a book fair)

[edit on 9/15/2009 by ravenshadow13]

I agree!!! I love my books! I love big picture/coffee table books and many others. I am always in Barnes and Noble shopping. Its one of my favorite places to relax.
There is something about a book that is nothing like reading it online. I like the smell of them esp the older ones. I like seeing how they were addressed to the original owner, many times it tells a lot about the person who once owned it. Books have history! I dont like how everything is going online and I think bookstores are suffering. The selection in some isnt as big and I know two used books stores that have closed because so many books are online for a cheaper price. It makes me sad honestly. I went to those stores all the time and they were there for about 20 years and now they are no longer. I collect many different books esp Shakespeare and old French text books. Those are things I cant really experience online!

reply to post by spellbound

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Simply from personal preference I agree, I love holding a book, I love the smell, the feel, the little feeling of accomplishment as I see my bookmark moving closer to the end. I'm also the type of person that like writing my papers out in a notebook instead of on a notebook computer.

As a society I don't want to see book completely disappear simply because the internet and articles on it can be manipulated or erased. A physical book is just that, once it is in print unless you burn every copy it is here forever.

I guess i have to disagree too.
While i really like to read, i think that Books are a thing of the past, just like magazines and newspapers.
Chopping down Trees just for Books is stupid, just like teknikal said.

And books have a lot of other flaws: They consume a whole lot of Space. Not all people live in big mansions with one room dedicated to a library.
I absolutely HATE the smell of Books. Especially older Books are just disgusting. They yellow, they fall apart, maybe you lose some pages, so you have to buy them again (I own Books that are 40, 50 years old and they really show their age)

Ebooks are the future and once the readers like kindle become more useful and cheaper, they'll replace Books and i will gladly kick them all out.

The commercial technology has not yet reached the point where we can do away with the mass creation of book based publishing.

However it is undeniable that the old forms of media are being replaced, and that it is not ecologically viable to continue using paper to hold the collected knowledge of mankind or their storis, especially in such massive amounts of multiple copies.

Don't get me wrong I think hard copies should exist, but not in the numbers they are produced today, and we need cheaper ways to produce the readers, because frankly it boggles my mind that I can get a 8gb Ipod Clone for £20 ($30-35) which plays music and movies but I have to pay £150+ for a simple e reading device with a screen that isn't much bigger, that doesn't make any sense to me, I could buy a 2nd hand laptop and an external battery (that lasts 8 hours away from the mains) for less money, and be able to do a host of things OTHER than read books.

reply to post by ShadowAngel85

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I disagree completely. For one, newspapers and magazines are preferred by many people over the use of the internet.

How can you hate the smell of old books? It's my favorite smell in the world...



I guess you're entitled. I'm personally a bibliophile, so... I suppose I am biased.

I would suggest this is because of 3 primary reasons:

1) People don't know how to use the net "properly".

2) Wireless internet is still in its infancy, pricing of technology (hardware) and bandwidth (monthly rental often with extra charges for going over a limited data allowance) puts people off. Therefore in a lot of situation having a paper hard copy is simply easier to deal with (such as reading a paper on the train journey to work or reading a magazine while getting your hair done).

3) The media companies have not caught up properly with the internet, a lot of information sites which are not run by the media giants (and even some that are) are poorly designed and are not attractive prospects to people who are used to having the information spoon fed to them.

Its still going to take a while before we see a real change in the way media is handled but it will probably be within the next 10-20 years (barring the destruction of the world).

Books are great because its contents cannot be remotely deleted, like Amazon deleted copies of 1984 from its customer's kindles (ebook reader) without the customers authorization. It's too easy for the contents in an ebook reader to be deleted remotely for people to put their trust into it.

Besides, ebook readers still have quite a ways to go before they're widely accepted with the obstacles being cost, view window size, weight, durability, even flexibility. The technology for a flexible, paper-like ebook reader has already been invented but for obvious reasons it will be a very long time before it's sold to the public.

The paper that has been used in printing books recently is from wood pulp. It's crap and turns brown in just a few years and disintegrates after a couple of decades.

I wish they'd stop using wood fibre entirely.

Papyrus, which is from reeds, last millenia. The best paper made these days is from cloth rags:



Doing away with books isn't a good idea. Doing away with wood pulp paper is an excellent one.

sp

[edit on 15/9/09 by masqua]