Thursday, April 10, 2003
How about this for the quote of the day:
Man builds no structure which outlives a book.
-- Victorian poet Eugene Fitch Ware
The quote comes from The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski. The rest of this is just my mind wandering...
Just a few years ago it seemed everyone couldn't stop talking about ebooks and how they'd revolutionize the book industry. They still might, but the fact is that any technological advance that requres a secondary device to read the primary text is not going to be an advancement over a book that needs no device to be read. Devices, whether they're computers, PDA's, or other reading device, need to be updated and can not survive the wear and tear paper books can take. Drop any laptop on the ground and watch the owner's face. And they become outdated. Try bringing in a 5 1/4" diskette to your nearby copy shop and ask them to open up the files for you to print.
This is almost hard to say because I'm one who loves my computer, can't believe all we can do now that we have the internet, and sincerely wishes I had an ebook device that would allow me to custom build travel books with info I need when on the road. But it can't happen until the ebook is as sturdy as a regular book.
We still sell books today because they are a brilliant invention that endures.
A second point the quote raises is the nature of permanence embedded in the printing of books. A book will outlive any structure because anyone can print more copies of it and share them. We cannot print more copies of the Space Needle or the Eiffel Tower and erect them in backyards around the world.
If a revolutionary idea is written down in only one book, it's easy for a government, school, or other authority to suppress the idea. But if the idea is printed in hundreds of books, or thousands, it's impossible to suppress all of the copies of that idea. This is how Thomas Paine's pamphlets spread through American culture in the late 1700's and encouraged support for the American Revolution.
If a revolutionary idea is good, if it resonates with the culture, then people will remember the idea and pass it on. Publishers still print Common Sense, Thoreau's Walden, Candide, and they will continue to print Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States long after he's gone. The more copies of these books that are in the world, the less likely their ideas will go away. This is why books are revolutionary and dangerous.
Booksellers are part of the system that continues to give life to ideas. We fill our stores with good ideas and make them available to people to discover, to share, to expand.
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Man builds no structure which outlives a book.
-- Victorian poet Eugene Fitch Ware
The quote comes from The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski. The rest of this is just my mind wandering...
Just a few years ago it seemed everyone couldn't stop talking about ebooks and how they'd revolutionize the book industry. They still might, but the fact is that any technological advance that requres a secondary device to read the primary text is not going to be an advancement over a book that needs no device to be read. Devices, whether they're computers, PDA's, or other reading device, need to be updated and can not survive the wear and tear paper books can take. Drop any laptop on the ground and watch the owner's face. And they become outdated. Try bringing in a 5 1/4" diskette to your nearby copy shop and ask them to open up the files for you to print.
This is almost hard to say because I'm one who loves my computer, can't believe all we can do now that we have the internet, and sincerely wishes I had an ebook device that would allow me to custom build travel books with info I need when on the road. But it can't happen until the ebook is as sturdy as a regular book.
We still sell books today because they are a brilliant invention that endures.
A second point the quote raises is the nature of permanence embedded in the printing of books. A book will outlive any structure because anyone can print more copies of it and share them. We cannot print more copies of the Space Needle or the Eiffel Tower and erect them in backyards around the world.
If a revolutionary idea is written down in only one book, it's easy for a government, school, or other authority to suppress the idea. But if the idea is printed in hundreds of books, or thousands, it's impossible to suppress all of the copies of that idea. This is how Thomas Paine's pamphlets spread through American culture in the late 1700's and encouraged support for the American Revolution.
If a revolutionary idea is good, if it resonates with the culture, then people will remember the idea and pass it on. Publishers still print Common Sense, Thoreau's Walden, Candide, and they will continue to print Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States long after he's gone. The more copies of these books that are in the world, the less likely their ideas will go away. This is why books are revolutionary and dangerous.
Booksellers are part of the system that continues to give life to ideas. We fill our stores with good ideas and make them available to people to discover, to share, to expand.
