4 ms·

More people are reading more things more often than ever before. Indie hackers (as well as anyone else) can now cheaply publish their own magazines to the glob

by sneak 3y ago

More people are reading more things more often than ever before. Indie hackers (as well as anyone else) can now cheaply publish their own magazines to the globe. I don’t think we lost something other than paper and postage. Pretty soon (in the scheme of things) they’ll stop printing books and paper money too. (I say this as a vinyl and book collector. It’s just facts. Our great grandchildren will not use physical books.)

nerdponx 3y ago
I don't think it will disappear entirely. Just like vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs, some people deliberately choose to buy dead tree media for one reason or another. Maybe print magazines will go first, and maybe print newspapers at some point in the future, but actual books will probably never go away.
- HomeDeLaPot 3y ago
  Yes. Books might go the same way the horse has gone. No longer dominant, but still occupying niches.
- sneak 3y ago
  Vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs will also be unused in 100 years. Cassettes and VHS will by then be unreadable, just as most floppies are now. Hell, in 100 years, there won’t even be the mp3 codec anymore. You don’t need to tell me that people deliberately choose dead trees; I am one of them: I collect books and have more than most collectors. Same goes for vinyl. The writing is on the wall, however. In 100 years it won’t be a thing, just as fountain pens and wax seals aren’t today. Yes, they will still exist, and yes, people into whatever type of historical reenactment that is will still have them, but there will be no industry around them like there is now.
  - mfragin 3y ago
    Yeah I understand your point, but vinyl is kinda sacred. I mean, of all the things you mentioned, it's by far the most likely to still be usable in the future. Even in a post-apocalyptic world people might figure out how to play vinyl. MP3s? Not a chance. Full disclosure: I never liked cassettes. Oh, and I made the mistake of choosing Beta over VHS....
  - rchaud 3y ago
    > Cassettes and VHS will by then be unreadable, just as most floppies are now. And yet, the longevity of a humble cassette tape far exceeds that of the average website. Websites ("digital products" if we must) change, they delete old/offtopic articles for SEO reasons, they change designs to fit in more ads, their owner ship changes hands, the image links break...the list is endless. There are Gizmodo articles from < 10yrs filled with blank blocks with an "image not found" message in them. At least the cassette's changes are due to physical degradation only.
echelon 3y ago
> I don’t think we lost something other than paper and postage. Popular Science was nostalgic. It was a callback to an earlier time, and it tracked within its pages the series of changes led to today. It's like losing a species to extinction, albeit not quite as drastic or irrecoverable. I remember the magazine fondly. Once I got into my later teens, it felt a little too general audience for my taste. But it always made me wonder about the possibilities of science and engineering. Jetpack futures, cloud cities, and millennium ships. > Indie hackers (as well as anyone else) can now cheaply publish their own magazines to the globe. It won't be long and even blogs and news websites will see the margin set to zero. LLMs will ingest and rephrase (with accuracy) all kinds of content. There will be no money in running CNN or the New York Times. > Our great grandchildren will not use physical books. It's sad to think that the libraries will get garbage collected, but the books they store will be little more than anachronisms. Perhaps they can be turned into public internet cafes.
- JackFr 3y ago
  I had an argument with my wife about funding our public libraries. (We live in NYC which I believe supports 3 out of the top 10 public library systems in the country. Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan maintain separate library systems.) I am happy for my tax dollars to support the system, but the bottom line is that branch libraries exist as a free, under-resourced Internet cafe for the indigent. That might be a good use for the public fisc, but the librarians and books are completely ignored. We have three children the youngest of whom just finished high school and we were forced to admit none of us has been in our neighborhood branch in more than 8 years. At the same time I haves seen two exhibits at the main reading room in the past 18 months.
bawolff 3y ago
> Pretty soon (in the scheme of things) they’ll stop printing books and paper money too. That seems unlikely to me. E-books have really terrible UX. Paper books aren't going anywhere until that is fixed.
- dumbfounder 3y ago
  I can't carry a library of 1000 physical books in my pocket and pull them out while on the toilet. I think you have it backward.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    That's not exactly useful. The ability to read a book without any electrical charge, however, is.
    - dumbfounder 3y ago
      Being able to pull out any book, anywhere, any time, is not useful? What happens at night in your electricityless world, are you reading by candlelight? Or you can just light the page you just read on fire, that way your book is also your fuel.
    - nl 3y ago
      As someone who reads quickly a lot on planes (and sees a lot of others doing the same) the ability to have multiple books on a Kindle is much more important than lack of access to electricity for a few days. (I also have a large physical book library.)
    - willywanker 3y ago
      e-readers can go for days to weeks on a full charge depending on how often you use them. Definitely much longer than the average smartphone.
  - hattmall 3y ago
    But that's not really how books work though. I don't ever really need to read more than 1 book at a time. I'm all for e-readers, have a couple and use them, but it's a cost saving measure. I would vastly prefer physical books for the interface.
renegade-otter 3y ago
I am reading The Shallows, and I am not so sure. Having replaced my paper books with iPad Kindle versions years ago, I am seriously thinking of going back to paper. https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750 https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...
- sneak 3y ago
  I read books off of an SD card inserted into an e-ink device that has never had the wifi turned on. The problems with internet overuse are orthogonal.

by sneak 3y ago

nerdponx 3y ago

I don't think it will disappear entirely. Just like vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs, some people deliberately choose to buy dead tree media for one reason or another. Maybe print magazines will go first, and maybe print newspapers at some point in the future, but actual books will probably never go away.

HomeDeLaPot 3y ago
Yes. Books might go the same way the horse has gone. No longer dominant, but still occupying niches.
sneak 3y ago
Vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs will also be unused in 100 years. Cassettes and VHS will by then be unreadable, just as most floppies are now. Hell, in 100 years, there won’t even be the mp3 codec anymore. You don’t need to tell me that people deliberately choose dead trees; I am one of them: I collect books and have more than most collectors. Same goes for vinyl. The writing is on the wall, however. In 100 years it won’t be a thing, just as fountain pens and wax seals aren’t today. Yes, they will still exist, and yes, people into whatever type of historical reenactment that is will still have them, but there will be no industry around them like there is now.
- mfragin 3y ago
  Yeah I understand your point, but vinyl is kinda sacred. I mean, of all the things you mentioned, it's by far the most likely to still be usable in the future. Even in a post-apocalyptic world people might figure out how to play vinyl. MP3s? Not a chance. Full disclosure: I never liked cassettes. Oh, and I made the mistake of choosing Beta over VHS....
- rchaud 3y ago
  > Cassettes and VHS will by then be unreadable, just as most floppies are now. And yet, the longevity of a humble cassette tape far exceeds that of the average website. Websites ("digital products" if we must) change, they delete old/offtopic articles for SEO reasons, they change designs to fit in more ads, their owner ship changes hands, the image links break...the list is endless. There are Gizmodo articles from < 10yrs filled with blank blocks with an "image not found" message in them. At least the cassette's changes are due to physical degradation only.

echelon 3y ago

> I don’t think we lost something other than paper and postage. Popular Science was nostalgic. It was a callback to an earlier time, and it tracked within its pages the series of changes led to today. It's like losing a species to extinction, albeit not quite as drastic or irrecoverable. I remember the magazine fondly. Once I got into my later teens, it felt a little too general audience for my taste. But it always made me wonder about the possibilities of science and engineering. Jetpack futures, cloud cities, and millennium ships. > Indie hackers (as well as anyone else) can now cheaply publish their own magazines to the globe. It won't be long and even blogs and news websites will see the margin set to zero. LLMs will ingest and rephrase (with accuracy) all kinds of content. There will be no money in running CNN or the New York Times. > Our great grandchildren will not use physical books. It's sad to think that the libraries will get garbage collected, but the books they store will be little more than anachronisms. Perhaps they can be turned into public internet cafes.

JackFr 3y ago
I had an argument with my wife about funding our public libraries. (We live in NYC which I believe supports 3 out of the top 10 public library systems in the country. Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan maintain separate library systems.) I am happy for my tax dollars to support the system, but the bottom line is that branch libraries exist as a free, under-resourced Internet cafe for the indigent. That might be a good use for the public fisc, but the librarians and books are completely ignored. We have three children the youngest of whom just finished high school and we were forced to admit none of us has been in our neighborhood branch in more than 8 years. At the same time I haves seen two exhibits at the main reading room in the past 18 months.

bawolff 3y ago

> Pretty soon (in the scheme of things) they’ll stop printing books and paper money too. That seems unlikely to me. E-books have really terrible UX. Paper books aren't going anywhere until that is fixed.

dumbfounder 3y ago
I can't carry a library of 1000 physical books in my pocket and pull them out while on the toilet. I think you have it backward.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  That's not exactly useful. The ability to read a book without any electrical charge, however, is.
  - dumbfounder 3y ago
    Being able to pull out any book, anywhere, any time, is not useful? What happens at night in your electricityless world, are you reading by candlelight? Or you can just light the page you just read on fire, that way your book is also your fuel.
  - nl 3y ago
    As someone who reads quickly a lot on planes (and sees a lot of others doing the same) the ability to have multiple books on a Kindle is much more important than lack of access to electricity for a few days. (I also have a large physical book library.)
  - willywanker 3y ago
    e-readers can go for days to weeks on a full charge depending on how often you use them. Definitely much longer than the average smartphone.
- hattmall 3y ago
  But that's not really how books work though. I don't ever really need to read more than 1 book at a time. I'm all for e-readers, have a couple and use them, but it's a cost saving measure. I would vastly prefer physical books for the interface.

renegade-otter 3y ago

I am reading The Shallows, and I am not so sure. Having replaced my paper books with iPad Kindle versions years ago, I am seriously thinking of going back to paper. https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750 https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

sneak 3y ago
I read books off of an SD card inserted into an e-ink device that has never had the wifi turned on. The problems with internet overuse are orthogonal.