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> Will all of this be around in twenty or thirty years? I actually have the opposite theory. Will books be around in 20 or 30 years? I mean, books that exist

> Will all of this be around in twenty or thirty years? I actually have the opposite theory. Will books be around in 20 or 30 years? I mean, books that exist now will continue to exist. But will new ones continue to be printed? Will it continue to exist as a format? I am an early adopter, but a growing fraction of things I read simply do not come in dead-tree format. We are approaching a singularity where today's hardbacks becomes tomorrow's paperbacks--something to do when demand is higher than anticipated. I am with you when you are concerned about DRM and how long your iPad will last. But I think DRM-free PDF and ePub are a lot more futureproof than paper. Imagine if your house catches on fire--do you even have a list of books to put on the insurance form? Whereas, I have all my books backed up with geographic redundancy. Disclaimer: I've scanned all my books, http://sealedabstract.com/lifehacking/the-joy-of-electronic-books/ http://sealedabstract.com/lifehacking/the-joy-of-electronic-...

anonymoushn 15y ago
All of your images seem to be 0 bytes.
lukev 15y ago
With current technology, physical media is still more robust for the effort expended. If you throw a book on a shelf, it will be there in 50 years except in the event of a house-destroying catastrophe (which hopefully insurance would cover). No thought required. In fact, my son could discover it decades after I'm dead, with no other communication between us. Current digital solutions, however, require more or less constant upkeep. Physical media such as hard drives, DVDs and flash is susceptible to both catastrophic failure and bit rot with a half life of only about 5 years (in my experience). Online storage services which outsource the task of redundant maintained storage avoid this, but to protect yourself from services going defunct you need to have your data on multiple services and keep them constantly synced. In short, if you stop actively backing up/maintaining your data for even a few years, chances are you'll loose it. I think there's also discoverability issues with digital media in its current incarnation, but that's another discussion.
- firebones 15y ago
  Nassim Nicholas Taleb made the point in a recent antifragility lecture that if a technology is robust enough to have survived X years and is still in use, it almost assuredly will be around X years from now. By that metric, use of printed books has a minimum of 500 years of life remaining, if not more (depending on your definition of the underlying technology of books). In contrast, look at the fragility of the systems that sustain ebooks, starting with the computing hardware supply chain. An interesting thought experiment is to think of what it would take for ebooks to become as robust or as antifragile as physical books. For instance, would it require the hardware, power supply, and content to fuse into a form as cheap and ubiquitous as paper (and manufacturing of such hardware within the realm of anyone)? What could enable that? A breakthrough in self-replicating 3D printers that are capable of using recyclable material as printer stock?
- drewcrawford 15y ago
  My comment is not at all about which is the better archival medium. Nothing in your reply addresses my thesis that dead-tree books will cease to be produced for new content, and in fact have been already in many cases. Dead-tree paper can only really be advantageous as you propose if you consider the cost of producing the physical artifact (printing, binding, shipping) a sunk cost. It may be a sunk cost in 1995, but my thesis is that it will not be a sunk cost in 2030. Stated alternately, it may be a better archival medium, but most books are not purchased on the basis of being reliable archives. Although independent of the main premise, I do object to bit rot as being applicable to books. My library of ebooks spans 25GB, an amount that pales in comparison to my music collection, which normal people all have in digital format. 25GB can be backed up in minutes a year, and is far less than the effort people extend to climate-control a collection of dead trees and cart it around during moves. Would you be open to a long bet on this topic?

anonymoushn 15y ago

All of your images seem to be 0 bytes.

lukev 15y ago

With current technology, physical media is still more robust for the effort expended. If you throw a book on a shelf, it will be there in 50 years except in the event of a house-destroying catastrophe (which hopefully insurance would cover). No thought required. In fact, my son could discover it decades after I'm dead, with no other communication between us. Current digital solutions, however, require more or less constant upkeep. Physical media such as hard drives, DVDs and flash is susceptible to both catastrophic failure and bit rot with a half life of only about 5 years (in my experience). Online storage services which outsource the task of redundant maintained storage avoid this, but to protect yourself from services going defunct you need to have your data on multiple services and keep them constantly synced. In short, if you stop actively backing up/maintaining your data for even a few years, chances are you'll loose it. I think there's also discoverability issues with digital media in its current incarnation, but that's another discussion.

firebones 15y ago
Nassim Nicholas Taleb made the point in a recent antifragility lecture that if a technology is robust enough to have survived X years and is still in use, it almost assuredly will be around X years from now. By that metric, use of printed books has a minimum of 500 years of life remaining, if not more (depending on your definition of the underlying technology of books). In contrast, look at the fragility of the systems that sustain ebooks, starting with the computing hardware supply chain. An interesting thought experiment is to think of what it would take for ebooks to become as robust or as antifragile as physical books. For instance, would it require the hardware, power supply, and content to fuse into a form as cheap and ubiquitous as paper (and manufacturing of such hardware within the realm of anyone)? What could enable that? A breakthrough in self-replicating 3D printers that are capable of using recyclable material as printer stock?
drewcrawford 15y ago
My comment is not at all about which is the better archival medium. Nothing in your reply addresses my thesis that dead-tree books will cease to be produced for new content, and in fact have been already in many cases. Dead-tree paper can only really be advantageous as you propose if you consider the cost of producing the physical artifact (printing, binding, shipping) a sunk cost. It may be a sunk cost in 1995, but my thesis is that it will not be a sunk cost in 2030. Stated alternately, it may be a better archival medium, but most books are not purchased on the basis of being reliable archives. Although independent of the main premise, I do object to bit rot as being applicable to books. My library of ebooks spans 25GB, an amount that pales in comparison to my music collection, which normal people all have in digital format. 25GB can be backed up in minutes a year, and is far less than the effort people extend to climate-control a collection of dead trees and cart it around during moves. Would you be open to a long bet on this topic?