10 ms·

Digital media are failing, especially eBooks are, and it to me it feels like a huge cultural regression. In the nineties, I digitized my CD collection and have

by Udo 12y ago

Digital media are failing, especially eBooks are, and it to me it feels like a huge cultural regression. In the nineties, I digitized my CD collection and haven't looked back. I did the same with my DVDs, and eventually I got (DRM-free or cracked) eBook versions of all books that were important to me. Doing away with all those physical storage objects felt so liberating, I can't even describe it. Plus, I can have all my stuff with me wherever I go. I do enjoy reading on my iPad, too. However, nobody I know of made this leap. Usually, older people like me do have some sort of ripped movie or eBook collection which they don't use. Millennials, however, use physical media all the way, and even where they don't they accept only DRM'ed, thoroughly walled gardens where you can rent stuff for a limited time and those companies only allow you to consume things in a very restrictive manner. They have huge DVD collections, they started printing out their photos again, they mostly only read paper-based books, they prefer streaming content via crappy proprietary channels, and I'm not even sure many of them would know how to copy a file if their life depended on it. This feels like an immense failure to me, not only because I feel isolated in my content consumption habits, but also because we've somehow managed to move backwards for purely cultural reasons. It's a loss of capability, and a loss of personal freedom and empowerment.

agumonkey 12y ago
I think it boils down to the actual experience[1]. You don't interact with a CD much. You open the box, put the disc in the player, and then enjoy the actual content, same for movies. So CD, DVD, HDD or cloud doesn't take anything away. Reading is different, you constantly touch it, smell it, look at the paper and ink. I still remember strongly the sensation I get when I used to read a little. Eebook readers (even the best) take away all this. The most compelling reason people enjoy e-readers: space. Especially for travelers or even holidays, you can carry as many books as you want in your bag now; something impossible before. Other than that I'd bet people prefer paper. My conclusion to the digital era trend, is that it's a human sensation deprivation most of the time. [1] there's a little movement toward vynil LP records too, the large cover art, setting up the player arm (also the acoustics)...
- squeaky-clean 12y ago
  >Reading is different, you constantly touch it, smell it, look at the paper and ink. Aside from looking at the ink, none of these things actually have to do with reading. They're all things that deal with paper. I've never seen them as important, though I understand that some people enjoy them. But so much that you cannot read without it? (Or at least so much that it makes reading significantly less enjoyable). To me, that's like someone saying they like eating popcorn while watching movies, and that they could never watch a movie without popcorn. Do you really even enjoy the movies, or just the popcorn? I also have a vinyl record collection. I really enjoy the ritual of setting a record on the turntable and playing it, studying the packaging and any inserts included while it plays. But 99% of my music listening is done through Spotify or Bandcamp. eReaders have so many advantages aside from just space. I never lose my place, even when reading 5 books at once. I can highlight what I'm reading without worrying about it being harmful to the book. I can look up a word in a dictionary instantly, on the device (this ended up being a much nicer feature than I thought it would be). Being able to easily read with one hand. My library is entirely backed up online, so if I lose or break my device, I still keep my books (this isn't so true about the collection of books I left at an ex-girlfriend's house). >I think it boils down to the actual experience Certainly. It just surprises me how many people seem to enjoy the experience of reading more than the actual reading.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Ha, well, I edited my first comment too much, I said I believe that this is a fundamental trait of humans. We love the physical sensations. Typing on a mechanical keyboard, playing on a weighted-keys piano (instead of responsive synth.), touching paper. It becomes as important as the symbolic experience (the aesthetic pleasure of music, or ideas put in words). Medium and message blend into one.
  - gglitch 12y ago
    In my unstudied and ill-informed opinion, computers and the internet have trained many of us to view intellectual content as more abstracted from the physical experience of ingesting it than it really is, as though the ideal of reading would actually be telepathy from writer to reader, and anything added to that signal chain must be by definition noise. I don't know if I totally buy that view though. I sympathize with the students who focus better with print; I do too - and I take better notes when I write by hand. I don't think that's because I'm anachronistic; I think it's because of some fundamental aspect of being both a mind and a body.
dualogy 12y ago
Don't see what the problem is. So millenials like to retain some connection to the physical world rather than glue themselves to the same old glowing screen all day for all activities, from work to reading to movies to music. These things retain and comprise rituals, and rituals matter to human beings. Whether it's dedusting your DVD collection or swapping books with friends, reading a magazine in a park or cafe, etc.. netbooks, tablets, phablets have zero soul. Some go to extremes such as vinyl, most don't. Still. Let tech figure out aviation, industrial goods production, logistics and what not. Software doesn't have to eat everything. It might technically be capable of doing so, but if younger consumers inadvertently decide to slightly delay the all-out zombification of the masses for another decade or until they get hooked on GoogleAppleMicroCorp's always-on SmartGlassVRContactLenses, I say good riddance.
sigmar 12y ago
>Millennials, however, use physical media all the way... They have huge DVD collections, they started printing out their photos again, they mostly only read paper-based books What age are the Millennials that you know? Because I can assure you they are not typical Millennials
- WalterSear 12y ago
  The parent and article author are describing a world that they would like to exist, not necessarily the one we inhabit.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> but also because we've somehow managed to move backwards for purely cultural reasons. We didn't move backwards. What happened is that the expected benefits of online media didn't quite work out for most people in practice. Recognize that and optimizing for the state of media as it is rather than for acting now based on a romanticization of what online media could provide is sensible, and not a step backward. Will online digital media become what those of us who were around when it was emerging hoped? Sure, probably, eventually. And, really, people rejecting it because it hasn't yet, and because current physical media still offers concrete advantages to people's desires compared to existing online media is the only thing that can create the pressure that will get it there.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Exactly, it looks backward for those who are excited by the digital trend (a fad to me), but reality will balance things out. Also things have value when rare, now that physical is heading to rare...
smeyer 12y ago
>they started printing out their photos again You lost me here. I'm firmly a "millennial", and I can't recall ever seeing a friend with printed photos from the last four years other than the occasional art student. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your overarching point, but this part really rings very hollow to me.
- gglitch 12y ago
  My family prints out pictures. We of course have hundreds of gigs of digital, but the pleasure of having physical books of curated sets of our most loved photos, e.g. of our vacations and kids, is way more powerful than staring at them on our TV or laptops. (&FWIW I'm right at the cusp of gens X and Y.)
  - w1ntermute 12y ago
    That might be fine if you have lots of space in your house and don't plan to move any time soon, but I've kept everything digital because I don't have much space in my apartment and I might move within a year (when my lease is up). It's fantastic not having to deal with physical goods.
- bane 12y ago
  Every so often we'll print off a favorite picture or something. Maybe to make an invitation or a sign or something. We definitely don't treat them as well as a real photograph and they usually end up getting tossed in the trash after a short life tacked to a cork board.
alricb 12y ago
Mainly, in some cases, printed books still have an edge in usability over e-books. Some of it is just due to current technical limitations: e-books often have bad enough typography that the reading experience is noticeably worse than with a printed book. Moving around the content is still more awkward with e-books than with printed ones. We also have adopted page numbers as reference markers and haven't yet gone back to numbering sentences or paragraphs in most instances. There's also the issue that CDs or DVDs are useless without a playback device, while books are self-contained.
virmundi 12y ago
I have the opposite view for most of the items you've listed. I'm a millennial. I think that most of it boils down to two things: UX and sense of worth. First, for UX, I find most e-formatted books to be terrible. Sure fiction is okay in such a format. It's linear. Start on page 1. Work through until end. Sadly, I don't read fiction (my wife gets on me for this). I read technical things. I read things that require a House of Pain level of Jumping Around. I get five pages into a a section then need to backtrack. E-books are terrible for this. It's because they suck on Kobo and other e-readers. The screens too small to hold the code information. Large screen e-readers for A4 style documents never really existed (in a reasonable price range) on an open platform. Many technical works are A4 PDFs. They don't work well on e-book readers. I tried reading on two tables to get a better UX. The first was an HP flippy notebook. I read over 3,000 pages of IBM Red Books on Websphere Process Server and the old IBM MQ BPM whose name I'm forgetting. It wasn't terrible. A bit small because the resolution on the HP was lower than a modern laptop. However, it was 5-6 lbs. Crap was that tiring. So I got an iPad. Turns out that the resolution on that is too low for A4. Sure I can zoom. Sure I got GoodReader. Sure it was annoying when I tried to page through on a zoomed page. UX still sucks. Non-PDF tech books are better in iBook or the other readers available. I ran an experiment with Joy Of Clojure 2: The Clojuring. Not bad. Only worked inside. So I never got read at the beach (I moved to Florida to do that, amongst other reasons). UX never worked for me. I hope for a day when an e-reader fits a full page of information comfortably in the screen with ability to quickly leaf back through pages without slow refresh rates. Until that day comes, physical, heavy books it is. Second, I've come to the conclusion that I don't care for media. That isn't to say I don't use it. I do. Like crack. I sit on my sofa and do nothing but watch TV shows that I don't really care for, but it's easy enough to be motivated to just sit there. As a result, I don't pay for cable. I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime (Prime more for the shipping, but combined with the streaming, I get my money's worth). I don't buy DVDs any more. I don't watch the ones I have (except for once a year watching the Harry Potter movies over a weekend). I just don't care. So Netflix is fine with me. Control what they want, but the media companies wouldn't have made money off me if they were open. Media has almost no value to me. If my wife wasn't around, I'd get rid of Netflix (keep Prime, shipping to a small Florida town makes life better). From what I can tell through anecdotal observations, media is on the wane for most millennials. We don't philosophically care. That's why we're fine to rent access. It's not an asset. It's not an investment. It's something to do to distract and we've got phones with the Internet and its Tumblr and Facebook and Rock'em-Sock'em-Robots.
deleted 12y ago
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rayiner 12y ago
> I digitized my CD collection and haven't looked back Your CDs were always digital.
austenallred 12y ago
There are a few major problems with this "research." 1. Asking what people "prefer" does not reflect what they actually use. 2. Textbooks are very different from the books most people read 3. College students are in a conspicuous time of life when physical books are more readily available than eBooks (and often free). That doesn't hold true for most of life. > Digital media are failing, especially eBooks are I'm not sure where you're getting your data, but I think all of these anecdotes are highly exaggerated. Amazon began selling more E-Books than physical books back in 2011. [1] To be fair, I, along with millenials prefer reading physical books. They're nicer on your eyes, you get to "feel" them -- print is a great medium. But I now read exclusively on my iPad and eBook. Why? When I want to read something I want to read it now, and I don't want to end up with a library of crap I have to move around. Textbooks are particularly terrible in electronic formats. The formatting is never right, graphics are always messed up, code often has line breaks in weird places, etc. If I were still in college studying CS, of course I would get the physical copies. But I'm not, so I don't. >They started printing out their photos again I don't want to counter anecdote with anecdote, but I can't find any empirical data on number of photos printed, so I'm forced to. I literally don't know anyone who has printed more than a dozen photos in the past couple years (with the rare "year in photos" photobook exception). >They have huge DVD collections I have friends whose kids didn't know what a DVD is. Most people I know have some DVDs laying around, but I feel like you're vastly overstating the prominence of physical media. I even ditched my vinyl record collection for Spotify - it didn't provide enough value to lug it around I would guess I'm on the "early adopter" end of the spectrum (as well as a bit of a minimalist), but the notion of physical products that we own and lug around seems to be clearly on the way out, as not only electronic but "in the cloud" media take over. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?_...
anigbrowl 12y ago
It's a loss of capability, and a loss of personal freedom and empowerment. Wait, people's choice to prefer physical media is a loos of freedom and empowerment? That's a hard argument to make. It seems to me that you're arguing that the failure of others to share your consumption preferences means that there's insufficient market pressure to on suppliers to deliver content in a way that suits you. I like the idea of e-books but in practice I loathe reading them. That's inconvenient, because we have a lot of books and I read fast, so moving house means dealing with several hundred pounds of printed matter and wrangling bookshelves. But the textural substrate of the physical book is far mroe appealing to me than any e-reader, not to mention being able to pencil notes on the margin or the creative pleasures of discovering epehemera of prior readers in used books, from personal ntoes to airline tickets. Likewise, DVD or blu-rays often deliver better viewing quality than streaming alternatives (although I use Netflix streaming regularly), and more importantly they often contain valuable extras - at least I find them valuable, because I work in film so things like interviews or director commentaries can have significant professional utility. Downside is having the wrangle the physical disks and annoying publisher lead-ins/piracy warnings and so on. As for photos, I have thousands of digital ones as I shoot a lot, but ones I really like get printed and I also still shoot things on film because film grain color etc/ is so aesthetically pleasing. Film sets are generally digital these days, and that means shooting a bland, low-contrast image in order to maximize dynamic range and treat the footage with an appropriate 'look' in post. Economically this makes a great deal of sense and I love the possibilities it opens up, but I also enjoy shooting blind on junk cameras (even a hand cranked one) to see what I'll get. Digital is a great complement to working with or viewing physical media, but it need not and probably should not become a substitute. I have photos and artwork of mine hanging on the wall that I originated digitally, but I also enjoy brushes and paint; I do most of my writing at a keyboard but I carry notepaper and pencil everywhere because I enjoy writing things by hand, and because switching between different media is often a good way to escape creative blockages.
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
What's "backwards" or "forwards", and who are you to decide for the rest of us? Look, I've tried many of these same things. Digitized all my CDs? Check. Start in on the movies? Check. Got a crap-ton of ebooks on my Kindle? Check. But reading is simply not consuming bits displayed in e-ink on a hunk of plastic. Reading is removing yourself from distractions and committing to some kind of journey with your author. The devices that we consume e-books on are now all competing to get us to do all sorts of other bullshit that's got nothing to do with that. And that makes them a problem. I'm keeping my V1 Kindle DX until it fails, and then unless I find another 1-function e-book device? I'm throwing the entire hunk of trash away. It doesn't matter if I have 5 or 5 thousand books on one device, if I don't get the same benefits from reading, it's not working for me. For consumers, there is nothing wrong with one-function devices -- it's the manufacturers that all want a new walled garden where they can charge entry.
fsloth 12y ago
Digital media at this point in time is more or less volatile from a historical perspective. It's best to consider it transient and have physical copies of the most precious things. Transient equals consumables - and companies leverage this. I have a few photographs from my great-grandparents from late 19th or early 20th century. Which are awesome. With physical media I can be pretty sure I can preserve data over the next hundred years (sans accidents). With digital media one still needs heavy redundancy to guarantee preservation. Not to think about the historical compatibility issue. Which storage format will be readable then? It's much easier on an institutional, internet archive scale to set up an ongoing process. I'm a software engineer and figuring out how to keep my digital data alive is a constant PITA...
sowhatquestion 12y ago
> Millennials, however, use physical media all the way... They have huge DVD collections As a millenial, I have to say this statement could hardly be more misleading. Millenials I know may have DVD and even VHS collections, but that's only because these media are effectively "dead," so used items can be had for free or cheap via thrift stores. (Remember that we're young and (mostly) poor; these simple facts explain 99% of so-called "generational trends.") Other physical media (viz., vinyl records) are typically kept around for nostalgia/display value. Someone who has a record on vinyl might listen to it more often as an MP3 or stream--but those things don't fulfill the universal human need to put all the stuff you like on a shelf. > and even where they don't they accept only DRM'ed, thoroughly walled gardens where you can rent stuff for a limited time and those companies only allow you to consume things in a very restrictive manner. Ah, so you're saying millenials don't use the kind of digital media that squares with your politics! Fascinating, tell me more. But this is the simplest thing in the world to explain: people don't actually want to own media. We want to (1) access it when we want to experience it, and (2) signal to others that we like it. Streaming solves the first problem easily and cheaply. Occasional physical purchases solve the second problem. Regarding DRM'd streaming in particular, do you know how many hours of my life I sacrificed in the early 2000s hand-editing MP3 tags, copying files between devices, etc.? Neither do I, and I don't want to know because I'm sure it was obscenely high. I would gladly pay Google Play twice the $10/month I pay them so that I will never to have to return to those dark times. And I feel similarly about Netflix. If for some reason my streaming services don't have a piece of media--or if I need something they do have in DRM-free form--I can torrent it or (vomit) purchase it from Amazon/iTunes. Honestly, it's a beautiful system--I get so much for so little. It feels like the exact opposite of a "loss of capability." But this isn't an "I love Big Brother" moment. I accept the system only because I always have the option to pirate what I need. That's why I don't see DRM as the problem. DRM can never eliminate piracy due to the "analog hole." Law enforcement, the courts, and Big Content could do a lot more to crack down on it though. That's why, on the one hand, I really won't lift a finger to do anything about DRM, but on the other hand, I'd be willing to expend a lot of energy opposing any law that would further empower copyright owners. That's why I've donated to the Pirate Bay. Etc. If you want to take the discussion in a more idealistic direction, I think reducing the copyright term to 15-20 years would be a much more important change than anything else I've discussed. And unlike anti-DRM activism, copyright term reform is something that almost anyone can understand and relate to. > they mostly only read paper-based books Did you RTFA? The whole thing is about why books are an exception. No one is concerned with "reading comprehension" when it comes to music or movies. Psychologists in TFA appear to be saying--and I agree--that our comprehension and retention of long-form printed material is facilitated in subtle ways by the physicality of books. TL;DR if the system stays as open as it is today, I think digital media are clearly succeeding. In a context where Netflix is one option among several, it's a godsend. In a context where it's the only option, I think you have a better case--but we can prevent things from deteriorating to that point.

by Udo 12y ago

agumonkey 12y ago

I think it boils down to the actual experience[1]. You don't interact with a CD much. You open the box, put the disc in the player, and then enjoy the actual content, same for movies. So CD, DVD, HDD or cloud doesn't take anything away. Reading is different, you constantly touch it, smell it, look at the paper and ink. I still remember strongly the sensation I get when I used to read a little. Eebook readers (even the best) take away all this. The most compelling reason people enjoy e-readers: space. Especially for travelers or even holidays, you can carry as many books as you want in your bag now; something impossible before. Other than that I'd bet people prefer paper. My conclusion to the digital era trend, is that it's a human sensation deprivation most of the time. [1] there's a little movement toward vynil LP records too, the large cover art, setting up the player arm (also the acoustics)...

squeaky-clean 12y ago
>Reading is different, you constantly touch it, smell it, look at the paper and ink. Aside from looking at the ink, none of these things actually have to do with reading. They're all things that deal with paper. I've never seen them as important, though I understand that some people enjoy them. But so much that you cannot read without it? (Or at least so much that it makes reading significantly less enjoyable). To me, that's like someone saying they like eating popcorn while watching movies, and that they could never watch a movie without popcorn. Do you really even enjoy the movies, or just the popcorn? I also have a vinyl record collection. I really enjoy the ritual of setting a record on the turntable and playing it, studying the packaging and any inserts included while it plays. But 99% of my music listening is done through Spotify or Bandcamp. eReaders have so many advantages aside from just space. I never lose my place, even when reading 5 books at once. I can highlight what I'm reading without worrying about it being harmful to the book. I can look up a word in a dictionary instantly, on the device (this ended up being a much nicer feature than I thought it would be). Being able to easily read with one hand. My library is entirely backed up online, so if I lose or break my device, I still keep my books (this isn't so true about the collection of books I left at an ex-girlfriend's house). >I think it boils down to the actual experience Certainly. It just surprises me how many people seem to enjoy the experience of reading more than the actual reading.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Ha, well, I edited my first comment too much, I said I believe that this is a fundamental trait of humans. We love the physical sensations. Typing on a mechanical keyboard, playing on a weighted-keys piano (instead of responsive synth.), touching paper. It becomes as important as the symbolic experience (the aesthetic pleasure of music, or ideas put in words). Medium and message blend into one.
- gglitch 12y ago
  In my unstudied and ill-informed opinion, computers and the internet have trained many of us to view intellectual content as more abstracted from the physical experience of ingesting it than it really is, as though the ideal of reading would actually be telepathy from writer to reader, and anything added to that signal chain must be by definition noise. I don't know if I totally buy that view though. I sympathize with the students who focus better with print; I do too - and I take better notes when I write by hand. I don't think that's because I'm anachronistic; I think it's because of some fundamental aspect of being both a mind and a body.

dualogy 12y ago

Don't see what the problem is. So millenials like to retain some connection to the physical world rather than glue themselves to the same old glowing screen all day for all activities, from work to reading to movies to music. These things retain and comprise rituals, and rituals matter to human beings. Whether it's dedusting your DVD collection or swapping books with friends, reading a magazine in a park or cafe, etc.. netbooks, tablets, phablets have zero soul. Some go to extremes such as vinyl, most don't. Still. Let tech figure out aviation, industrial goods production, logistics and what not. Software doesn't have to eat everything. It might technically be capable of doing so, but if younger consumers inadvertently decide to slightly delay the all-out zombification of the masses for another decade or until they get hooked on GoogleAppleMicroCorp's always-on SmartGlassVRContactLenses, I say good riddance.

sigmar 12y ago

>Millennials, however, use physical media all the way... They have huge DVD collections, they started printing out their photos again, they mostly only read paper-based books What age are the Millennials that you know? Because I can assure you they are not typical Millennials

WalterSear 12y ago
The parent and article author are describing a world that they would like to exist, not necessarily the one we inhabit.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> but also because we've somehow managed to move backwards for purely cultural reasons. We didn't move backwards. What happened is that the expected benefits of online media didn't quite work out for most people in practice. Recognize that and optimizing for the state of media as it is rather than for acting now based on a romanticization of what online media could provide is sensible, and not a step backward. Will online digital media become what those of us who were around when it was emerging hoped? Sure, probably, eventually. And, really, people rejecting it because it hasn't yet, and because current physical media still offers concrete advantages to people's desires compared to existing online media is the only thing that can create the pressure that will get it there.

agumonkey 12y ago
Exactly, it looks backward for those who are excited by the digital trend (a fad to me), but reality will balance things out. Also things have value when rare, now that physical is heading to rare...

smeyer 12y ago

>they started printing out their photos again You lost me here. I'm firmly a "millennial", and I can't recall ever seeing a friend with printed photos from the last four years other than the occasional art student. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your overarching point, but this part really rings very hollow to me.

gglitch 12y ago
My family prints out pictures. We of course have hundreds of gigs of digital, but the pleasure of having physical books of curated sets of our most loved photos, e.g. of our vacations and kids, is way more powerful than staring at them on our TV or laptops. (&FWIW I'm right at the cusp of gens X and Y.)
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  That might be fine if you have lots of space in your house and don't plan to move any time soon, but I've kept everything digital because I don't have much space in my apartment and I might move within a year (when my lease is up). It's fantastic not having to deal with physical goods.
bane 12y ago
Every so often we'll print off a favorite picture or something. Maybe to make an invitation or a sign or something. We definitely don't treat them as well as a real photograph and they usually end up getting tossed in the trash after a short life tacked to a cork board.

alricb 12y ago

Mainly, in some cases, printed books still have an edge in usability over e-books. Some of it is just due to current technical limitations: e-books often have bad enough typography that the reading experience is noticeably worse than with a printed book. Moving around the content is still more awkward with e-books than with printed ones. We also have adopted page numbers as reference markers and haven't yet gone back to numbering sentences or paragraphs in most instances. There's also the issue that CDs or DVDs are useless without a playback device, while books are self-contained.

virmundi 12y ago

I have the opposite view for most of the items you've listed. I'm a millennial. I think that most of it boils down to two things: UX and sense of worth. First, for UX, I find most e-formatted books to be terrible. Sure fiction is okay in such a format. It's linear. Start on page 1. Work through until end. Sadly, I don't read fiction (my wife gets on me for this). I read technical things. I read things that require a House of Pain level of Jumping Around. I get five pages into a a section then need to backtrack. E-books are terrible for this. It's because they suck on Kobo and other e-readers. The screens too small to hold the code information. Large screen e-readers for A4 style documents never really existed (in a reasonable price range) on an open platform. Many technical works are A4 PDFs. They don't work well on e-book readers. I tried reading on two tables to get a better UX. The first was an HP flippy notebook. I read over 3,000 pages of IBM Red Books on Websphere Process Server and the old IBM MQ BPM whose name I'm forgetting. It wasn't terrible. A bit small because the resolution on the HP was lower than a modern laptop. However, it was 5-6 lbs. Crap was that tiring. So I got an iPad. Turns out that the resolution on that is too low for A4. Sure I can zoom. Sure I got GoodReader. Sure it was annoying when I tried to page through on a zoomed page. UX still sucks. Non-PDF tech books are better in iBook or the other readers available. I ran an experiment with Joy Of Clojure 2: The Clojuring. Not bad. Only worked inside. So I never got read at the beach (I moved to Florida to do that, amongst other reasons). UX never worked for me. I hope for a day when an e-reader fits a full page of information comfortably in the screen with ability to quickly leaf back through pages without slow refresh rates. Until that day comes, physical, heavy books it is. Second, I've come to the conclusion that I don't care for media. That isn't to say I don't use it. I do. Like crack. I sit on my sofa and do nothing but watch TV shows that I don't really care for, but it's easy enough to be motivated to just sit there. As a result, I don't pay for cable. I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime (Prime more for the shipping, but combined with the streaming, I get my money's worth). I don't buy DVDs any more. I don't watch the ones I have (except for once a year watching the Harry Potter movies over a weekend). I just don't care. So Netflix is fine with me. Control what they want, but the media companies wouldn't have made money off me if they were open. Media has almost no value to me. If my wife wasn't around, I'd get rid of Netflix (keep Prime, shipping to a small Florida town makes life better). From what I can tell through anecdotal observations, media is on the wane for most millennials. We don't philosophically care. That's why we're fine to rent access. It's not an asset. It's not an investment. It's something to do to distract and we've got phones with the Internet and its Tumblr and Facebook and Rock'em-Sock'em-Robots.

deleted 12y ago

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rayiner 12y ago

> I digitized my CD collection and haven't looked back Your CDs were always digital.

austenallred 12y ago

There are a few major problems with this "research." 1. Asking what people "prefer" does not reflect what they actually use. 2. Textbooks are very different from the books most people read 3. College students are in a conspicuous time of life when physical books are more readily available than eBooks (and often free). That doesn't hold true for most of life. > Digital media are failing, especially eBooks are I'm not sure where you're getting your data, but I think all of these anecdotes are highly exaggerated. Amazon began selling more E-Books than physical books back in 2011. [1] To be fair, I, along with millenials prefer reading physical books. They're nicer on your eyes, you get to "feel" them -- print is a great medium. But I now read exclusively on my iPad and eBook. Why? When I want to read something I want to read it now, and I don't want to end up with a library of crap I have to move around. Textbooks are particularly terrible in electronic formats. The formatting is never right, graphics are always messed up, code often has line breaks in weird places, etc. If I were still in college studying CS, of course I would get the physical copies. But I'm not, so I don't. >They started printing out their photos again I don't want to counter anecdote with anecdote, but I can't find any empirical data on number of photos printed, so I'm forced to. I literally don't know anyone who has printed more than a dozen photos in the past couple years (with the rare "year in photos" photobook exception). >They have huge DVD collections I have friends whose kids didn't know what a DVD is. Most people I know have some DVDs laying around, but I feel like you're vastly overstating the prominence of physical media. I even ditched my vinyl record collection for Spotify - it didn't provide enough value to lug it around I would guess I'm on the "early adopter" end of the spectrum (as well as a bit of a minimalist), but the notion of physical products that we own and lug around seems to be clearly on the way out, as not only electronic but "in the cloud" media take over. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?_...

anigbrowl 12y ago

It's a loss of capability, and a loss of personal freedom and empowerment. Wait, people's choice to prefer physical media is a loos of freedom and empowerment? That's a hard argument to make. It seems to me that you're arguing that the failure of others to share your consumption preferences means that there's insufficient market pressure to on suppliers to deliver content in a way that suits you. I like the idea of e-books but in practice I loathe reading them. That's inconvenient, because we have a lot of books and I read fast, so moving house means dealing with several hundred pounds of printed matter and wrangling bookshelves. But the textural substrate of the physical book is far mroe appealing to me than any e-reader, not to mention being able to pencil notes on the margin or the creative pleasures of discovering epehemera of prior readers in used books, from personal ntoes to airline tickets. Likewise, DVD or blu-rays often deliver better viewing quality than streaming alternatives (although I use Netflix streaming regularly), and more importantly they often contain valuable extras - at least I find them valuable, because I work in film so things like interviews or director commentaries can have significant professional utility. Downside is having the wrangle the physical disks and annoying publisher lead-ins/piracy warnings and so on. As for photos, I have thousands of digital ones as I shoot a lot, but ones I really like get printed and I also still shoot things on film because film grain color etc/ is so aesthetically pleasing. Film sets are generally digital these days, and that means shooting a bland, low-contrast image in order to maximize dynamic range and treat the footage with an appropriate 'look' in post. Economically this makes a great deal of sense and I love the possibilities it opens up, but I also enjoy shooting blind on junk cameras (even a hand cranked one) to see what I'll get. Digital is a great complement to working with or viewing physical media, but it need not and probably should not become a substitute. I have photos and artwork of mine hanging on the wall that I originated digitally, but I also enjoy brushes and paint; I do most of my writing at a keyboard but I carry notepaper and pencil everywhere because I enjoy writing things by hand, and because switching between different media is often a good way to escape creative blockages.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

What's "backwards" or "forwards", and who are you to decide for the rest of us? Look, I've tried many of these same things. Digitized all my CDs? Check. Start in on the movies? Check. Got a crap-ton of ebooks on my Kindle? Check. But reading is simply not consuming bits displayed in e-ink on a hunk of plastic. Reading is removing yourself from distractions and committing to some kind of journey with your author. The devices that we consume e-books on are now all competing to get us to do all sorts of other bullshit that's got nothing to do with that. And that makes them a problem. I'm keeping my V1 Kindle DX until it fails, and then unless I find another 1-function e-book device? I'm throwing the entire hunk of trash away. It doesn't matter if I have 5 or 5 thousand books on one device, if I don't get the same benefits from reading, it's not working for me. For consumers, there is nothing wrong with one-function devices -- it's the manufacturers that all want a new walled garden where they can charge entry.

fsloth 12y ago

Digital media at this point in time is more or less volatile from a historical perspective. It's best to consider it transient and have physical copies of the most precious things. Transient equals consumables - and companies leverage this. I have a few photographs from my great-grandparents from late 19th or early 20th century. Which are awesome. With physical media I can be pretty sure I can preserve data over the next hundred years (sans accidents). With digital media one still needs heavy redundancy to guarantee preservation. Not to think about the historical compatibility issue. Which storage format will be readable then? It's much easier on an institutional, internet archive scale to set up an ongoing process. I'm a software engineer and figuring out how to keep my digital data alive is a constant PITA...

sowhatquestion 12y ago

> Millennials, however, use physical media all the way... They have huge DVD collections As a millenial, I have to say this statement could hardly be more misleading. Millenials I know may have DVD and even VHS collections, but that's only because these media are effectively "dead," so used items can be had for free or cheap via thrift stores. (Remember that we're young and (mostly) poor; these simple facts explain 99% of so-called "generational trends.") Other physical media (viz., vinyl records) are typically kept around for nostalgia/display value. Someone who has a record on vinyl might listen to it more often as an MP3 or stream--but those things don't fulfill the universal human need to put all the stuff you like on a shelf. > and even where they don't they accept only DRM'ed, thoroughly walled gardens where you can rent stuff for a limited time and those companies only allow you to consume things in a very restrictive manner. Ah, so you're saying millenials don't use the kind of digital media that squares with your politics! Fascinating, tell me more. But this is the simplest thing in the world to explain: people don't actually want to own media. We want to (1) access it when we want to experience it, and (2) signal to others that we like it. Streaming solves the first problem easily and cheaply. Occasional physical purchases solve the second problem. Regarding DRM'd streaming in particular, do you know how many hours of my life I sacrificed in the early 2000s hand-editing MP3 tags, copying files between devices, etc.? Neither do I, and I don't want to know because I'm sure it was obscenely high. I would gladly pay Google Play twice the $10/month I pay them so that I will never to have to return to those dark times. And I feel similarly about Netflix. If for some reason my streaming services don't have a piece of media--or if I need something they do have in DRM-free form--I can torrent it or (vomit) purchase it from Amazon/iTunes. Honestly, it's a beautiful system--I get so much for so little. It feels like the exact opposite of a "loss of capability." But this isn't an "I love Big Brother" moment. I accept the system only because I always have the option to pirate what I need. That's why I don't see DRM as the problem. DRM can never eliminate piracy due to the "analog hole." Law enforcement, the courts, and Big Content could do a lot more to crack down on it though. That's why, on the one hand, I really won't lift a finger to do anything about DRM, but on the other hand, I'd be willing to expend a lot of energy opposing any law that would further empower copyright owners. That's why I've donated to the Pirate Bay. Etc. If you want to take the discussion in a more idealistic direction, I think reducing the copyright term to 15-20 years would be a much more important change than anything else I've discussed. And unlike anti-DRM activism, copyright term reform is something that almost anyone can understand and relate to. > they mostly only read paper-based books Did you RTFA? The whole thing is about why books are an exception. No one is concerned with "reading comprehension" when it comes to music or movies. Psychologists in TFA appear to be saying--and I agree--that our comprehension and retention of long-form printed material is facilitated in subtle ways by the physicality of books. TL;DR if the system stays as open as it is today, I think digital media are clearly succeeding. In a context where Netflix is one option among several, it's a godsend. In a context where it's the only option, I think you have a better case--but we can prevent things from deteriorating to that point.