Comments on: 30 mostly spurious benefits of ebooks

By: Chazz

Chazz — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:15:15 +0000

Ebooks require less hardware and software for conversion to audio than paper books which makes them a great convenience for those with limited vision.

By: M

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:15:38 +0000

Mark, you lose, lay down your antiqued books, and accept it! im not saying burn them, im just saying, you lose this arguement/discussion/debate/comparison, stop buying books if you want to be ethical. how many figures do you need before you start trusting what you see? or do you need those figures printed on a bit of dead tree?

By: M

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:58:42 +0000

i have over 13,000 ebooks, please tell me, without a house (im a student), i could store that amount of intellectual material in books without needing several removal vans. also, what good is a book, when you CANT BREATHE AIR. sure, ebooks require that you have manufactured for you, a computer, but at least the materials used don’t prevent AIR PRODUCTION, and seeing as your already ‘using a screen for flickr, youtube, etc’, not really wasted material is it? the electricity and manufacturing processes used CAN come from clean sources. books are inherently dated and destructive of the environment. also, im lazy and forget to bring books back to the library, i no longer have that problem. i can also share books with people AND STILL BE ABLE TO READ THEM AFTERWARDS, forget about “can i have my book back please?”, forget about it being ‘my’ book…..

to the author of this article, stop being an antique. THANK you. i have a laptop and im staying in this year. the benefits of books are now only subjective (portability withstanding) and, if a screen ‘hurts your eyes’, theres this clever function labeled BRIGHTNESS and CONTRAST, which you can dull. the text size and colour can also be modified for those with reading struggles, WITHOUT NEEDING A REPRINT….

bring on the resource based economy. future by design, Jacque Fresco. http://www.thevenusproject.com/

o and cencorship IS more avoidable on the internet, just to finish you off.

By: johnmiedema.ca » Blog Archive » “Paper vs. paperless: Which makes reading greener?”

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:46:38 +0000

[...] As the article states, the numbers aren’t in yet. Mark Lindner was the reluctant host of a discussion on this subject a little ways back. One useful thing that came out of that discussion was this link [...]

By: Slow Reading » Blog Archive » The Leaves and the Tree: Spectrum of Media

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:11:42 +0000

[...] idea has been kicking around for some time. A recent conversation at Off the Mark spurred back into [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:51:15 +0000

Quite interesting! Thank you, Paul.

While this will not directly answer our questions it is helpful.

By the way, if you do think that there is an answer then I’d be happy to suggest some things to read to disavow you of that notion. There is, nor cannot be, a single answer to this issue.

By: Paul R. Pival

Paul R. Pival — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:26:00 +0000

Hi Mark, just came across this article comparing the environmental cost of online vs paper newspapers - thought it was relevant to the discussion.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:47:48 +0000

Very good point, Bo!

Being a different kind(s) of technology they also have other individual and social costs than do books, which have their own.

I should have thought of this but since I’m not really trying to build that balanced list–that I’d love to see–by myself I gave it little thought.

Thanks for reminding us of it, Bo!

By: Bo Kinney

Bo Kinney — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:33:27 +0000

Great post, Mark! I just want to add one thing– E-books are different from real books in a very important way: They require you to have special equipment to use them, and you have to buy this equipment from the industrial producers. This has environmental costs, as you have pointed out, but it has social costs as well. When you have to buy special equipment to use books, some people will inevitably be excluded from their use.

By: John Miedema

John Miedema — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:46:48 +0000

I appreciate Mark’s even-handed view on the issue. Personally, one of the best advantages I see for ebooks is that it is one cheap way for new authors to get exposure. My view is that digital and print technologies represent two ends of a spectrum. Digital publishing is suited to high changeable content and works in progress, and for light reading. Print publishing is suited for well-developed ideas and complex ideas that require sustained reading, and rich materials that should be savoured slowly. As a spectrum, both mediums are useful. That seems to be a common point.