The future is bleak

[UndergroundMan]

FUCK THIS

Nothing compares to the feel of a book in your hands. I even enjoy the smell of books. And reading via a computer screen is painful and annoying. I would rather read a scroll than from a book on a computer screen...

[Centrist Simon Steele]

FUCK THIS

Nothing compares to the feel of a book in your hands. I even enjoy the smell of books. And reading via a computer screen is painful and annoying. I would rather read a scroll than from a book on a computer screen...

What about when you check out a book from the library and it has like a booger on the page?

[WhiteHaven]

What about when you check out a book from the library and it has like a booger on the page?

Then you go and buy the book. As easy as that.

Edit: How often does THAT happen, anyway?

[Peter Irving]

Then you go and buy the book. As easy as that.

Edit: How often does THAT happen, anyway?

Well my dad is a librarian and according to him worse has happaned. Like some fukcer defecated into a book.

[WhiteHaven]

Well my dad is a librarian and according to him worse has happaned. Like some fukcer defecated into a book.

Wah? What the hell! :o

Are you honest? It is really hard for me, to believe that. What kind of a person would do that?

Nice Avatar by the way.

[Peter Irving]

Wah? What the hell! :o

Are you honest? It is really hard for me, to believe that. What kind of a person would do that?

Nice Avatar by the way.

Yes I am completley honest. To me doing such a thing is about the same as defacing artwork.

Oh and yes my avatar is showing the important human theme of jaw kicking :D

[Shryke]

I have a friend who's a Librarian. Apparently at her library they have (or had rather) this one book. It was a bit on the racy side, but for the life of me I can't remember what she said the name was.

Anyway, only 1 person ever took this book out. He'd come in every wednesday, go straight to this book, take it off the shelf and then "sneak" it into the bathroom. And then ..... well, the pages came back sticky and I'll leave it at that.

Eventually, they got rid of the damn book and the Wednesday after that, apparently he complained to the front desk and raised a HUGE stink.

[Renasko]

Fucking nutjobs. 18 e-readers? Good luck with that and your coffee machines. :thumbsdown:

[Ran]

Yeah, you know, some of the decisions being made boggle my mind. The coffee machine? What the hell does that have to do with education? Are they turning out baristas for Starbucks?

[WhiteHaven]

Anyway, only 1 person ever took this book out. He'd come in every wednesday, go straight to this book, take it off the shelf and then "sneak" it into the bathroom. And then ..... well, the pages came back sticky and I'll leave it at that.

Eventually, they got rid of the damn book and the Wednesday after that, apparently he complained to the front desk and raised a HUGE stink.

There way too many sick people around.

[VarysTheSpider]

Guys--this is really about money. No one is going to read on screen. When you were in a hurry in college and needed one more source for that paper you were writing, what did you do? Check out a book? No you got an article online and printed it out. People are going to be printing in mass quantity, and the school charges you for every page.

If I was in a hurry for another source and feeling exceptionally lazy I didn't even have to leave my bed. I could access my university's electronic library from my laptop and read it straight from the screen. No hassle, no cost.

[Week]

FUCK THIS

Nothing compares to the feel of a book in your hands. I even enjoy the smell of books. And reading via a computer screen is painful and annoying. I would rather read a scroll than from a book on a computer screen...

Nice right hook, the poor strawman never saw it coming. Perhaps discuss the value of a library that is terribly underutilized and is simply a sunk cost for a high school vs digitizing the library to reduce cost. Nobody is saying that all libraries should do this, certainly not. For some, however, it may make a lot of sense.

[Geddon]

Think about it--kids won't check books out for free and get their info, now they'll skim books online and print a few pages here and there.

...

What this will end up doing is promoting NOT reading.

reading text on a screen - or even printed out from a web page - is not the same as reading from a book.

I second that. My sister has the Sony Ebook reader, that is some nasty shit. I am NEVER going to read my books in front of a screen. That's just not right. She isn't using the thing, either.

Bloody books, give me scrolls any day of the week. Ah, the tactile feel of rolling that vellum through your fingers, the beautiful hand-copied script, the freedom to lay out as much or as little of the scroll as necessary for reading comfort, the satisfaction of putting the scroll neatly back in it's case later.

Books, Pah! They make it too easy to just flip to the pages of interest - this "random access" will lead to readers skimming works, reading superficially rather than absorbing the information in the natural sequential order in which it was written. You mark my words, these "books" will be the end of reading and study.

Damn your scrolls, give me stone tablets any day of the week. The pleasing solidity and permanence, the craft involved in carving out these eternal messages, gifts to our descendants. The simple honesty of rock. As far as I'm concerned if it's not worth chiselling out painstakingly over weeks and months then it isn't worth reading.

These new fangled scrolls are ephemeral and fragile, they aren't a safe repository for knowledge. Also too much information can be recorded on them, any truly useful pieces of information will be lost in a sea of worthless verbiage - the important stuff will be too difficult to for the average person to pick out. You mark my words, these scrolls will be the end of real learning and wisdom.

Luddites.

Try to view it not as the end of books, but as the beginning of an era where there are no real limits to the information at your disposal. An era where the entire contents of the worlds libraries are a few clicks away, where the concepts of "unavailable", "out of print" and "all our copies are out on loan" no longer apply.

Books have had a good run, but all technologies are superseded eventually.

[El-ahrairah]

Books have had a good run, but all technologies are superseded eventually.

I think in the end (2000 years+) the book will outlast the computer.

"Surprisingly, humans invented books before computers. They do many things backwards" - Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

[Poobah]

Luddites.

Try to view it not as the end of books, but as the beginning of an era where there are no real limits to the information at your disposal. An era where the entire contents of the worlds libraries are a few clicks away, where the concepts of "unavailable", "out of print" and "all our copies are out on loan" no longer apply.

Books have had a good run, but all technologies are superseded eventually.

You can actually read books on a computer screen without coming away with a serious headache / loosing concentration? Congrats 'cause I can't.

Also. You can't sit with your computer on the bus/train/toilet and read from the screen. Even if you were using a little reader thing I'm guessing they have less tolerance for being near water than books and need electricity - surprisingly books are incredibly advanced and will run forever without needing to replace their batteries, they also have other advanced features like pages which you can read without any 'load time' and easily re-access swiftly through something known as a bookmark (well actually I dog-ear my books... *ducks and covers*), they are also entirely free of DRM, allowing the user perfect freedom in their use. And so on.

I'm sorry but 'readers' and their ilk as a superior technology? That's utter crap, I've tried using them and it's going to be years before they are anywhere near useful enough to be worth the bother. As for the world of the future, how about you imagine a world of "server down, try again later" "... battery low" "please input your credit card details to purchase the next page of this book" "error <blank screen>" "<Press Button> <wait> <page appears eventually>" Try thinking of a world in which Stuff Like this happens.

[WhiteHaven]

Try thinking of a world in which Stuff Like this happens.

THAT is scaring me! Imagine a world, were big ccoperations can erase the books of rebellious minds. Nah, I do not want to live in that world.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

28 ereaders != library.

I think in the end (2000 years+) the book will outlast the computer.

Well, in the event climate change or a nuclear war or some such thing ends industrialized society, perhaps.

[Ormond]

Yeah, you know, some of the decisions being made boggle my mind. The coffee machine? What the hell does that have to do with education? Are they turning out baristas for Starbucks?

I absolutely hate this, but this concept is going to spread from high schools to colleges quicker than you can say "mocha latte."

There are a lot of college administrators who already think exactly like the high school administrator at this place. There are many "non-selective" private colleges out there that are going to be doing exactly this very soon. It breaks my heart, but it is the wave of the future.

And the coffee machines will be seen as a big draw by the admissions people at every private school, high school or college. A lot of those people don't really care about education -- they just want to get the bodies paying tuition into the classrooms, and will think they can put out lots of ads about how their institution is on the cutting edge of the future by getting rid of books.

I think it's going to result in a future where very few people have a deep understanding of topics in depth but think knowledge is just the same thing as the "facts" you can quickly get from Googling Wikipedia.

[Geddon]

You can actually read books on a computer screen without coming away with a serious headache / loosing concentration? Congrats 'cause I can't.

The e-ink screens on the new electronic readers are as easy to read as books. The technology is completely different from that used in CRT/LCD displays and the eye fatigue associated with reading from the latter is not a problem when using e-ink.

Also. You can't sit with your computer on the bus/train/toilet and read from the screen. Even if you were using a little reader thing I'm guessing they have less tolerance for being near water than books and need electricity - surprisingly books are incredibly advanced and will run forever without needing to replace their batteries

My guess is that there will be a completely watertight electronic reader produced in the near future; it should be trivial to create one. At that point you'll be able to read while submerged, if you wish, and you won't have to leave the electronic reader on top of a radiator to dry out for a few days afterwards. In the meantime you can just put your e-reader in a transparent ziplock bag (many people already do this when using these devices at the beach).

As for electricity, most of the current electronic readers will last for weeks of reading between charges. Few people in the western world are away from sources of mains electricity for that long.

they also have other advanced features like pages which you can read without any 'load time' and easily re-access swiftly through something known as a bookmark (well actually I dog-ear my books... *ducks and covers*), they are also entirely free of DRM, allowing the user perfect freedom in their use. And so on.

They also turn yellow and rot, fall apart from multiple readings, get stained, get loaned out and lost. They are hard to search (at least when compared with full text searching on a computer), they are pretty bad for the environment and they take up a lot of space.

All of the useful functionality of a printed book (including bookmarks) is already, or will soon be, replicated by the electronic reader devices. In addition to that functionality you will also get a lot of additional functionality that can't be retrofitted to printed books.

I'm sorry but 'readers' and their ilk as a superior technology? That's utter crap, I've tried using them and it's going to be years before they are anywhere near useful enough to be worth the bother.

I use one regularly, at least as far as I'm concerned there is no difference (in terms of comfort and speed) reading from it or from a printed book. On aggregate they are about the same in terms of convenience - the device is light and easy to carry when compared to many of the large hardbacks I tend to read but there is more effort involved in getting the content on the device first.

The technology is already very good and is improving steadily. Within a decade anybody for whom reading is an important part of their life will own some sort of electronic reading device and will be doing most of their reading from it.

As for the world of the future, how about you imagine a world of "server down, try again later" "... battery low" "please input your credit card details to purchase the next page of this book" "error <blank screen>" "<Press Button> <wait> <page appears eventually>" Try thinking of a world in which Stuff Like this happens.

There will definitely be teething troubles, we are just at the beginning of this new era. I'm not worried about the reliability of the infrastructure (we deal with short lived service problems on the internet now but that hasn't harmed it's popularity) and locally caching content will help in these cases. Also if your e-reader crashes you'll just restart it, no big deal.

DRM, copyright and paying for content are the big issues. Personally I think we will eventually end up with a system where people pay a monthly subscription fee for access to any and all written content, with that fee being divided up between creators, rights holders and the companies that run the cataloguing/delivery systems. That could take quite a while though, several decades probably.

In reference to the OP, I think this school has jumped the gun. The infrastructure to replace a functioning library with an electronic equivalent just isn't there yet, and the devices are too expensive and fragile to be used on a loan-out basis. Give it 5 or 10 years though and it is very likely that those problems will have been solved.

[Serious Callers Only]

Pretty sad this gesticulation. I walk around with 3000 books in my pen drive and access to another 10000 or so from project Gutenberg where ever there is http access.

As for DRM well, its not called the analog hole for nothing.