In the US, most pulp and lumber come from tree farms, like at Georgia-Pacific. New tree lots are planted as mature lots are harvested. These days deforestation occures largely in developing countries like Brazil where demand for land overrides environmental concerns.
Environmental Responsibility: Books vs. Digital Readers
- Thread starter Smellincoffee
- Start date
In the US, most pulp and lumber come from tree farms, like at Georgia-Pacific. New tree lots are planted as mature lots are harvested. These days deforestation occures largely in developing countries like Brazil where demand for land overrides environmental concerns.
The ability to change the font size would be the only reason I would ever get one of these gizmos. There are some websites I visit regularly where I have the font size set for what's comfortable for me - thank goodness fanfiction.net is one that allows this.
CKS, what kind of fanfic do you read?
I read a lot of Star Trek, some Highlander, some Tudors, and just finished a 26-chapter novel about the Borgias. This is all on fanfiction.net, but I also have a growing collection of physical fanzines - mostly Star Trek (Classic only; I don't care for most of the Next Gen stuff), some Highlander, Doctor Who, and crossovers.And speaking of the physical fanzines - some really excellent Star Trek fanfic is available online that used to be only available in physical form, but part of the appeal of the physical fanzines is the artwork. Most of the time when the stories are re-posted online, the artwork isn't.
Tomorrow there is a new series premiering on TV, called Revolution. The basic premise is that one day, the electricity stops working, all over the planet. No electricity, no batteries, therefore no computers, cell phones, etc. Personally, I'd be devastated if my reading and reference library - which is extensive, considering that I've been a book collector for over 40 years (yes, I still occasionally pick up and read a few of my childhood books, and still have the very first book I can remember) - were lost forever.
And with a physical book, the company that sold it to you can't electronically grab it back.
Firefox can set and remember zoom level on a site-specific basis, there's really no need for sites to implement this feature on their end.
That can't happen to any of my ebooks.
To be honest, I like the idea of building a large physical collection that I can stand back and admire. Electronic collections (this applies to video games and Steam too) just don't give the same feeling as amassing a physical one.
I get that, but I move fairly frequently, and moving large collections of stuff is a huge hassle. The alternative, not moving as frequently, is really restrictive to your life/career.
Also collections of physical stuff are expensive to store.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Yeah, having a few hundred books on your shelves makes you feel more... better, than having a few hundred files in your kindle.
I'm not materialistic like that.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
But I am. In the house of my dreams there is a library with walls wrapped in books, thousands of them. 
Mise
isle of lucy
Bragging about your book collection is for snobs. I'm above all of that.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
The house of my dreams. I wish I had thousands of books.
I'm quite proud of my library, which includes the Franklin Library's "Great Books" collection, as well as countless history books with decades of my marginalia, arguments and highlighting. Call it bragging (Mise), I don't care.
One overriding point. Stuff you have on "electronic files" eventually disappears. I can't begin to describe how much research, data, articles, papers and books (and Music!) I've lost since the 80's from corrupted files and dead hardrives. Yet I still have physical books from when I was a kid.
There's also the matter of (planned) obsolescence. With each new operating system, old data (deliberately) becomes unreadable (as a profit strategy by device manufacturers). Once you're on the technological bandwagon, you have to be pretty active and continue spending to keep your files rewritten and up to date. Corporations like where I work have to maintain an entire expensive department of IT geeks to preserve and protect all our valuable medical and business data. Whereas a book is a one-time expense and can just sit there - gathering dust for years (lifetimes).
I'm reminded of the historian David McCullough, who while researching his book, 1776, visited the Admiralty in London. He was allowed into the stacks and walked down the years until he reached 1776, pulled the dusty volume down from the shelf and opened it to read about Admiral Howe's fleet that assembled and sailed to New York in the War. Written in a delicate hand over two hundred years ago - and to his left, volumes going back a century or more earlier.
I'm not a Luddite - I have a Kindle Fire now - but all the books and articles I had on my original Sony Reader just a few years ago are long gone. And while there are powerful advantages of efficiency and availability to ebooks, there's also downside - largely unmentioned in our enthusiasm for the next gadget.
No insult intended, but perhaps the youngsters on this forum just haven't been around long enough to see the long-term effects.
You need to prioritize. I no longer own a couch, and my tables are in storage (except for one that I use for my computer and a few TV tables - all of which are currently holding a couple of hundred Star Trek books I'm sorting). I can do without a couch and a kitchen/dining room table, but I NEED my books!
I remember moving from my house into my first apartment a few years ago. The apartment seemed like a damn hotel room until I got my bookshelves set up and filled. Same with the place I'm in now. I felt horrible until I set up all my bookshelves and created what I consider to be a very cozy little room, with lots of books, a small TV, my music stuff, Maddy's cat tree, and my rug-hooking frame. The only place to sit is an ottoman and I don't have a coffee table, but plan to flange something up at some point.
The rest of my books are in the hallway, the walk-in closet, and soon-to-be library section of my room.
And a cat or several lazing around, like Frederick the Literate.But I am. In the house of my dreams there is a library with walls wrapped in books, thousands of them.
Attachments
That means you're doing it wrong.
You need to plan for catastrophic hardware failure at any time.
With standard practices for keeping electronic data safe versus physical objects, electronic data is orders of magnitude safer than physical objects. My house could burn to the ground tomorrow, and all my data would be safe, while all my physical goods would be permanently destroyed.
This isn't really the case. epub is a free and open standard suitable for long-term storage and can be trivially converted to any other standard if it ever becomes unsuitable for long-term storage.
I do prioritize, a couch for my friends to sit on is more important than books.
Aesthetic preference arguments for particular media over other media are doomed by the very premise they rest on. "I am used to this, therefore I think it is best" means as other people grow up with the newer media you're decrying will all think their thing is best.
I dunno, I prefer reading from a book over an ereader, but the overall advantages an ereader has means I do most of my reading from an ereader.
Also, I don't think ereader tech is far off from putting them on par with books for my reading preference - they just need faster page turning (whatever is fast enough to appear instantaneous to me) and a bit higher resolution. (So I can comfortable read smaller font.)
Perhaps I am doing it wrong. I'm sorry if it sounded like a rant. Yet while my house has never burnt to the ground (I don't even know anybody whose house has ever burnt to the ground), I certainly have lost tons of electronic data over the years. So have friends and family and colleagues. Maybe the newer generation gadgets are safer - haven't lost anything on a flash drive yet.
I'll look into epub, thanks. Does it overcome the problem of System 7 not recognizing things written in Windows 98?
Well, I'll respond to this, but it's probably better suited to its own thread/computer talk if it gets much more in depth than this - I can give more specific and concrete advise rather than talking about general technologies.
Newer storage tech is somewhat more reliable, but that's not particularly important - the big difference now is that backup and cloud software and storage is really good - it's easy to set up automatic backups of your computer so you always have at least 2 physical storage locations of your data, plus a cloud backup location, so if your house burns to the ground you can just re-download everything again.
I don't think file formats are related to System 7 / Win98 incompatibility issues. In any case, partly due to the proliferation of cloud storage, standards are pretty good now - I regularly jump between Windows / Mac OS / Linux systems without any difficulty.
Yeah, I understand. For the man who moves around a lot, things like ereaders and Steam are godsends in terms of convenience. I mean, Steam has allowed me to haul my computer to my dorm, and not have to bring any discs with me, which is really nice.
I used to resist ereaders as well, but at one point, storage space just became too much of a problem for me so I did decide to test a Kindle....haven't bought a physical book since.
Sure, I miss the book smell and feel, but the advantages for me actually do outweight the disadvantages. The thing I was most sceptically about was the screen (as I've never been able to read a longer text on a normal computer screen), but the e-ink stuff really rocks
as for storage security: phyiscal drives, etc. aren't really made for long time storage...it's a bit like having your book lie around on the kitchen table all the time. that's perfectly ok while you're reading it, but after that you'll put it away, or else somebody will soon or later spill orange juice over it
Sure, I miss the book smell and feel, but the advantages for me actually do outweight the disadvantages. The thing I was most sceptically about was the screen (as I've never been able to read a longer text on a normal computer screen), but the e-ink stuff really rocks
as for storage security: phyiscal drives, etc. aren't really made for long time storage...it's a bit like having your book lie around on the kitchen table all the time. that's perfectly ok while you're reading it, but after that you'll put it away, or else somebody will soon or later spill orange juice over it
Mise
isle of lucy
@Glassfan: It's not the bragging I find distasteful (that's clearly the fun part). This is really, really off topic, so I'll spoiler it:
Spoiler :
