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[Del]

'Dead tree technology!
Information that , if carefully stored , would last for millennia!

But thats the point Pip. They ARE dead trees.

And they wont last forever. To make them do that they have to be treated so the paper doesnt crumble. And they take up so much room.

I am all for e-books. They open up the world of literature to millions of people who never had access to it before. And that cant be a bad thing. From disabled persons with intellectual and physical limitations; with the new technology even the new iPads and most phones can read most text out load... and people who are house bound like the elderly. Far flung communities who dont have a book shop five minutes away (been there done that), and that applies to children and adults in 3rd world countries too. Hard to get book shops and libraries to far flung places but easy to get a signal to download a great book or lessons.

SUre, you need energy and a charge to power the technology... but books can get burnt in fires or lost in floods.

Besides.... if we dont embrace technology?...... what? you want us to WRITE letters to you now? Then wait a few weeks for a reply? No forum? No?

I do like books... but I love new technology; not for a buzz or to parrot on about what a wanker I am with the latest gadget.. but for what it can do. Its just another step in evolution.

ps. You are in for SUCH a shock when your little one starts formal education. Six years from now! Can you imagine what it will be like by then. The kids here already use iPads for literacy here in pre-school. My older girls have been getting their text books and doing their homework for high school on usb's and discs for years; and much better for their backs not carrying heavy bags too.

[pip]

Sad to point out that the environmental argument is mute. Its pretty much the same impact one way or the other. And Ireland ain't gonna have any technology in the schools . We're reducing resources as it is sadly.

Also Del. seriously how many people in the 3rd world can afford a bloody kindle . Sillieast E-Book argument ever

[pip]

Oh and as i said else where the Dead sea scrolls lasted two millenia without any special treatment etc

[Del]

Yes I totally agree on the "green" statement. six of one....

Dead sea scrolls? Pure luck mate. Just happened to be in a bone dry cave in the middle of a desert.

Ireland doesnt have technology in schools???? Really? How do your teen graduates go out of school without an IT base at least?

No I wasn't talking just about Kindle. I was talking about e-books. Books available on technology, not paper. And alot of third world countries do Pip. Places like Fiji where the standard of living is low have more access to computers than they do to a pencil and paper! (I know this personally because a friend of mine collects notebooks and pencils to send by container once a year over there). Schemes like that work out of Australia for alot of the Asian countries too. India is another amazing example. Their governments biggest push in the past decade has been to get electricity into every part of the country so that they all have access to computers. And wassisname.. Microsoft.... Gates! He started a huge billion dollar project to put computers in remote communities a long time ago.

[Bouncy Castle]

Pocket change to him!!

[pip]

Cos every where on the planet has electricity and full internet access and the money to maintain it Del.
Sadly not true and probably never will be.

Huge amounts of the population will never have access to any computer , especially in India .

Sadly in Irleand most of the schools do minimal IT stuff. In the whole of my secondary education i never used a computer in school and the school i was in still has no proper setup for it.

[raisindot]

Yes I totally agree on the "green" statement. six of one....

Dead sea scrolls? Pure luck mate. Just happened to be in a bone dry cave in the middle of a desert.

I believe they were also stored in earthenware jars, so that helped a bit.

Still, someday, when we've exhausted the last bit of energy in this world, the Internet winks out of existence, and ebook readers become glorified paperweights, there will still be billions of paper-bound books available for future generations to read. Of course, the down-side to that is that a fair number of them will be copies of the Filthy Shades of Gray series.

[pip]

Yes I totally agree on the "green" statement. six of one....

Dead sea scrolls? Pure luck mate. Just happened to be in a bone dry cave in the middle of a desert.

I believe they were also stored in earthenware jars, so that helped a bit.

Still, someday, when we've exhausted the last bit of energy in this world, the Internet winks out of existence, and ebook readers become glorified paperweights, there will still be billions of paper-bound books available for future generations to read. Of course, the down-side to that is that a fair number of them will be copies of the Filthy Shades of Gray series.

Earthen pots ain't really specialised treatment. But your last point is great shame about the crap books surviving as well but hey with no power we'll need fires

[Bouncy Castle]

Way to go. Pollute the air by setting fire to eReaders!

[Del]

The Dirt Road to the Information Superhighway

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spi ... 19034.html

[raptornx01]

$300 for a computer you have to keep paying on to use? when there are a plethora of laptops on the market for the same price that are yours from the moment of purchase. my store alone has several laps below $300.

[cheery_j.]

http://one.laptop.org/ <- 199 $

[ChristianBecker]

I think e-books are great. I have none, though. I happen to like real paper books.
I'm not so sure about durability, though. Fact is: A lot of old books only survived because they were copied in the middle ages by monk scribes, because in most parts of Europe we don't have such a (comparatively) favourable climate as in the dead sea caves.
I have some relatively new paper books that were printed on rather cheap paper and that are only some decades old that won't last for much longer; especially if I stored them, for example, in a place that is more humid, like a cellar.
Of course, HDDs, CDs, DVDs etc. won't last forever. And there's always the problem of finding a device to read those in, say, a hundred years. But storing the works digitally makes it much easier to copy them (the only problem being copyrights, that actually prevent you from doing so.) and thus they should stay available as long as there are computers.
As for the energy problem. I don't think there really is such a thing. The sun provides an awful lot of the stuff and we only have to reap it. Sure, as long as there is a lot of money to be made with fossil fuel alternative forms of generation are only growing slowly, but I think that will change rapidly once oil becomes so rare that cost forbids its use as fuel (you can do so many things with oil).

[raptornx01]

Its sad to think 50 years ago everyone thought we'd be riding in flying electric cars*. I always wondered if you brought people from the past to today if they wouldn't be disappointed.

* I remember going to disney world and seeing the big model city of the future Walt created. so much nicer then what we got.

[The Mad Collector]

The oldest book in my collection was printed in 1494, and I have several from the 1700's they look pretty good to me. However I cannot find anything that will read the backup discs I took in 1995