There must have been over 300 records on my shelves. There were LPs, EPs, and even some 45s although I did not collect 45s so they were probably belonged to my sister. There even a number of old classical 78s that I got from who knows where. But these records were classics: an original Beatles White Album press from the UK, Neil Diamond, Herb Alpert no less, and a Barry Manilow(?) (how did that get there?). These records, this “history” of the audio 60s and 70s had been sitting on my shelf for years, and the best part was – I didn’t even have a turntable.
When the technology changed, we all changed with it. Compact Discs were a smash that revolutionized the world. CDs were smaller, safer, and far superior to LPs. And even though we had to buy new devices to use them, we embraced CDs quickly. I have a cabinet with several hundred CDs in it, and probably another dozen in my car.
But the technology changed again. With MP3s came the ability to use yet another tech device with selectivity, fabulous fidelity, and total portability. Downloadable music (and now videos, movies, tutorials, lecture notes, and on and on) that I can store on my multiple-gigabytes player means that I can have all the entertainment I want with effectively zero storage. The change to “downloadables” is so profound that the CD industry has been in the tank for years and may very soon come to a close (you don’t see record stores anymore, soon you will not see CD and DVD stores either). At the end of the day, we were all too willing to give up our old ways of listening to music and move to the new technology which was always smaller, cheaper, better, and sexier.
However…
The other day, I was at the bookstore and saw the rows upon rows of books in all shapes and categories. I thought about how much floor space the books were taking up. I thought about the paper that went into manufacture, the mills and factories that created, the workers that labored, and the trucks that transported. There were books from far away places that had to be shipped – in a real ship. It is no wonder that the markup on books, especially school textbooks, is so high. And I thought, “Why are we not moving to digital books in the same way we moved to digital music?”
eBooks have been around for a while. In fact, the entire premise of SGML and HTML was to convert humanity’s textual information into a digital format that could be transmitted and rendered. Remember the “Information Super Highway”? And, while the Internet itself has exploded, and people are truly reading things on their computers (after all, you are reading this on your computer), eBooks are almost non-existent.
It is a frustrating conversation. Think about this the next time you are standing in that long, long line at the campus bookstore waiting forever for the privilege of dropping $500 for this term’s 50 pounds worth of textbooks (and will in 10 weeks sell back to the very same store for about $20): you could have downloaded the lot in a few seconds onto your flash drive or a 20 ounce reader -- and, for about a third of the price.
So, why are more people not going to eBooks? It seems that there is a certain “comfort” in a physical book. People have talked to me about curling up in front of a fire, or using book marks, or some aesthetic warmth that a physical book offers. Students have told me that they struggled with eBooks (Once someone told me that they spent the entire day in front of a computer to work and they did not want to spend the evening in front of a computer to read. So I asked her what she did do in the evening, and she said “watch TV”). Others have pointed out that while eBooks do offer a particular savings in manufacture and distribution, several texts priced in the $90 range were selling as eBooks in the middle $70s when they should have been priced around $15. Readers for eBooks are also still problematic. Borders sold a rather nice eBook device over the holidays for about $400. I can get a cheap laptop for that much; and it would come with a keyboard, applications, multi-gigabyte hard drive, and wireless Internet access.
Books survive, and perhaps for a while longer. And in my office are shelves and shelves of books some of which I have never read and some of which I will never read again; it is quite impressive. Besides, when all my books have been digitized, who will be impressed at my shelves and shelves of nothing?
