From: brad@optilink.COM (Brad Yearwood)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Computers not a substitute for books
Date: 6 Jan 93 08:29:21 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1993Jan5.171337.41508@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>, arc2@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (AMY CHARLES) writes:
> 
> I've been having a running argument with the Project Gutenberg folks
> (bit.gutenberg, I think) about this.  Aside from problems with aesthetics and
> transferability, digital text makes the most egalitarian of media the most
> classbound.  Imagine a world where almost all text is published digitally.
> To read it, then, you have to *buy* a reader, even if you're borrowing free
> material.  If you're too poor to buy a reader, you're out of luck.  Sure,
> maybe public libraries will have them.  (Assuming we still have public
> libraries, at that point.)  But then you're at the mercy of ever-shrinking
> library hours....already, here in Allentown, PA, it's difficult for a working
> adult to use the public libraries in the summer.
> 
> Until recently, the publishing industry has been fussy and archaic enough to
> resist market pressures.  With the advent of consolidation and the marketing
> mentality, though, I fear for the future of print.  Printing,
> binding/packaging, and distribution are all much much cheaper to do, en masse,
> electronically than conventionally.  We await, I think, only "market
> development."  Inconvertability, aesthetics and social considerations rarely
> resist capitalism.

Though it may at present seem classbound, digital text has a great liberating
potential.  Today's delivery mechanisms are scarce and expensive by comparison
with the incremental cost of delivering a paper book into an already-
established library infrastructure.

But take the situation of an area which is not currently well served by a
library, or by a particular sort of library (medicine, law, science, music).
To build a public access terminal for paper text (a library) requires land, a
building, some fixtures, a staff, and an initial stock of books.

To build a public access terminal for digital text requires a smaller amount
of land and a smaller building (rented storefront space or a trailer, or a
corner of an existing public building), a computer, some combination of
high-density storage media and a communication link to index and text
repository services, and perhaps a smaller local staff.

As technology and market volume expand, communication facilities and suitable
computer equipment (and, hopefully, index and repository services) will
decrease in cost to the point where many people will be able to afford digital
text access at home.  If something is affordable at home, then it will be
affordable to a small institution (school or public library).

To the extent that library services depend less upon physically extensive
and vulnerable collections, it is reasonable to expect that access will
improve, not diminish.

It has been said that freedom of the press exists only for those who own
a press.  It is in reducing the cost of a press that digital text has its
greatest liberating potential.

On Usenet and on various conference systems and networks, we are the pioneers
of this aspect of digital text.  Though we are still a small and privileged
group, the barriers to making a statement in this medium are much lower than
they are for television, radio, magazines, or books.

In our nascent microcosm we can begin to see both the benefits and the
detriments of increasingly democratic media.

Opportunities as compiler, editor, and commentator will abound in coming
years, and it will be feasible to site this work either at home, or in low
cost facilities only a nice walk or bike ride away.

I fear somewhat for the future of print, too.  Print is beautiful.  Paper
is beautiful.  If I were a tree I'd be happier, though, if we could move
more of the transient information off paper and onto a screen.  (I say
this in total hypocrisy, sitting an arm's length from a laser printer
and stacks of marked-up program listings and junk documents, though I
had choice in the type size, and have made it very small for economy.)

We are approaching a crucial juncture in forming the market for digital text
information services.  I feel confident that the communication and computer
technologies will come together very soon.

What is more necessary, and what I have less confidence in, is entrepreneurial
cleverness in information services.  We can expect nothing good, and perhaps
considerable active harm, from established oligarchized media: TV/radio
broadcast networks (who have enjoyed an incredibly cheap ride on scarce
spectrum space), cable, magazine, newspaper, and book publishers.  I agree
that consolidation and the marketing mentality are great risks here.  I'd
rather not call franchise-seeking "capitalism".

Brad Yearwood    brad@optilink.com     {uunet, pyramid}!optilink!brad
Petaluma, CA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books