The Future of Digital Books 256
Tabercil writes "The New York Times has an article about the mass scanning of books, which argues that actions such as Google's Book Search project are an inevitable outgrowth of the internet." From the article: "Scanning technology has been around for decades, but digitized books didn't make much sense until recently, when search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN came along. When millions of books have been scanned and their texts are made available in a single database, search technology will enable us to grab and read any book ever written. Ideally, in such a complete library we should also be able to read any article ever written in any newspaper, magazine or journal. And why stop there?"
Some such texts already exist (Score:5, Informative)
-MIT's Open Courseware at: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html [mit.edu]
-Textbook revolution at http://textbookrevolution.org/ [textbookrevolution.org]
-Physiscs texts at: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html#langua ges [phys.uu.nl]
-The assayer at http://www.theassayer.org/ [theassayer.org]
-Open content at http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/Technolo gy/OpenContent/opencontent.htm [hewlett.org]
I also know a number of econometric and statistics texts that are also available as free Ebooks, but they are of interest only to specialists.
From the folks who brought you Times Select (Score:2, Informative)
Re:We obey the Laws of Thermodynamics on this site (Score:3, Informative)
If we can replicate, then presumably we've cracked the problem of turning energy to matter and back. If we start running out of energy, we convert some more matter into energy.
If we start to run out of matter, we go get some from any of the many celestial bodies nearby. It's not like Jupiter is doing anything terribly important with it's extra matter (I'm assuming that if we can do all that other stuff, why not space travel as well)?
Re:Break Stupid Laws (Score:3, Informative)
Roundabout Safety Comes to America [tfhrc.gov]
Re:Star Trek replicators (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Infinite food != end to hunger (Score:3, Informative)
You can transform the nutrients of the soil, a seed and water into a tomato while using solar energy when you plant and care for that seed. The matter contained in the tomato must come from somewhere, a certain amount of energy will be needed to accomplish the transformation. A replicator could do that differently, theoretically even more efficiently (though that's not very likely). What the replicator could not change is the fact that a certain input is needed to generate an output. It will have to obey the laws of physics.
Also, not everything of value is a produceable good. There are other things of value e.g. services, health and space. Once the Ferrari becomes available at "zero cost" the oceanfront property will be in even higher demand.
Lots of computer books do this. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Scanned Books? No one is interested! (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps if book publishers put the same kind of pressure to eradicate scanned books form the web, books will move to P2P networks. However I doubt they ever do: enough people prefer reading books from paper, and dislike electronic texts (unlike music which is just as good when downloaded).
Re:Scanned Books? No one is interested! (Score:5, Informative)
a good article is at http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
you could read the rationale of the publisher and many of his autors who offer free e-book to boost the selling of other e-book/books of the same author.
trying to summarize: to them downloading a book when you are young and have few money could be the same that havig one from the local library, if you like the autor then, in the future when the money for some book will be a no-problem you will buy a lot.
Re:Cold Books vs. Cozy Books (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who is going to author books in the future? (Score:3, Informative)
If the full content of the book is available for free on the web, this probably isn't fair, but that's not currently the situation or the goal. From Google:
The Library Project's aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books specifically books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights.
Google's current intention doesn't seem to be to offer all the content of every book ever written up for everyone. Google wants to act as a search tool so people can find one of your books and purchase it - not read it all online. This could obviously change at any moment, but this really isn't any more of a threat to the publishing industry than book reviews are.
The other major difference between a book and a CD is the format. Most people don't want to read books off their computer screen. Paper is a much nicer medium - if they want a book. As a tech book author, I would worry much more about all of the forums, faqs, blogs and other sites that offer some of the same education that you write about. I rarely read a tech book because I can find the answers to my questions so much faster in Google.
Contrary to what you might read in the press, authors don't make a lot of money writing books.
Now that's interesting. So, if I buy one of the books you authored for, say $30, you mean to tell me you don't get the majority of that money? If that's true, who does make all of the revenue from those book sales? The publishers, printers, distributors and retail outlets? Does that seem fair?
Honestly, I think the authors of the future will create their content in blogs, ebooks, podcasts or other types of digital formats and use subscriptions or advertising revenue to fund their efforts. The only reason the publishing industry is still viable at all is because no one has come up with a reasonable book reader that people like. As soon as that happens paper books will become a thing of the past.
The bottom line is the Internet has changed things for many different industries. Traditional media, music, advertising, etc... The best thing to do is find out how to apply your talents to a digital format rather than trying to resist the changes in the legislature and the courtroom.
Re:Cold Books vs. Cozy Books (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget Newton books (as are freely available without DRM on Newton's Library [newtonslibrary.org]) and Z-Machine works (as are freely available without DRM on the Interactive Fiction Archive [ifarchive.org]). I definitely want at least these two formats in my dream e-book reader. A few other less common ones (like TADS, for example) would also be nice, but I'd personally settle for the ones you list plus PDF, Newton book, and Z-Machine.