30 mostly spurious benefits of ebooks

Submitted by Blake on February 23, 2008 - 3:39am
Topic: 
Electronic Publications

Thanks to lifehacker Mark discovered that Read an Ebook Week is in early March. The Epublishers Weekly blog has a post which covers “30 Benefits of Ebooks,” which while containing some bits of truth, if you will, is mostly INHHO [In His Humble Opinion] made of up bad logic and spurious reasoning. Off The Mark has some good comments on a few of them.

Comments

Submitted by Robin Whitman (not verified) on February 25, 2008 - 1:06pm.

That post by Mark is rude and childish, and reflects badly on Mark and on LIS News. ... It is possible to disagree -- even criticize intelligently -- with reason and respect.

Submitted by mdoneil on February 25, 2008 - 7:36pm.

Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade. Most of the points from epublishers are nonsense, all of the the points Mark made are valid.

Editorial standards, please... get your knickers out of the twist they are in. This is the interwebs.

Oh and if you think I am rude, you just might have something there.

Submitted by OMGWTF (not verified) on February 25, 2008 - 1:17pm.

This coming from a genius who clearly understands how the Internet works.

Submitted by JJR (not verified) on February 25, 2008 - 6:05pm.

Actually, Robin, Mark's editorial was spot on, and I agree with him 100%.
I did not find the tone "rude" or "childish", but critical and insightful.

And sometimes, frankly, stupid deserves a good smack-down, without apology.

Bad thinking and glitzy marketing doesn't deserve reason and respect--It deserves a healthy dose of ridicule.

Submitted by Robin Whitman (not verified) on February 26, 2008 - 11:38am.

The article "30 Benefits of Ebooks" was noted and linked by Lifehacker, one of the most well-respected blogs on the Internet. Obviously, it was selected -- not because these benefits were spurious -- because of its interest and its value. And its potential to inspire a (mature and thoughtful) discussion of its themes.

It seems to me that Mark missed the entire point of the article: to encourage reading in general (which is rapidly declining in America), and to promote (yes, promote) printed books. As library professionals, I imagine that everyone reading this list should be very concerned about these two issues. Ebooks -- and electronically-published documents -- are good for libraries, for library patrons, and for library professionals.

It may be that Mark has, in advance, made up his mind to despise ebooks -- and of course everything follows from there. Rightly framed, his objections would be an excellent starting for point for a discussion. For example, Mark disputes the statement that ebooks are good for environment. The pros and cons of that might be supported with facts about how many trees are used to create the New York Times, or a bestseller by Rowling.

Another of Mark's objections concern the issue of ebooks preserving books. He writes:

Ha ha ha ha ha. This is one of the funniest, utterly stupid comments I have ever heard. Digital preservation issues anymore? Format migration?

Yes, DRM-ed ebooks are doomed: they often don't work when you change computers. The "30 Beneftis of Ebooks" article is advocating ebooks that have no DRM, and often available for free. It's hard to for me to imagine that, 50 or 100 or 1,000 years from now, technology will be so backward as to be incapable of reading files in the text, PDF, or HTML formats. Mark seems to politely disagree with this -- an interesting discussion might follow.

As to rudeness and editorial standards -- there is a lot of subjectivity in these notions. "This is the internet" -- might mean that this is the Wild West, and anything goes, and if you don't like it, then go somewhere else. (And Blake, if you don't like me posting here, just say so. When I first saw your blog, it was so good-looking that I assumed that you were connected with some official library-related organization. And hence, editorial standards, etc. I didn't realize that this was a private blog.).

But the Internet might grow -- Web 3.0 -- and become better a better virtual place --than a Wild West of anonymous posters calling each other names. We might learn from each other, and -- even when disagreeing -- build a respectful relationship. .... To me, Mark's post sounded rude -- but I am probably (no: certainly) a lot older than you guys, and that generation gap makes a difference. I discuss issues and disagree in a much different manner than Mark's post, and some of the comments here. ... Mark says in another blog post that he is looking for a job: someone on a hiring committee -- an old fart like me -- might read his blog (not uncommon these days, as part of the hiring practice) and also see that post as rude and counterproductive. I wanted to point this out to LIS news and to Mark: how things might be viewed by someone outside of your own circle.

In any case -- thank you for the opportunity to express my views -- I would have expected you to have deleted all my posts. And, to OMGWTF: please do explain to me how the Internet works. And, if I am not supposed to disagree respectfully, let me know. Agree subserviently? Disagree sarcastically? ... I have been on the Internet for less than 1 year: I would like to learn more.