8 Unexpected Downsides of the Switch to E-books
As e-book sales overtake paper-book sales, it seems like everybody is crying and wringing their hands about what it means -- serious, society-changing ramifications like the end of ownership, or ease of piracy, or environmental impact, or whether it makes things easier or harder for publishers or aspiring authors.
Like most important issues, those are boring. What are some effects of going to an all e-book world that haven't been talked to death? I dug around and tried to find some e-book ramifications that would appeal to the type of people who spend more time preparing for a zombie apocalypse than like, unemployment, or retirement, or something. You know, realists.
#8. You Can't Hide a Gun in a Kindle
Book safes by BookEndDesigns
Well, you can't. I don't think this is the kind of thing you can argue about. If you can put a gun in an e-reader, go on and take a photo and let's see it.
Even with the so-called "smart cover," the iPad displays disappointing performance in gun hiding.
Life has gotten harder and harder these days for would-be assassins. Some jurisdictions make it totally illegal to carry loaded guns in public, even if you really need to kill a guy.
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"But you don't understand, officer. I was very angry at him!"
In the past, you could always depend on your trusty violin case, but with American orchestras going bankrupt left and right nowadays, people running around with violin cases are becoming a rarity and no longer blend into a crowd.
And old-fashioned high-tank toilets have been antiques for decades, so good luck taping a gun behind one of these modern toilets.
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Seriously. Where would you even ...?
So books are one of the few things left that you can carry around without people suspecting you've got something in them. Everyone who's afraid of getting shot is wary of people with bags and thick coats. If paper books go the way of the dodo, hit victims will also start being suspicious of anyone carrying one of those useless antiques for no reason.
#7. You Need Physical Books for Physical Tasks
I'm not the first person to observe this, so I'll just say that many times when you're looking for something handy, there just isn't anything around that will do a better job than the cheap Frederick Forsyth novel you got from Half-Price Books, which, after reading 10 pages, you realized you had already read before, so you just left it on the coffee table. These important tasks include table stabilizing, spider killing, cat fight breaking up and makeshift camera stand making.
Perfect!
Sure, there are other tools that can do these things better, but that requires you to be prepared and know you need them ahead of time. For stupid people and poor planners like me, it's good to have the books sitting around, in their natural home in the living room, ready for anything. Like the sudden appearance of a spider, or an unexpected flower-pressing emergency.
Another hypothetical situation might be if you are bad at following directions and installed the midbeam of your Ikea bed upside-down, causing it to snap the first time you put weight on it. Now I know a lot of people complain about the Harry Potter series' lackluster prose and overreliance on cliches, but you can't argue that these aren't thick, solid books that will not collapse under your weight.
I also recommend Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, which lends solid support to both Abraham Lincoln's legacy and a bed.
Supposing we are indeed on our way to a bookless future, I predict a robust market in that future for cardboard and wooden blocks of various sizes that people just keep around their living rooms.
#6. No More Flipbooks and Mustaches in Textbooks
If our society moves to e-books, textbooks will probably go electronic as well, which is, on the one hand, great, because maybe college students will finally stop being constantly ripped off on textbooks. On the other hand, it may be the end of a proud tradition of drawing mustaches and Satan horns on important historical figures.
Or removing mustaches, as the situation calls for.
If you have never itched to add an "improvement" to one of your public school textbooks while listening to a boring lesson, then you are clearly a conformist sheep. Or maybe just a decent person who respects public property. Either way, a lot of us had no concept of taxpayer money and participation in the social contract and did in fact draw mustaches, genitalia, knives stabbing people and, if we really had a spurt of concentration, flipbooks.
This is going to be a little harder on an e-book. Maybe they'll put in some software to let kids take notes and make markings, but the thing about software is it's pretty easy to limit people to doing what you want them to do. You can't give a kid a pen that can only make notes and can't draw penises, but you could set up software that does that. Kids are going to have to wait until they are at hacking age to crack that, which means that until then, there will be quite a few wasted years they could have been practicing mustaches.
I drew mustaches on many important historical figures, such as the Mayflower.
Sure, there's Photoshop and all that now, and the kid can get all his artistic expression out at home, but there's something about drawing on something you're not supposed to, when you're not supposed to, that is really motivating. I learned to draw entirely from hours and hours of drawing in class. Every time I tried to draw outside of class, I would just sit there and stare at the paper. If kids of the next generation are deprived of this opportunity, none of them will grow up to be shitty artists like me who think they can draw. What kind of a world would that be?
#5. It May Change the Perception of the Necronomicon and Other Mystical Books
Probably one of the most relevant concerns about physical paper books disappearing to the point where the average person isn't familiar with them anymore is: how is this going to affect movies with spellbooks and books like the Necronomicon in them? Will people stop using them in movies? Will they continue to use them in movies as archaic artifacts that the audience will increasingly struggle to understand? "Why is he trying to grab that biting leather thing off the pedestal?" they might ask. "They said he was supposed to get a book, why didn't he just download it back at the castle? Does the castle not get wireless?"
Army of Darkness Defense
At least they will have the Army of Darkness iPhone game to explain that guarding the Necronomicon is important, if not what it is.
I mean, sure, we still understand how scrolls work when we watch ancient movies with scrolls, so it won't be completely alien, but eliminating everyday exposure to books basically limits any story set in modern times to plots where treasure hunters deliberately seek ancient books of the dead for nefarious purposes, and really cuts down on variations like unsuspecting teenagers accidentally stumbling on a cursed book in a library.
On the other hand, closing one door does open others, like the possibility of a horror movie where the aforementioned unsuspecting teenagers weren't paying attention and downloaded the Necronomicon and now their Kindle is chasing them around the house. I think the studios would be really receptive to it, too, since they can slyly make it into an anti-piracy argument. ("Imagine one million Necronomicons chasing everyone around! This is why we need robust DRM in place!")
E-books are certainly limiting but -- I dunno'. Seems like a .22 with a skeleton frame might fit in there.
Reply"Devil in the White City" AND "The Princess Bride"!?
ReplyMarry me, woman. (After we leave our fiances. And move to a jurisdiction in which it's legal.)
not to mention future generations will be weaker after not carrying books, just this wimpy ereader thing
ReplyI wouldn't ever want an e-reader...I don't read much, but when I do I'd rather have an actual book. Also, I don't see how ANYONE wants textbooks to be digital. Now, I've never used an e-reader, so I don't exactly know how they work, but I have had to use a digital textbook on the computer for a class once (it was required, unfortunately), and it was so difficult to go back and forth between pages. With a book, you just fold it down, stick something in it, use fingers, etc...to go back and forth in a snap....so much easier.
Replyhey, I'm not saying ereaders are the solution to all the worlds problems. I have one, but I continue to buy regular old books, too, but for text books, and computer books, they are a life saver, because those things tend to be heavy as s**t, and if you're in any kind of school (or are just a huge nerd like me) you're probably usually carrying more than one of them at a time. I hope to god we've moved exclusively over to ebooks by the time my hypothetical future children go to school, because I don't want them to be bent in half by the time they're twelve.
"... less than half the population washes their hands after going to the bathroom if nobody is watching?"
Reply*shudder*
I can tell you that the half not washing their hands is the guys. Heck about 98 percent of them don't wash their hands even if someone is watching (I clean bathrooms as part of my job). I will say that the "turn on the faucet and swipe one hand through the beam of water as fast as possible" move does not count as washing hands.
I don't piss on my hands.....
They won't need to pass out fliers you idiot they'll just spam you with offers, notices, etc.
ReplyAnd if the company leasing you the books decides that you have stolen/copied/misused/etc their property they can take them back. As well as if you drop the damn thing in the sea you could lose your entire library.
Replyfortunately, the sea is large, and fairly easy to avoid whilst reading.
It's why I hate public bathrooms, no toilet lid.
ReplyYour articles are becoming better and better, I loved this one.
ReplyThe list was hilarious, but definitely backwards.
ReplyYes, I think not being able to hide a gun is a far worse side effect than less flyers.
You are becoming one of my favorite columnists.
ReplyI read it as E-boobs.
ReplyI just have to focus on #8 here. First of all, murder is already illegal. Obviously, hitmen aren't concerned or stopped by the law anyway (especially not in Illinois, screw that state and I pity those who live there). Second, why would they put a handgun inside a book and carry the book around when they could simply conceal the gun about themselves? They don't need thick coats or anything out of the ordinary, and it would draw less attention.
ReplyYou could, however, convert an e-reader into a battery of .22 or .17 rimfire rounds. It could even be electronically fired via the standard e-reader interface. I think it was done with some of the old cell phones or something like that. Sure, it's a small caliber, and yes, it's very short range. But, as long as there's space in the case, it can be done. And that's just if they want to use bullets.
*Disclaimer: Don't do any of these things.
Well, it's kind of a classy place to keep your gun. Also, what about hiding a bottle of booze, a knife &c. Of course you can reply everytime that you can conceal it anywhere on your person, but if you want to hide a large amount of items, a book is a very practical and innocuous place to hide it. Also, the choice of book can give you an opportunity to make a smart reference. For example, a gun in a bible is a classic, or a gun in Dante's Paradise Lost would be kind of cool.
You left out "if you buy books digitally, people can keep track of what you read."
Replypsst, unless you're paying with cash every time, they can anyway.
I liked the point about how movies and TV shows will respond to the death of tree books. My thinking is that we'll still see plots about kids going to the library or scenes with people reading books for years to come. Technology in movies is usually behind the times. Consider this example-- how many times have you seen a crime show or mystery movie where the cops walk into a crazy person's den and the crazy person has a whole wall filled with newspaper clippings, pictures, handwritten notes, etc.? It's an old cliche, and it keeps being used even though it's out-dated. People don't collect information that way anymore. If movies were realistic, the cops would find the crazy person's laptop instead, and it would be filled with documents, pictures, videos, bookmarked news stories, etc. That's not as visually striking, though, so the old trope persists.
Replyactually, crazy people still tend to like to decorate their houses with the crazy. Think of them like Hoarders of insanity. Stalkers are just girl-hoarders etc... it helps.
I wondered how an article about e-readers could actually be funny, but to my surprise I was laughing all the way through this. Nicely done, Christina! You took a boring topic and made it funny.
ReplyI have to be honest, I don't quite care for Christina H's columns. I usually go to Cracked to read about interesting things in history I haven't heard of or to hear witty observations on esoteric topics, but Christina never delivers in these ways. Her humor is purely observational, in the "I just ate a Taco Bell taco, must find something funny to say about it," sort of way. If she'd just leave her comfort zone and write about something that she doesn't come across in her everyday life, I'd probably like her a lot. But her columns are always about the intimately familiar, and, as a result, her humor always feels obvious.
ReplyAnd that's why we all have opinions.
so, basically, you want her to leave her comfort zone and enter yours?
Woo hilarious as always.
Replywell duh, havent u seen the film? the Necronomicon will still be relevent cos its bound in human flesh and written in blood, now show me an E-book made of human organs and fluids. you cant? well thats Books:1 E-books:0, plus can the E-book raise an ARMY OF DARKNES!!!!!!!!!!!!? no
Reply"does the castle not get wireless?" lmfaoooo
Reply