Forget superstores; what's _this_ going to do?
John Boston
Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
"set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand. (I
assume this is some kind of scanning process, but the article--which
appears in the Circuits section of the paper--is remarkably reticent on
this point.) It costs $100 to $150 to "set up" a book and about $5 to
print a copy. Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
don't have to be printed in batches. The general manager says, "Books
never really have to go out of print again." Now they have 150 titles
available; they expect 10,000 by the end of the year.
At first blush this sounds great. On second thought, if
nothing ever goes out of print, the whole ritual of reissuing fine old
books goes out the window. Would lines like Orb exist if anybody who
wanted an out-of-print book could get it? Seems to me that such
reprint series must be based on the assumption that there is a
sufficient pent-up demand for well-reputed but unavailable books that a
substantial quick sale can be expected. And I assume that many
people rely on the editorial judgments that underlie these series. Are
we at risk of losing one of the available means of sifting through the
chaff?
John Boston
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>,
John Boston <jbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
>division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
>using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
>"set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand. (I
>assume this is some kind of scanning process, but the article--which
>appears in the Circuits section of the paper--is remarkably reticent on
>this point.) It costs $100 to $150 to "set up" a book and about $5 to
>print a copy. Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
>don't have to be printed in batches. The general manager says, "Books
>never really have to go out of print again." Now they have 150 titles
>available; they expect 10,000 by the end of the year.
>
> At first blush this sounds great. On second thought, if
>nothing ever goes out of print, the whole ritual of reissuing fine old
>books goes out the window. Would lines like Orb exist if anybody who
>wanted an out-of-print book could get it? Seems to me that such
>reprint series must be based on the assumption that there is a
>sufficient pent-up demand for well-reputed but unavailable books that a
>substantial quick sale can be expected. And I assume that many
>people rely on the editorial judgments that underlie these series. Are
>we at risk of losing one of the available means of sifting through the
>chaff?
>
Possibly--but I can think of a way to handle it. Fine reprint lines
buy non-exclusive rights to the text. They offer both their editorial
skills and good formatting, and charge just a little bit extra. Or
maybe their reputation enables them to sell so many books that
they charge a little bit less.
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Jerome Bigge
On 5 Jun 1998 03:08:04 GMT, jbo...@mindspring.com (John Boston) wrote:
>Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
>division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
>using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
>"set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand. (I
>assume this is some kind of scanning process, but the article--which
>appears in the Circuits section of the paper--is remarkably reticent on
>this point.) It costs $100 to $150 to "set up" a book and about $5 to
>print a copy. Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
>don't have to be printed in batches. The general manager says, "Books
>never really have to go out of print again." Now they have 150 titles
>available; they expect 10,000 by the end of the year.
>
> At first blush this sounds great. On second thought, if
>nothing ever goes out of print, the whole ritual of reissuing fine old
>books goes out the window. Would lines like Orb exist if anybody who
>wanted an out-of-print book could get it? Seems to me that such
>reprint series must be based on the assumption that there is a
>sufficient pent-up demand for well-reputed but unavailable books that a
>substantial quick sale can be expected. And I assume that many
>people rely on the editorial judgments that underlie these series. Are
>we at risk of losing one of the available means of sifting through the
>chaff?
>
> John Boston
I'm still looking for a copy of "UNDER THE YOKE" by S.M. Stirling
for less than $39.95 + shipping that Amazon wanted for a copy...
And I'd love to have copies of books by authors who have been
out of print for decades if the price was "reasonable" enough.
-
Jerome Bigge (jbi...@novagate.com) NRA Life Member
Author of the "WARLADY" series of SF fantasy novels.
And of the "alternative history" WARTIME series where
history was just a little bit "different" from our own!
Download them all at http://www.novagate.com/~jbigge
In a time of war, one does need a good Warlady...
Virginia Ferguson
>Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
>division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
>using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
>"set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand. (I
>assume this is some kind of scanning process, but the article--which
>appears in the Circuits section of the paper--is remarkably reticent on
>this point.) It costs $100 to $150 to "set up" a book and about $5 to
>print a copy. Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
>don't have to be printed in batches. The general manager says, "Books
>never really have to go out of print again." Now they have 150 titles
>available; they expect 10,000 by the end of the year.
Does it take 30 seconds to print a "book" or to print "500 loose pages"?
If it's the latter I'd rather have the bookstore book, thanks. Unless
there was absolutely no other way to get the book *AND* I absolutely had
to have it. I've already got too many loose papers, binders, and folders
hanging around.
Virginia
GrapeApe
Some thoughts.
Some of these books will not cost 5 dollars, if you take the going market rate
of xerography into account, as a sucessful business model, 5 dollars buys you
100 pages. If a book is 500 pages, you will be paying five times as much. I
also cannot see these books on demand bound in a method satsfactory to the
average reader at a reasonable cost. A laser printed book on boths sides of the
page is not terribly difficult technically, but how many people want this
around in a three ring spiral or velo bound edition? Economies of scale are
what make books as inexpensive as they are today.
So if it happens, it will be to compete with collectors prices for rarer items.
Want the books to be even cheaper? Merely publish them as electronic books.
People can print them out themselves if they want to, and they can take
advantage of hyperindexing and search engines built in. Its already been done
with varying levels of success, but it doesnt catch on like something designed
for the hand people can take to the beach, woods, bathroom, laundry, without a
power outlet.
There will be contractual holdouts from publishers and authors, who think it
may be a slippery slope for their property. Most likely you will see works out
of print authors who have passed on who no longer have an estate protecting
their work.
The main competition will be publishers themselves taking advantage of smaller
print runs, in a situation they can also allow orders to build up to take
advantage of economies of scale.
Mike Giroux
On 5 Jun 1998 02:08:59 -0400, Virginia Ferguson <gi...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com> jbo...@mindspring.com (John Boston) writes:
>
>>Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
>>division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
>>using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
>>"set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand.
>
>If it's the latter I'd rather have the bookstore book, thanks. Unless
>there was absolutely no other way to get the book *AND* I absolutely had
>to have it. I've already got too many loose papers, binders, and folders
>hanging around.
If you look at http://www.ingram.com/Company_Info/lpihtml/, you'll see
that they claim to generate books "almost indistinguishable" from a noraml
trade paperback.
This is from their "How it works" page:
How It Works
Publisher submits a title in digital or hard copy form
LPI stores the title in a digital library:
The title becomes available for ordering on the Ingram systems and is
printed as ordered with "one-off" technology.
Publisher receives payment for each unit sold
Publisher is responsible for author royalties
Publisher retains all rights to the titles
Publisher sets the list price
Benefits To Publishers
Extends a book's life cycle resulting in higher revenues
Eliminates inventory carrying costs
Eliminates order processing and shipping expenses
Opens up new market opportunities
Book Attributes
Books are accepted from 5 x 8 to 7 x 10 originals
Books are produced in 5 7/8 x 8 3/4 Trade paper
Black & white content, four color covers
Titles with less than 700 pages
Title Candidates
Backlist titles
Out of Stock Indefinitely (OSI)
Out of Print (OP)
Academic
Professional/Technical/Reference (PTR)
Religious
Galleys
Publisher Compensation
Publishers are paid the wholesale price less a printing fee for
each net sale
Payments are made monthly
I guess that means this mechanism couldn't reprint _Eye of the World_, assuming
Tor ever let it go out of print... :) But it _could_ do _Under the Yoke_, which
someone else was asking about (that's a pretty good book, BTW; keep looking for
it).
There's a lot more on the website. Check out the URL above for more
information. So far, they have no titles of any interest to me in their
list, but I'm guessing this has a good chance of changing in the near future...
--
Mike
mgi...@icon.com
Evelyn C. Leeper
In article <6l8124$4l0$0...@205.138.137.39>,
Jerome Bigge <jbi...@novagate.com> wrote:
> I'm still looking for a copy of "UNDER THE YOKE" by S.M. Stirling
> for less than $39.95 + shipping that Amazon wanted for a copy...
> And I'd love to have copies of books by authors who have been
> out of print for decades if the price was "reasonable" enough.
http://www.mxbf.com lists one for $5 and one for $2 (plus S&H, one
presumes).
--
Evelyn C. Leeper | ele...@lucent.com
+1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me?"
"Look at your eyes. They are small but they see enormous things." --Rumi
Evelyn C. Leeper
PMccutc103
jbi...@novagate.com (Jerome Bigge) wrote:
>I'm still looking for a copy of "UNDER THE YOKE" by S.M. Stirling
>for less than $39.95 + shipping that Amazon wanted for a copy...
>And I'd love to have copies of books by authors who have been
>out of print for decades if the price was "reasonable" enough.
I saw both new and used copies of this title in paperback,
yesterday, at The Stars Our Destination, an SF bookstore
in Chicago.
I suggest you call them at 773-871-2722 and ask them to
send you a copy. Yes, you'll have to pay S&H, I assume,
but I doubt that they'll want $39.95 for it, either.
--
Pete McCutchen
Evelyn C. Leeper
> don't have to be printed in batches.
30 seconds to print what? OF MICE AND MEN? An unabridged TALE OF GENJI?
(I know this vagueness is not your fault. I hate press releases that
are vague or inaccurate--which these days is most of them.)
Soundcage
In article <6l8v25$i...@nntpb.cb.lucent.com>, ele...@lucent.com wrote:
>In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>,
>John Boston <jbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
>> don't have to be printed in batches.
>
>30 seconds to print what? OF MICE AND MEN? An unabridged TALE OF GENJI?
>
>(I know this vagueness is not your fault. I hate press releases that
>are vague or inaccurate--which these days is most of them.)
>
I read the article as well and I thought they mentioned that the 30 seconds
refered to the printing of a 300 page paperback.
Avram Grumer
In article <6l821r$8...@panix2.panix.com>, gi...@panix.com (Virginia
Ferguson) wrote:
> Does it take 30 seconds to print a "book" or to print "500 loose pages"?
A book. According to
<http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/06/02/DD62949.DTL>:
: In less than an hour, an operator can cut out the pages of an
: aging out-of-print book, scan the pages, print them by laser on
: paper from another machine, cut and trim the pages and bring the
: laminated, full-color book cover (created simultaneously by
: another device) into a final machine, the binder. In minutes a
: brand-new paperback book thunders out, the spine still hot from
: newly applied glue and the cover lying perfectly flat on pages
: that show no signs of waves or ripples (in the past, telltale
: marks of cheap printing) and on print so clear youąd swear it
: was a first edition.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
Information wants to be wrong.
John S. Novak
On 5 Jun 1998 05:52:04 GMT, Jerome Bigge <jbi...@novagate.com> wrote:
>I'm still looking for a copy of "UNDER THE YOKE" by S.M. Stirling
>for less than $39.95 + shipping that Amazon wanted for a copy...
>And I'd love to have copies of books by authors who have been
>out of print for decades if the price was "reasonable" enough.
??
I didn't even know this was hard to find.
Are they asking that price for paperback or hardcover?
At any rate, you may want to try some of the web-based used bookstore
network searches. I can't imagine this is that rare.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cris.com
The Humblest Man on the Net
James Lahue
John S. Novak wrote:
>
> On 5 Jun 1998 05:52:04 GMT, Jerome Bigge <jbi...@novagate.com> wrote:
>
> >I'm still looking for a copy of "UNDER THE YOKE" by S.M. Stirling
> >for less than $39.95 + shipping that Amazon wanted for a copy...
> >And I'd love to have copies of books by authors who have been
> >out of print for decades if the price was "reasonable" enough.
>
> ??
>
> I didn't even know this was hard to find.
> Are they asking that price for paperback or hardcover?
>
> At any rate, you may want to try some of the web-based used bookstore
> network searches. I can't imagine this is that rare.
>
Using MX Book Finder (http://www.mxbf.com), I found a paperback copy
for $5 and another for $2. No mention of it being found in hardcover.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jim Lahue | Disclaimer: All expressed
jla...@vnet.ibm.com | views are mine alone and not
RS/6000 Division, IBM Corp | necessarily shared by IBM
Scott Ellsworth
In article <6l8v25$i...@nntpb.cb.lucent.com>, ele...@lucent.com wrote:
>In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>,
>John Boston <jbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
>> don't have to be printed in batches.
>
>30 seconds to print what? OF MICE AND MEN? An unabridged TALE OF GENJI?
>
>(I know this vagueness is not your fault. I hate press releases that
>are vague or inaccurate--which these days is most of them.)
Article I saw in MacWeek quoted page print rates, including binding,
of 135-180 pages per minutes, so somewhat slower than that, though
the Simon and shuster chap they interviews in MacWeek, 6/1/98, p. 18
was talking about using four of the 135 critters plus one of the 180
critters. (Xerox Docutech 135 and 6180, to be precise.)
This would work out to four 270 page books with covers in two minutes.
Certainly made me hopeful. S&S was hoping to use it for academic
books, where they really do not want them to go out of print, but they
have such tight margins tthat it is easy to make them do so. Further,
for a run of 2500 books, on demand runs $4.32 per, while offset
costs $1.85. Apparently, the costs for on demand are fairly linear,
while they are not for offset, so it really does not change for a run
of 250, which is something that can be arranged for an academic
text onvery short notice.
Scott
Scott Ellsworth sc...@eviews.com
"When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment
results" - Calvin Coolidge, (Stanley Walker, City Editor, p. 131 (1934))
"The barbarian is thwarted at the moat." - Scott Adams
John Boston
In article <6l9178$cb0$3...@winter.news.erols.com>, soun...@erols.com says...
>
>In article <6l8v25$i...@nntpb.cb.lucent.com>, ele...@lucent.com wrote:
>>In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>,
>>John Boston <jbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> Printing takes about 30 seconds and the books
>>> don't have to be printed in batches.
>>
>>30 seconds to print what? OF MICE AND MEN? An unabridged TALE OF GENJI?
>>
>>(I know this vagueness is not your fault. I hate press releases that
>>are vague or inaccurate--which these days is most of them.)
>>
>
>refered to the printing of a 300 page paperback.
That's correct.
John Boston
William Clifford
gi...@panix.com (Virginia Ferguson) wrote:
>Does it take 30 seconds to print a "book" or to print "500 loose pages"?
>If it's the latter I'd rather have the bookstore book, thanks. Unless
>there was absolutely no other way to get the book *AND* I absolutely had
>to have it. I've already got too many loose papers, binders, and folders
>hanging around.
If the Xerox 5090 we have at work (oh for a Docutech) is any example
the books are probably tape bound internally which is probably figured
in the 30 second figure given. Still, that's a heck of a ppm rate.
-William Clifford
Warning!! From fields foiled! (you figure it out)
Joe Bernstein
GrapeApe <grap...@aol.com> wrote:
> Some of these books will not cost 5 dollars, if you take the going market rate
> of xerography into account, as a sucessful business model, 5 dollars buys you
> 100 pages. If a book is 500 pages, you will be paying five times as much. I
> also cannot see these books on demand bound in a method satsfactory to the
> average reader at a reasonable cost. A laser printed book on boths sides of
> the page is not terribly difficult technically, but how many people want this
> around in a three ring spiral or velo bound edition? Economies of scale are
> what make books as inexpensive as they are today.
The book my boss brought back from the ABA show here last weekend was as
close to perfect-bound as I can tell (being, admittedly, not an expert
in binding). I realise the possibility that anyone could do this on
demand is intrinsically unconceivable to people who keep insisting like
this that it's not possible, but you know, sooner or later people will
land on the moon too. Anyway, the book I saw was emphatically *not*
velo-bound or three-ring spiral, it was a real book; and while I didn't
personally witness it being printed, I don't see how Ingram could
possibly benefit by lying about this. - JLB
GrapeApe
I have no problem with the high speed printing or the trade paperback style
binding. I do question any notion that any book done with the process will only
cost 5 dollars a copy however, unless the text is one hundred pages or less.
These will not be as inexpensive as a regularly published edition, although
you can generally cut down overhead costs such as publicity and distribution.
It will certainly be a costs savings for small runs of set and known demand
such as college texts in comparision to setting up a large press to print the
minimum practical allotment.
Elisabeth Carey
Not everyone regards perfect-bound books as the ultimate definition of
"real books". It's a cheap, rather poor method of binding. For a
five-dollar book? Sure, especially a five-dollar book I couldn't
otherwise get. But for a twenty-dollar book? I better want that sucker
awful bad. And GrapeApe's point about how many pages you could
actually get for five dollars and still leave some profit for the
"publisher" does seem to be a valid one.
Can it be done? Sure, and there _is_ a market niche available for it.
But these books are going to be flimsier and less attractive than
curren paperbacks, and except for very short books, they're going to
be as or more expensive. They're not going to drive conventional
publishers out of business, or threaten conventional bookstores.
[Remember, just as soon as they perfect "television", all the movie
theaters are gonna close down, 'cause we'll all be sitting at home,
watching movies with just our families, or all alone. It'll be the
death of the movie theaters, I tell ya. Just like movie theaters and
radio killed off reading...]
Lis Carey
John S. Novak
On 06 Jun 1998 19:06:49 GMT, GrapeApe <grap...@aol.com> wrote:
>I have no problem with the high speed printing or the trade paperback style
>binding. I do question any notion that any book done with the process will only
>cost 5 dollars a copy however, unless the text is one hundred pages or less.
Ape, it's a question of scale and economy.
I think it was you who made the comment that a xerox copy of a single
page costs five cents, and that therefore one hundred pages are
"worth" five dollars.
But that five cent price is set mainly because that's what the market
will bear as a maximum cost for low volumes of copies on demand. I've
seen drug stores bring the price down as low as two cents a copy, and
I'm sure they weren't losing money on the proposition. Maybe not making
much, but not losing money.
So by that scheme, five bucks gets you not a hundred pages, but two
hundred and fifty pages. Now, add in to that the fact that these
people are going to be buying paper and ink in a lot greater volume
than a normal drug store, and the price goes down even farther. _Now_
add in the fact that they are using an evolutionarily new (rather than
a revolutionarily new) technology for printing these things, and,
well, no, I don't have a problem believing their prices.
> These will not be as inexpensive as a regularly published edition, although
>you can generally cut down overhead costs such as publicity and distribution.
I don't think anyone suggested they would.
Jay Random
Elisabeth Carey wrote:
>
> Not everyone regards perfect-bound books as the ultimate definition of
> "real books". It's a cheap, rather poor method of binding. For a
> five-dollar book? Sure, especially a five-dollar book I couldn't
> otherwise get. But for a twenty-dollar book? I better want that sucker
> awful bad. And GrapeApe's point about how many pages you could
> actually get for five dollars and still leave some profit for the
> "publisher" does seem to be a valid one.
Mass-market paperbacks are perfect-bound, are they not? It's been a
while since I could buy one of those for five dollars.
> Can it be done? Sure, and there _is_ a market niche available for it.
> But these books are going to be flimsier and less attractive than
> curren paperbacks, and except for very short books, they're going to
> be as or more expensive. They're not going to drive conventional
> publishers out of business, or threaten conventional bookstores.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that they will. What they may do is
drive the phrase `out of print' out of business, greatly to the benefit
of both writers & readers.
Incidentally, these books need not be `flimsier & less attractive'. I've
seen books produced by an earlier version of this process, & they're
quite sturdy & passably attractive.
GrapeApe
>But that five cent price is set mainly because that's what the market
>will bear as a maximum cost for low volumes of copies on demand. I've
>seen drug stores bring the price down as low as two cents a copy, and
>I'm sure they weren't losing money on the proposition.
They may have been doing 2 cent copies as a loss leader, no profit or profit
loss to bring people into the store for other impulse items.
I chose the 5 cent as an known example where the end cost IS providing for
overhead and allowing profits. Of course the overhead is going to differ
somewhat between a kinkos and a book on demand press, but there are still
royalties to pay. A "published on demand' print will probably end up going at
least 5% over a comparable copy from a standard publishing run.
John S. Novak
On 06 Jun 1998 22:55:29 GMT, GrapeApe <grap...@aol.com> wrote:
>A "published on demand' print will probably end up going at
>least 5% over a comparable copy from a standard publishing run.
Who is arguing this?
What we're talking about is cost of production, not sale price.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <avram-05069...@avram.port.net>,
Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>In article <6l821r$8...@panix2.panix.com>, gi...@panix.com (Virginia
>Ferguson) wrote:
>
>> Does it take 30 seconds to print a "book" or to print "500 loose pages"?
>
><http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/06/02/DD62949.DTL>:
>
>
>: In less than an hour, an operator can cut out the pages of an
>: aging out-of-print book, scan the pages, print them by laser on
>: paper from another machine, cut and trim the pages and bring the
>: laminated, full-color book cover (created simultaneously by
>: another device) into a final machine, the binder. In minutes a
>: brand-new paperback book thunders out, the spine still hot from
>: newly applied glue and the cover lying perfectly flat on pages
>: that show no signs of waves or ripples (in the past, telltale
>: marks of cheap printing) and on print so clear youąd swear it
>: was a first edition.
>
would be nice (books could be reset), but I gather that it's not reliable
yet. Is there any information about which it is?
Jay Random
John S. Novak wrote:
>
> On 06 Jun 1998 22:55:29 GMT, GrapeApe <grap...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >A "published on demand' print will probably end up going at
> >least 5% over a comparable copy from a standard publishing run.
>
> Who is arguing this?
> What we're talking about is cost of production, not sale price.
Cost of production, actually, can be many times higher for a
print-on-demand book than for a conventionally published book, without
affecting the profitability of the sale.
How's that, you ask?
Simple: _Less than 10%_ of the retail price of the average book,
hardcover or paperback, represents the cost of printing. The other
90-plus percent is added between the printing press & the consumer --
author's royalties, publisher's overhead, initial editing costs,
distributor's discount, bookseller's discount, publisher's profit.
Ingram's (pardon me if I don't have the exact figures) pays roughly half
the cover price for the books it distributes. Allowing 10% of the price
as a royalty (a fairish average figure, I understand), Ingram's can
spend up to 40% of the cover price of a print-on-demand book before it
becomes more expensive _to them_ than buying from a traditional
publisher. They also save on inventory costs, & need not worry about the
cost of handling returns. Net effect: As long as a print-on-demand book
costs no more than four times as much to produce as a traditionally
printed book, it can compete in the marketplace. (I am assuming that
Ingram's is only using the P.O.D. system to reprint previously published
works -- a safe assumption, I think -- so that the initial costs that
the publisher pays to bring a book to press need not be paid again.)
Is print-on-demand more than four times as expensive as traditional
webpress? At the moment, certainly. But improving technology &
increasing economies of scale (How many P.O.D. systems are in use now?
Let's see what they cost when there is a machine in every bookshop) will
certainly drive the price down over time. I think it would be
presumptuous to assume that print-on-demand will _never_ be cheap enough
to be viable.
--J. Random Print-Demander, D.G.F.V.
Robert Pearlman
grap...@aol.com (GrapeApe) wrote:
>>But that five cent price is set mainly because that's what the market
>>will bear as a maximum cost for low volumes of copies on demand. I've
>>seen drug stores bring the price down as low as two cents a copy, and
>>I'm sure they weren't losing money on the proposition.
>
>They may have been doing 2 cent copies as a loss leader, no profit or profit
>loss to bring people into the store for other impulse items.
>
>I chose the 5 cent as an known example where the end cost IS providing for
>overhead and allowing profits. Of course the overhead is going to differ
>somewhat between a kinkos and a book on demand press, but there are still
>royalties to pay. A "published on demand' print will probably end up going at
>least 5% over a comparable copy from a standard publishing run.
FWIW, 12 years ago some Singaporean shops were offering volume Xerox
reproduction at $US.01/pg and apparently surviving. I know, because I
paid the bills.
Pearlman
Elisabeth Carey
Jay Random wrote:
>
> Elisabeth Carey wrote:
> >
> > Not everyone regards perfect-bound books as the ultimate definition of
> > "real books". It's a cheap, rather poor method of binding. For a
> > five-dollar book? Sure, especially a five-dollar book I couldn't
> > otherwise get. But for a twenty-dollar book? I better want that sucker
> > awful bad. And GrapeApe's point about how many pages you could
> > actually get for five dollars and still leave some profit for the
> > "publisher" does seem to be a valid one.
>
> Mass-market paperbacks are perfect-bound, are they not? It's been a
> while since I could buy one of those for five dollars.
I meant five dollars US, which is what I understood John Boston to
mean--and yes, $5.99-$6.99 is more common, these days, but that's with
cover art and a printing process that's reasonably permanent. John
Boston mentions an unspecified "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing
equipment and software" and printing taking "about 30 seconds"; this
does not seem consistent with any printing process that would not be
damaged by a rainstorm. If the print in my five-dollar book is going
to run and smear when I get caught in the rain, I'm not going to be
happy.
>
> > Can it be done? Sure, and there _is_ a market niche available for it.
> > But these books are going to be flimsier and less attractive than
> > curren paperbacks, and except for very short books, they're going to
> > be as or more expensive. They're not going to drive conventional
> > publishers out of business, or threaten conventional bookstores.
>
> I don't think anyone is suggesting that they will.
John Boston's original post did mention with alarm the possibility of
lines like Orb being shut down "because nothing ever goes out of
print". A more likely development is that it'd be easier for the
publisher to tell when there's enough demand to bring out a new
edition.
> What they may do is
> drive the phrase `out of print' out of business, greatly to the > benefit
> of both writers & readers.
Quite possibly. Books On Demand, for instance, keeps a host of
technical and academic works available for those who really need them,
which would otherwise be completely unavailable because the demand,
while persistent, is very low.
> Incidentally, these books need not be `flimsier & less attractive'. > I've
> seen books produced by an earlier version of this process, & they're
> quite sturdy & passably attractive.
Full-color cover art on reasonably heavy-duty cover stock?
Double-sided printing? The print survives accidental contact with
water? Books On Demand editions are plain, ugly, and not very sturdy,
but the customers buy them because they really, really need that book
for business/professional reasons, not for the pleasure of a good
book. To sell to a general consumer audience, for pleasure reading, at
close to the cost of a mass market paperback, they'll have to be
reasonably close to a mass market paperback in attractiveness and
durability. And that, of course, is assuming that longer books don't
wind up costing three or four times what a mass market paperback does.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
> >least 5% over a comparable copy from a standard publishing run.
>
> What we're talking about is cost of production, not sale price.
If you're not talking about sale price, then you're just blowing
smoke, about sales to the general public. There is absolutely no point
in debating the commercial viability of something until you can talk
about the sale price to the consumer--because the consumer does not
care diddly-squat what it costs to produce; the consumer cares what it
costs to _buy_.
Lis Carey
John S. Novak
>If you're not talking about sale price, then you're just blowing
>smoke, about sales to the general public. There is absolutely no point
>in debating the commercial viability of something until you can talk
>about the sale price to the consumer--because the consumer does not
>care diddly-squat what it costs to produce; the consumer cares what it
>costs to _buy_.
Well you have to talk about both, because sale price tends to depend,
among other things, on production cost.
GrapeApe
The five dollar cost is more than likely the minimum production cost, not the
price for the consumer.
C-Span Booknotes is at the Chicago Booksellers Convention and they showed one
of the mini web press kiosks in action, I say its puts a foot or two of roll
paper through a second, (around 8 pages both sides) which is undoubtedly folded
glued smacked into jackets and trimmed into a neat package.
Samuel Paik
Lighting Print has been mentioned in this and related newsgroups
before. I guess the difference is that someone has actually
seen a book produced by it as well as firmer pricing.
Sam
--
Samuel S. Paik / pa...@webnexus.com / Speak only for self
Oh, veiled and secret Power We know thy ways are true--
Whose paths we seek in vain, In spite of being broken
Be with us in our hour Because of being broken.
Of overthrow and pain; May rise and build anew
That we--by which sure token Stand up and build anew!
Rudyard Kipling / Hymn of Breaking Strain
Elisabeth Carey
John S. Novak wrote:
>
> On Sun, 07 Jun 1998 01:05:54 -0400, Elisabeth Carey
> <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
> >If you're not talking about sale price, then you're just blowing
> >smoke, about sales to the general public. There is absolutely no point
> >in debating the commercial viability of something until you can talk
> >about the sale price to the consumer--because the consumer does not
> >care diddly-squat what it costs to produce; the consumer cares what it
> >costs to _buy_.
>
> Well you have to talk about both, because sale price tends to depend,
> among other things, on production cost.
Yes, _in part_. But there's no point in raving on about how the
consummers are gonna _love_ this, if you haven't factored in the other
costs, and figured out what you can afford to sell it for. It's
particularly silly to talk about how a five-dollar production cost is
going to make instant-print books viable in competition with
$5.99-$6.99 paperbacks, when you haven't figured in royalties and
licenses and overhead and advertising [presumably advertising, at
least, would be a lot less than for standard mmpbs, but you'd still
have to do some, if only to let people know that the service is
available and they should _ask_ if the book they want is available.]
Production cost by itself does not determine the commercial viability
of a Good Idea, and if you're only talking about production cost,
you're wasting your time.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
Samuel Paik wrote:
>
> Lighting Print has been mentioned in this and related newsgroups
> before. I guess the difference is that someone has actually
> seen a book produced by it as well as firmer pricing.
Except that they're apparently _not_ talking about "pricing"; they're
talking about _production costs_.
Lis Carey
John Boston
In article <357A1EE6...@mediaone.net>, lis....@mediaone.net says...
>
>Jay Random wrote:
>>
>> Elisabeth Carey wrote:
>> >
>> > Not everyone regards perfect-bound books as the ultimate definition of
>> > "real books". It's a cheap, rather poor method of binding. For a
>> > five-dollar book? Sure, especially a five-dollar book I couldn't
>> > otherwise get. But for a twenty-dollar book? I better want that sucker
>> > awful bad. And GrapeApe's point about how many pages you could
>> > actually get for five dollars and still leave some profit for the
>> > "publisher" does seem to be a valid one.
>>
>> Mass-market paperbacks are perfect-bound, are they not? It's been a
>> while since I could buy one of those for five dollars.
>
>I meant five dollars US, which is what I understood John Boston to
>mean--and yes, $5.99-$6.99 is more common, these days, but that's with
>cover art and a printing process that's reasonably permanent. John
>Boston mentions an unspecified "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing
>equipment and software" and printing taking "about 30 seconds"; this
>does not seem consistent with any printing process that would not be
>damaged by a rainstorm. If the print in my five-dollar book is going
>to run and smear when I get caught in the rain, I'm not going to be
>happy.
>
Five dollars is allegedly the _printing_ cost alone after the book
is "set up." The proposed price of the books, which obviously would cover
the cost of the set-up and the equipment over the long haul, is $15-20. I
assume this will go down as the equipment becomes more common, though it may
not go down as fast as other computer-related costs. After all, the whole
point of this innovation is _not_ to take advantage of economies of scale.
John Boston
Joe Bernstein
Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
> Joe Bernstein wrote:
> >
> > GrapeApe <grap...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Some of these books will not cost 5 dollars [snip...] . I
> > > also cannot see these books on demand bound in a method satsfactory to the
> > > average reader at a reasonable cost. A laser printed book on boths sides
> > > of the page is not terribly difficult technically, but how many people
> > > want this around in a three ring spiral or velo bound edition? Economies
> > > of scale are what make books as inexpensive as they are today.
> >
> > The book my boss brought back from the ABA show here last weekend was as
> > close to perfect-bound as I can tell (being, admittedly, not an expert
> > in binding). I realise the possibility that anyone could do this on
> > demand is intrinsically unconceivable to people who keep insisting like
> > this that it's not possible, but you know, sooner or later people will
> > land on the moon too. Anyway, the book I saw was emphatically *not*
> > velo-bound or three-ring spiral, it was a real book
[snip]
> Not everyone regards perfect-bound books as the ultimate definition of
> "real books". It's a cheap, rather poor method of binding.
Well, as compared to sewn signature binding, certainly. It still whups
velo or spiral binding cold, though (I say from having used to
destruction books of all four kinds). I apologise for not taking the
extra lines to explain that "perfect" binding is not perfect; I was
trying to be brief and was taking for granted that people following this
thread would know the terminology.
That said, I assume sewn signature binding is not the only other form
superior to perfect, or you wouldn't have phrased your reply this way,
so I'm curious: what other methods of binding are superior?
>For a
> five-dollar book? Sure, especially a five-dollar book I couldn't
> otherwise get. But for a twenty-dollar book? I better want that sucker
> awful bad. And GrapeApe's point about how many pages you could
> actually get for five dollars and still leave some profit for the
> "publisher" does seem to be a valid one.
I guess I should've snipped the sentence about $5. What I was
responding to was the sentence that took for granted that we were
talking about Kinko's being the bindery. I'd seen that assumption or
other forms of an impossibility-assumption in this thread several times,
and I found such absolutely mind-bogglingly naive in a science fiction
newsgroup, hence my parenthesis.
I have no trouble at all with the assumption that print-on-demand is
inherently some degree more expensive, all other things being equal,
than print-in-advance, which seems implicit in the two concepts. (To
take up and strain somewhat your example, it is more expensive to buy a
video than to go to a movie.) For textbooks; for scholarly books; for
out of print books... for several categories already named in this
thread without me even having to strain my brain, print-on-demand could
nevertheless *lower* prices. Here I *will* strain my brain a bit to
explain how.
For scholarly books, for instance, we have the Brill factor. Most
scholarly books have to be subsidised because it's not worth setting up
the plates to do them otherwise, and so forth. Brill, in contrast,
require no subsidy. This is partly because they charge astronomically
high prices and never reprint in paperback; partly because many many
academic libraries seem to think every single book by Brill *must* be
bought no matter what (they're wrong); partly because Brill, themselves,
do no editorial work whatsoever, and are essentially printers rather
than publishers (that's why they're wrong).
I'm fairly sure scholarly books could be produced *below* Brill's prices
and *superior* in (scholarly, not design/binding) quality, without
subsidies, by some previously unemployed MAs and such who undertook to
do the *editorial* work, and then have print-on-demand both for the
printing work and for the economies resulting in this case from *lack*
of scale. (More precisely, from a technology whose scale matches the
relevant market's.) I'm not sure the difference would be enough to get
the library market, since most libraries would in turn feel compelled to
rebind all those paperbacks; but it might. It's actually a win-win
prospect: if they did get the library market, Brill would have to raise
standards and/or lower prices to compete; if they didn't get it, they'd
have to keep prices much lower than Brill's, and the range of available
scholarly books within the reach of non-professorial budgets would
increase greatly.
I don't claim to know as much about the textbook market as about the
scholarly book one, but I suspect the egregious size of textbook prices
often owes as much to the captive-audience situation as in Brill's case
(though it just as often owes to the staffs of thousands who work on
some textbooks...). Where a high textbook price is the result of a
captive audience, or even simply of the costs of publishing books that
sell mainly to a specific market whose size is difficult to predict, I
suspect there are ways print-on-demand could be played upon to lower
that price.
Books that would otherwise be out of print are such an obvious case I
need say no more. Um, let me assure you, as someone who's been working
used books for nearly five years (that's my principal area at this
store): while they constitute only a small percentage of the total
number of books not in print, there are still *many* books people would
willingly buy a $20 trade paperback of. White Wolf has in fact recently
been doing a pretty good business of this by a *traditional*, mass,
publishing model...
> They're not going to drive conventional
> publishers out of business, or threaten conventional bookstores.
I don't expect either of those results. I do think they're possible,
because I don't think I'm smart enough to call possibility vs.
impossibility questions, and I keep in mind a comment my boss made in a
conversation about the recent implosion in the US comics industry: she
pointed out how widely available, for just one example, British
paperbacks were in this country not that long ago, by way of evidence
that yes, the comics market (or for that matter the mass-market
paperback one) really *could* just die. Markets do not always make for
diversity or availability of products... But neither in my previous
post nor this one did I *forecast* print-on-demand breaking out of
certain niches. Any more, in fact, than moon landings have. I just
find the case for the impossibility of each innovation approximately
equally convincing.
[Movie theatres' extinction therefore snipped.]
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer and bookseller http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Speaking for myself alone jos...@tezcat.com j...@sfbooks.com
John S. Novak
>Yes, _in part_. But there's no point in raving on about how the
>consummers are gonna _love_ this, if you haven't factored in the other
>costs, and figured out what you can afford to sell it for. It's
>particularly silly to talk about how a five-dollar production cost is
>going to make instant-print books viable in competition with
>$5.99-$6.99 paperbacks, when you haven't figured in royalties and
[...]
Yes, I know that.
I'm not a drooling moron.
I reserve the right, however, to speak entirely about cost of
production when someone else is disbelieveing precisely that.
Phil Hunt
In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>
jbo...@mindspring.com "John Boston" writes:
> Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
> division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
> using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
> "set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand.
> [...]
I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
absurd.
--
Phil Hunt
"Dreaming something won't make it happen,
but not dreaming something will make it not happen"
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk,UUCP writes:
In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>
jbo...@mindspring.com "John Boston" writes:
> Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
> division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
> using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
> "set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand.
> [...]
I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
absurd.
Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years, I
think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
--------------
Theresa
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <301268582...@tvo.org>,
Were thore 800 year old bits stored on dead trees or dead animals?
Graydon
In article <6lgo6v$9...@universe.digex.net>,
Dead animals.
There are dead reeds much older - Egyptian papyri - and western papers
about five hundred years old, but those are mostly not trees. Trees are
not a good thing to make paper out of, all things considered.
It's not quite fair to say 'no special handling techniques required',
either; it takes a great deal of care to read a manuscript 800 years old
without damaging it.
--
goo...@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
paultr...@my-dejanews.com
I have to agree with Theresa: the main reason why books remain in our
increasingly digital world is because they're perfectly low-tech. As much as
I love my Macintosh, I can't read articles on it in bed, in the car, on the
toilet, out on the back porch, or in any area where I can't string an
extension cord. (This is also the great appeal of magazines: just show me
the E-zine which can be read in the tub or alongside a swimming pool without
the potential for turning the reader into gumbo.) Besides, part of our
primate heritage dictates that we have to have something physical to touch,
sniff, poke, and possibly throw away, and digital media doesn't have that
added attraction.
Besides, I don't know aobut you, but I love the smell of old books; old 5
1/4" floppy disks aren't the same.
Cordially,
Paul T. Riddell
The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness:
The Paul T. Riddell Essay Archive
http://www.dcx.net/priddell
"Subscribe to the newsletter and win potentially valuable prizes!"
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Brenda Clough
Graydon wrote:
> In article <6lgo6v$9...@universe.digex.net>,
> Nancy Lebovitz <nan...@universe.digex.net> wrote:
> >In article <301268582...@tvo.org>,
> >Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@tvo.org> wrote:
> >>Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
> >>requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
> >>monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years, I
> >>think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
> >>hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
> >
> >Were thore 800 year old bits stored on dead trees or dead animals?
>
> Dead animals.
>
> There are dead reeds much older - Egyptian papyri - and western papers
> about five hundred years old, but those are mostly not trees. Trees are
> not a good thing to make paper out of, all things considered.
>
> It's not quite fair to say 'no special handling techniques required',
> either; it takes a great deal of care to read a manuscript 800 years old
> without damaging it.
>
There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago addressing this
point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and read it, to
get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does take some
specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even
good for coasters.
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Doug Tricarico
In <357C1D58...@erols.com> Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
writes:
>
>There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago
>addressing this point -- that while it takes no special equipment
>to open a book and read it, to get the information off of a tape
>or CD or stack of punchcards does take some specialized technology.
> Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even good for
>coasters.
>
>Brenda
Hmmm... I'm using one for just such a purpose. Technically it's a
CD-ROM but there you have it. Works fine as a coaster.
Doug
Evelyn C. Leeper
In article <6lha3q$i97$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
<paultr...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> I have to agree with Theresa: the main reason why books remain in our
> increasingly digital world is because they're perfectly low-tech. As much as
> I love my Macintosh, I can't read articles on it in bed, in the car, on the
> toilet, out on the back porch, or in any area where I can't string an
> extension cord. (This is also the great appeal of magazines: just show me
> the E-zine which can be read in the tub or alongside a swimming pool without
> the potential for turning the reader into gumbo.)
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have read etexts in
bed, in the car, on the toilet, on the back porch, and alongside a
swimming pool. I could read in the tub but while I wouldn't be turned
into gumbo, I don't relish the idea of dropping my computer into it.
(I don't read books or magazines in the tub for the same reason.)
My computer is smaller (albeit *slightly* heavier) than a paperback
book. It is not a Macintosh. It does run DOS.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper | ele...@lucent.com
+1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me?"
"Look at your eyes. They are small but they see enormous things." --Rumi
Thomas Womack
paultr...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
: I have to agree with Theresa: the main reason why books remain in our
: increasingly digital world is because they're perfectly low-tech. As much as
: I love my Macintosh, I can't read articles on it in bed, in the car, on the
: toilet, out on the back porch, or in any area where I can't string an
: extension cord. (This is also the great appeal of magazines: just show me
: the E-zine which can be read in the tub or alongside a swimming pool without
: the potential for turning the reader into gumbo.)
:Besides, part of our primate heritage dictates that we have to have
:something physical to touch, sniff, poke, and possibly throw away, and
:digital media doesn't have that added attraction.
PDAs are pretty good at satisfying that primate urge; I *have* read
ebooks (OK, Kipling poetry) (no, no, go away Mr Askew) in bed, in the
car, in the toilet and out on the back porch. It's not sane to read from
PDAs near water, though; they're too expensive to risk getting wet, and
they dry even worse than books do.
Tom
Brenda Clough
Doug Tricarico wrote:
The hole in the center lets the condensation through onto the tabletop.
liz...@mrlizard.com
In article <357C1D58...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
>
>There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago addressing this
>point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and read it,
> to
>get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does take some
>specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even
>good for coasters.
>
And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have scribbles on
them.
John Lorentz
Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote in article
<357C1D58...@erols.com>...
>
>
> There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago addressing
this
> point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and read
it, to
> get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does take
some
> specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not
even
> good for coasters.
>
I own several books that will pass being 100 years of age within the next
dozen years. I can take them out and read them anytime I'm home.
I have a box of 5 1/4 discs that are no more than 5 years old, that I
really should find a way to get data off of--but I can't right now, since
neither of our computers has an appropriate drive, and some were
Doublespaced, and Microsoft doesn't sell that technology anymore.
(Drivespace will read Doublespaced discs sometimes--but no all of the
time.)
Ruth's (2 1/2-year-old) computer died a lingering death over the last few
weeks--and the new computer will neither restore everything from the last
tape backup, nor will it presently recognize her "old" (22 months) hard
drive. But she's been able to read bits of info all that time, in the form
of books, newspapers and magazines.
--John
Brenda Clough
liz...@mrlizard.com wrote:
> In article <357C1D58...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> >There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago addressing this
> >point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and read it,
> > to
> >get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does take some
> >specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even
> >good for coasters.
> >
>
> And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have scribbles on
> them.
That would pertain, whatever media you were storing data on.
Elisabeth Carey
liz...@mrlizard.com wrote:
>
> In article <357C1D58...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> >There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago > addressing this
> >point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and > read it,
> > to
> >get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does > take some
> >specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, > not even
> >good for coasters.
> >
>
> And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have > scribbles on
> them.
The difference being, of course, that with the dead trees, you ONLY
need to master the language. With the CDs, you need the specialized
equipment, and the power source for the specialized equipment, before
you can even begin to worry about what language the stored information
is stored in. And survival of multiple copies in different languages
for long periods of time, on such "perishable" materials as paper,
papyrus, parchment, and vellum, enabling people who start out knowing
only one of the languages that one of the texts is in to learn the
other languages and read the other texts, is one of the boring facts
of history. Also, of course, increased likelihood of survival of the
texts because they can be copied even by people who _don't_ know the
language a give text is in.
Whereas CDs can only be copied if you have the right technology--which
does rather complicate the process of preserving enough copies of
enough things until somebody, somewhere, reinvents the
technology--_exactly_ the right technology--to use them.
Lis Carey
Damien Neil
On Sun, 07 Jun 98 00:50:59 GMT, Phil Hunt <ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
>absurd.
Do you, perchance, have a suggestion for an alternative medium that meets
the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and usable?
Stone tablets win on the durable front (until you drop them), but loose
on most of the rest.
Human brain cells win, but tend to not last for more than a hundred years.
Digital media are rarely cheap (once the cost of viewing hardware is
factored in), and have generally lost out durability-wise. (Reference
old Moon probe data, the diary I kept on my C64 a decade or so ago, etc.)
Non-tree pulp is appealing, and may well be a superb alternative.
- Damien
dstillwa-wi...@tvo.org
In article <301268582...@tvo.org> you write:
>Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
>requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
>monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years, I
>think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
>hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
a relatively new phenomenon, and has a shelf life of far, far FAR less than
800 years (somewhere around 70 or 80 I believe). The books that have lived
for that long are made out of numerous other materials from Hemp to Papyrus.
I believe that the process of pulping wood was too expensive to form paper
before this century; not to mention the cost of felling the trees necesary as
opposed to harvesting a crop of hemp, for example
Daniel
--- Internet Message Header Follows ---
Received: from earth.willamette.edu (158.104.100.101)
by mail.tvo.org (FirstClass Mail Server v5.11)
transient id 667; 18:56:31 -0400
Received: from jupiter.willamette.edu (dsti...@jupiter.willamette.edu
[158.104.1.1])
by earth.willamette.edu (8.8.8/8.6.4) with ESMTP
id PAA12136 for <tw...@tvo.org>; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 15:54:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (dstillwa@localhost)
by jupiter.willamette.edu (8.8.8/8.6.4)
id PAA14329; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 15:54:46 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 15:54:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Daniel C Stillwaggon <dsti...@willamette.edu>
Message-Id: <1998060822...@jupiter.willamette.edu>
To: tw...@tvo.org
Subject: Re: Forget superstores; what's _this_ going to do?
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
In-Reply-To: <301268582...@tvo.org>
Organization: Willamette University, Salem, OR, USA
Cc:
Avram Grumer
> In article <357C1D58...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> >There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago
> >addressing this point -- that while it takes no special equipment
> >to open a book and read it, to get the information off of a tape or
> >CD or stack of punchcards does take some specialized technology.
> >Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even good for coasters.
>
> And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have scribbles
> on them.
Lizard, if I locked you in a room with the following items:
1) A multimedia CD-ROM
2) A set of instructions telling you how to build a CD-ROM player,
and the raw materials (sand, minerals, metals, etc.) necessary to
build it.
3) A copy of a book in a language you don't understand
4) An English-to-Unknown-Language-Mentioned-in-#3-Above dictionary
...which do you think you'd be able to decipher first, the book or the CD-ROM?
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
"The Internet is not a separate 'cyberspace' reality. It is a new nervous
system for the physical world." -- Phil Agre
Lawrence Watt-Evans
On 8 Jun 1998 22:19:19 GMT, "John Lorentz" <jlor...@spiritone.com>
wrote:
>I own several books that will pass being 100 years of age within the next
>dozen years. I can take them out and read them anytime I'm home.
Apropos of very little, you don't yet have any over a century? I know
I've got dozens older than that; I can't recall anything from the 18th
century offhand, but I've got lots dating back to 1830 or so. Is this
unusual?
>I have a box of 5 1/4 discs that are no more than 5 years old, that I
>really should find a way to get data off of--but I can't right now, since
>neither of our computers has an appropriate drive, and some were
>Doublespaced, and Microsoft doesn't sell that technology anymore.
>(Drivespace will read Doublespaced discs sometimes--but no all of the
>time.)
There's a significant chance they've degraded to uselessness anyway --
but hey, why were you still using 5.25" in 1993? I'd switched over in
1989, and I thought I was slow.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 4/24/98
Elisabeth Carey
dsti...@willamette.edu wrote:
>
> In article <301268582...@tvo.org> you write:
> >Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
> >requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
> >monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years, I
> >think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
> >hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
> I believe that you may be misinformed in this area. IIRC paper from trees is
> a relatively new phenomenon, and has a shelf life of far, far FAR less than
> 800 years (somewhere around 70 or 80 I believe). The books that have lived
> for that long are made out of numerous other materials from Hemp to Papyrus.
> I believe that the process of pulping wood was too expensive to form paper
> before this century; not to mention the cost of felling the trees necesary as
>
> opposed to harvesting a crop of hemp, for example
Hemp, cotton, linen, sheepskin.
It was in the mid-19th century, roughly, that it suddenly became
_cheap_ to make paper from relatively high-acid sources, such as, for
instance, trees. It then took a few decades before anybody noticed the
problem, and a few more years to bring the cost of low-acid,
"permanent" paper down to what tree-pulp paper costs, and now _most_
hardcovers and trade paperbacks are printed on permanent paper, i.e.,
paper that should last as long as what we were using up until the
Victorian era.
Meanwhile, people are hard at work deacidifying the high-acid books
that haven't already disintegrated.
Lis Carey
Sea Wasp
liz...@mrlizard.com wrote:
>
> In article <357C1D58...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> >There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago addressing this
> >point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and read it,
> > to
> >get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does take some
> >specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even
> >good for coasters.
> >
>
> And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have scribbles on
> them.
You're being rather obtuse. Knowledge of the language can be passed on
independent of tech level or equipment. I have a 7.5" floppy here.
Assuming the info on it is still THERE, where do I go to get it read?
If I have a CD-ROM 100 years from now, will I be able to run the
program? I can pick up a Shakespeare play printed in the original run
and read it without needing any technological assistance. Will you be
able to do the same with today's info storage?
Paper has a big advantage there. Hardcopy always will have that
advantage -- archival security and data endurance. Unless, of course,
you get to the point that ALL information, even the seemingly
irrelevant, trivial, or repulsive, is automatically transferred to your
new format at all times.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;;
_Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at http://www.hyperbooks.com
Todd D. Ellner
The new media are very compact and can be randomly accessed quickly,
but they don't last nearly as long as some of the older media. We have
books from before Gutenberg and stone tablets from a loooonnnnggg time
ago. I doubt that my CDs and Jaz cartridges will last even a century.
Even finding a tool to read the old media can be problematic. When was
the last time you found a new 8" floppy drive in utterly reliable working
order. Even 9-track tape drives are getting harder to find.
I've heard that some branches of the military keep absolutely vital stuff
on mylar punched tape. A hand-cranked tape reader can always be constructed
and operated by an enlisted man.
--
Todd Ellner | The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
tel...@cs.pdx.edu | --William Blake "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
(503)493-4431 |
David G. Bell
> In article <357C1D58...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> >There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago addressing this
> >point -- that while it takes no special equipment to open a book and read it,
> > to
> >get the information off of a tape or CD or stack of punchcards does take some
> >specialized technology. Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even
> >good for coasters.
> >
>
> And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have scribbles on
> them.
Unless yoo're talking about some really serious cultural disruption,
that is rather more survivable a system of encoding the data than a
series of binary digits, requiring advanced technology to read, that
arbitrarily encode the above-mentioned scribbles.
If things are that bad, you're having to guess about how many bits per
character, before you can even start on any other linguistic analysis.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Tharsia
<,snip>
>>I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead
>> trees absurd.
>
>Do you, perchance, have a suggestion for an alternative medium
> that meets the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and > usable?
>
>Stone tablets win on the durable front (until you drop them), but
>loose on most of the rest.
>
>Human brain cells win, but tend to not last for more than a > hundred years.
>
>Digital media are rarely cheap (once the cost of viewing
>hardware is factored in), and have generally lost out
> durability-wise. (Reference old Moon probe data, the diary I > kept on my
C64 a decade or so ago, etc.)
>
>Non-tree pulp is appealing, and may well be a superb > alternative.
>
> - Damien
Cotton is the most archival paper that is easily available. It is a bit more
expensive,however.
(Watercolorists, myself included, look for the "100% rag" label on paper for
painting, simply because even though it may cost $10 a sheet, it will be around
in 3000 years, based on how long Egyptian cotton sheets have lasted. Given that
the world lasts so long, of course.)
Tharsia/aol.com (aka joan barger; standardize address to reply)
--Whoever does not study history is doomed to repeat it
"On the other hand, gentlemen . . . suppose we gave a war and EVERYBODY came?"
-- Jules Pfeifer
Craig West
Phil Hunt (ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk) wrote:
+>In article <6l7nek$pg9$1...@samsara0.mindspring.com>
+> jbo...@mindspring.com "John Boston" writes:
+>> Today's _New York Times_ reports the existence of Lightning Print, a
+>> division of the book wholesaler Ingram, which by some unspecified means
+>> using "state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software" can
+>> "set [a] book up in the digital library" for printing on demand.
+>> [...]
+>I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
+>absurd.
I agree, but for the minor detail that I have yet to see an e-book that is
anywhere near as convenient to read.
They probably exist, but I haven't seen them...
--
Craig West Ph: (905) 821-8300 | It's not a bug,
Pulse Microsystems Fx: (905) 821-7331 | It's a feature...
2660 Meadowvale Blvd, Unit #10 | acw...@echo-on.net
Mississauga, Ont., Canada L5N-6M6 | cr...@pulsemicro.com
Jay Random
dsti...@willamette.edu wrote:
>
> In article <301268582...@tvo.org> you write:
> >Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
> >requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
> >monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years, I
> >think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
> >hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
> I believe that you may be misinformed in this area. IIRC paper from trees is
> a relatively new phenomenon, and has a shelf life of far, far FAR less than
> 800 years (somewhere around 70 or 80 I believe). The books that have lived
> for that long are made out of numerous other materials from Hemp to Papyrus.
> I believe that the process of pulping wood was too expensive to form paper
> before this century; not to mention the cost of felling the trees necesary as
> opposed to harvesting a crop of hemp, for example
The process for manufacturing paper out of wood pulp was developed circa
1830, & quickly superseded earlier processes (such as that using linen
rags) for most mass-produced printed matter. Books made of wood-pulp
paper in the middle of the 19th century are still legible & easy to
handle today, if they have been appropriately cared for & properly
stored. (Keep it in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight; it'll last
for centuries.)
These, btw, are _not_ the acid-free papers of recent invention, which
have the potential to last a great deal longer without oxidizing.
--J. Random Old Book Fancier, D.G.F.V.
John Boston
In article <6lgo6v$9...@universe.digex.net>, nan...@universe.digex.net
says...
[snip]
>>
>>I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
>>absurd.
>>
>>Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
>>requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
>>monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years,
I
>>think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
>>hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
>
>Were thore 800 year old bits stored on dead trees or dead animals?
Maybe live trees or animals would be preferable.
ObSF: Le Guin's "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" and Dick's "The
Preserving Machine."
John Boston
GrapeApe
I wonder if it's a xerox process or ocr. Optical character recognition
would be nice (books could be reset), but I gather that it's not reliable
yet. Is there any information about which it is?
The print on demand machine requires setting up, that is, in most cases it will
be newly typeset and laid out in a ready to go postscript file, probably from
scratch, rather than being scanned (although OCR can certainly help in the
stage of getting the book into a newly typeset form)
Peter Brülls
lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans):
> On 8 Jun 1998 22:19:19 GMT, "John Lorentz" <jlor...@spiritone.com>
> wrote:
>> I own several books that will pass being 100 years of age within
>> the next dozen years. I can take them out and read them anytime
>> I'm home.
> Apropos of very little, you don't yet have any over a century? I know
> I've got dozens older than that; I can't recall anything from the 18th
> century offhand, but I've got lots dating back to 1830 or so. Is this
> unusual?
I thought owning books already has become unsual these days.
>> I have a box of 5 1/4 discs that are no more than 5 years old, that I
>> really should find a way to get data off of--but I can't right now, since
>> neither of our computers has an appropriate drive, and some were
>> Doublespaced, and Microsoft doesn't sell that technology anymore.
>> (Drivespace will read Doublespaced discs sometimes--but no all of the
>> time.)
> There's a significant chance they've degraded to uselessness anyway --
> but hey, why were you still using 5.25" in 1993? I'd switched over in
> 1989, and I thought I was slow.
I doubt that the markets for PCs in North America and Western Europe
are that different, so I'm not surprised. In 1992 PCs were still being
sold with both 3ź and 5ź.
One could still get an old PC style 5ź drive to John's
floppies. However, I have fiveteen year old 5ź Apple formated floppies
with old data. Homework, comic collection and books list, juvenile
prose,... not impossible to access, but simply not worth my time.
Peter Brülls
Robert Sneddon
In article <slrn6nor5...@grace.acm.rpi.edu>, Damien Neil
<ne...@acm.rpi.edu> writes
>>absurd.
>
>the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and usable?
>
>
Laser-etched sheets of stainless steel, microengraved at 1000
characters per inch (or better). Gold-plate them afterwards, with a very
thin coating. They can be read with a simple microscope, or a good
digital scanner, although it might have to be custom made. Use 20th
century English - if Latin has survived 2000 years plus, and Greek even
longer, English of this period will still be comprehensible in 10,000
years time. Multiple copies of a dictionary/concordance inserspersed
with the data would be a wise precaution anyhow.
--
To reply by email, send to nojay (at) public (period) antipope (dot) org
Robert Sneddon
Mike Chary
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>On 8 Jun 1998 22:19:19 GMT, "John Lorentz" <jlor...@spiritone.com>
>wrote:
>
>>I own several books that will pass being 100 years of age within the next
>>dozen years. I can take them out and read them anytime I'm home.
>
>Apropos of very little, you don't yet have any over a century? I know
>I've got dozens older than that; I can't recall anything from the 18th
>century offhand, but I've got lots dating back to 1830 or so. Is this
>unusual?
Kind of. Most people didn't know how to read all that well before the
last hundred years, and that was when they started putting acid into
paper. Books before 1840 or so hold up very well over time, but after
that they start to yellow and turn brittle.
(Or so I was told in college. I could have been lied to.)
--
Court Philosopher and Barbarian, DNRC http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~fchary
Congratulations on a Great Season VALPO!
Happy 100th birthday, Paul Robeson!
"Ipsa scientia potestas est." - Roger Bacon
Elisabeth Carey
Peter Brülls wrote:
>
> lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans):
>
> > On 8 Jun 1998 22:19:19 GMT, "John Lorentz" <jlor...@spiritone.com>
> > wrote:
>
> >> I own several books that will pass being 100 years of age within
> >> the next dozen years. I can take them out and read them anytime
> >> I'm home.
>
> > Apropos of very little, you don't yet have any over a century? I know
> > I've got dozens older than that; I can't recall anything from the 18th
> > century offhand, but I've got lots dating back to 1830 or so. Is this
> > unusual?
>
We're living in the most literate age in the history of the world,
with more people able to read and more people owning books across much
more of society than was imaginable even a hundred and fifty years
ago.
Boring, and devastating to the egos of people who want to think
reading is a dying middle-class art, but true.
Lis Carey
Brenda Clough
Robert Sneddon wrote:
>
>
> Laser-etched sheets of stainless steel, microengraved at 1000
> characters per inch (or better). Gold-plate them afterwards, with a very
> thin coating. They can be read with a simple microscope, or a good
> digital scanner, although it might have to be custom made. Use 20th
> century English - if Latin has survived 2000 years plus, and Greek even
> longer, English of this period will still be comprehensible in 10,000
> years time. Multiple copies of a dictionary/concordance inserspersed
> with the data would be a wise precaution anyhow.
>
Sounds perfect! Hey, Patrick! When is Tor going to go to the stainless-steel
edition, huh?
Thomas Womack
Todd D. Ellner <tel...@cs.pdx.edu> wrote:
: The new media are very compact and can be randomly accessed quickly,
: but they don't last nearly as long as some of the older media. We have
: books from before Gutenberg and stone tablets from a loooonnnnggg time
: ago. I doubt that my CDs and Jaz cartridges will last even a century.
But you can copy CDs to new media in 37 minutes, or 18.5 if you spent
100 dollars more when you bought the CD writer. Ditto with Jaz
cartridges. It takes considerably more than 37 minutes to make a
backup stone tablet ...
: Even finding a tool to read the old media can be problematic. When was
: the last time you found a new 8" floppy drive in utterly reliable working
: order. Even 9-track tape drives are getting harder to find.
That's why you move your data when you change media. I spent an
evening moving everything on my ZIP discs to CDR upon selling the ZIP
drive; some day, I'll spend another evening moving everything on my
3.5" discs to CDR - they're getting old. I fully anticipate sitting
down for an evening in 2005 and copying my CDR collection onto DVDR,
or whatever miraculous new technology exists then.
OK, I don't have much data to move around; it's a much, much harder
problem to transfer a terabyte of old DAT tapes to DLT (*reading* a
terabyte takes sixteen hours at the full 20-meg-a-second theoretical
speed of SCSI). But there are few institutions with a terabyte of data
on old media - if you have been collecting data on punched cards, you
can probably fit a filing cabinet on each CDR.
Tom
Avram Grumer
In article <8wF7GaAr...@ibfs.demon.co.uk>, Robert Sneddon
<no...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <slrn6nor5...@grace.acm.rpi.edu>, Damien Neil
> <ne...@acm.rpi.edu> writes
> >
> >Do you, perchance, have a suggestion for an alternative medium that
> >meets the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and usable?
>
> Laser-etched sheets of stainless steel, microengraved at 1000
> characters per inch (or better). Gold-plate them afterwards, with a very
> thin coating. They can be read with a simple microscope, or a good
> digital scanner, although it might have to be custom made. Use 20th
> century English - if Latin has survived 2000 years plus, and Greek even
> longer, English of this period will still be comprehensible in 10,000
> years time. Multiple copies of a dictionary/concordance inserspersed
> with the data would be a wise precaution anyhow.
Assuming our descendents have microscopes.
Many of the works of the ancient Greeks were burned or thrown out as scrap
paper by later generations who didn't understand their worth. On the one
hand, gold-plated sheets of steel are clearly valuable things that
shouldn't be thrown out. On the other, they also look like valuable
things that could be melted down and made into jewelery, or used to build
tools.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
"My television set told me that seventy to eighty percent
of the population now gets most of their information
about the world from their television set!" -- Crosley Bendix
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <6lil6p$deb$1...@mizar.cs.pdx.edu>,
Todd D. Ellner <tel...@cs.pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>The new media are very compact and can be randomly accessed quickly,
>but they don't last nearly as long as some of the older media. We have
>books from before Gutenberg and stone tablets from a loooonnnnggg time
>ago. I doubt that my CDs and Jaz cartridges will last even a century.
>
>the last time you found a new 8" floppy drive in utterly reliable working
>order. Even 9-track tape drives are getting harder to find.
>
devices which can read the 10 or 20 most common old media. I don't know
if many people will want them for home use, but I can imagine libraries
and old-records recovery businesses having them.
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
liz...@mrlizard.com
In article <avram-08069...@avram.port.net>, av...@bigfoot.com (Avram Grumer) wrote:
>In article <6lhi55$m...@enews1.newsguy.com>, liz...@mrlizard.com wrote:
>
>> >
>> >There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a couple years ago
>> >addressing this point -- that while it takes no special equipment
>> >to open a book and read it, to get the information off of a tape or
>> >CD or stack of punchcards does take some specialized technology.
>> >Without a CD player, those CDs are useless, not even good for coasters.
>>
>> And without knowledge of the language, the dead trees just have scribbles
>> on them.
>
>
>1) A multimedia CD-ROM
>2) A set of instructions telling you how to build a CD-ROM player,
> and the raw materials (sand, minerals, metals, etc.) necessary to
> build it.
>3) A copy of a book in a language you don't understand
>4) An English-to-Unknown-Language-Mentioned-in-#3-Above dictionary
>
>
Oh, probably the book. The point was, paper isn't a guarantee of survival of
information. We have plenty of artifacts from dead cultures that are basically
meaningless.
What's interesting is the possibility that print might effectively vanish
sometime in thenext century, leaving a total 'information gap' for
archeaologists thousands of years hence. It might seem that history stopped
sometime around 2050 or so...
EKR
av...@bigfoot.com (Avram Grumer) writes:
> Lizard, if I locked you in a room with the following items:
>
> 1) A multimedia CD-ROM
> 2) A set of instructions telling you how to build a CD-ROM player,
> and the raw materials (sand, minerals, metals, etc.) necessary to
> build it.
> 3) A copy of a book in a language you don't understand
> 4) An English-to-Unknown-Language-Mentioned-in-#3-Above dictionary
>
> ...which do you think you'd be able to decipher first, the book or the CD-ROM?
ready access to any of the CDROMs you had available whereas you'd
still have to laboriously read each book and translate it by hand.
And that's not to mention making the information available to third
parties.
'Fast' is an issue of both latency AND throughput.
-Ekr
--
[Eric Rescorla Terisa Systems, Inc.]
"Put it in the top slot."
edwa...@cc5.crl.aecl.ca
In a previous article, Robert Sneddon <no...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
->In article <slrn6nor5...@grace.acm.rpi.edu>, Damien Neil
-><ne...@acm.rpi.edu> writes
->>On Sun, 07 Jun 98 00:50:59 GMT, Phil Hunt <ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk> wrote:
->>>I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
->>>absurd.
->>
->>Do you, perchance, have a suggestion for an alternative medium that meets
->>the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and usable?
->>
->>Non-tree pulp is appealing, and may well be a superb alternative.
->>
->
-> Laser-etched sheets of stainless steel, microengraved at 1000
->characters per inch (or better). Gold-plate them afterwards, with a very
->thin coating. They can be read with a simple microscope, or a good
->digital scanner, although it might have to be custom made. Use 20th
->century English - if Latin has survived 2000 years plus, and Greek even
->longer, English of this period will still be comprehensible in 10,000
->years time. Multiple copies of a dictionary/concordance inserspersed
->with the data would be a wise precaution anyhow.
->
->--
-> To reply by email, send to nojay (at) public (period) antipope (dot) org
->
->Robert Sneddon
I think Latin survived to the present day because no one was speaking it,
except those who learned it from books and who therefore all learned it
the same way. English will probably be unintelligible to the modern
speaker in another century or two. Go with a proven winner. Write your
plates in Latin.
GeoffE
Mark E. Smith
In article <6lha3q$i97$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
paultr...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> I have to agree with Theresa: the main reason why books remain
> in our increasingly digital world is because they're perfectly
> low-tech.
I've always been nervous about the long term availability of any
information that requires a source of electricity. Maybe I'm in
a headspin over the current rate of technological change, but if
the "information age" is Plan A, and it requires an uninterrupted
supply of electrical power, I'd feel one whole heck of a lot
better if there was a Plan B that didn't assume the juice would
always be there for us.
--
Mark E. Smith <msm...@lvnworth.com>
Graydon
In article <6lk1a5$8mc$9...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
Thomas Womack <mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>But you can copy CDs to new media in 37 minutes, or 18.5 if you spent
>100 dollars more when you bought the CD writer. Ditto with Jaz
>cartridges. It takes considerably more than 37 minutes to make a
>backup stone tablet ...
At the equivalent tech level?
Horizontal milling machine'd do you quite some number of stone tablets in
that length of time.
An equivalent information per time copy, no, that's challenging, but
you're already getting better durability, so it's a case of picking your
tradeoffs.
--
goo...@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
Graydon
In article <6lkksd$r9n$3...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
Thomas Womack <mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>Graydon <gra...@gooroos.com> wrote:
>: In article <6lk1a5$8mc$9...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
>: Thomas Womack <mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>: >But you can copy CDs to new media in 37 minutes, or 18.5 if you spent
>: >100 dollars more when you bought the CD writer. Ditto with Jaz
>: >cartridges. It takes considerably more than 37 minutes to make a
>: >backup stone tablet ...
>
>: At the equivalent tech level?
>
>: Horizontal milling machine'd do you quite some number of stone tablets in
>: that length of time.
>
>be done with modern manufacturing tools. There was an amazing recent
>article in Wired (Bruce Sterling reporting from St Petersburg -
>http://www.wired.com/wired/6.01/sterling.html - more sense-of-wonder
>in that article than I've got from a lot of purported SF), one of
>whose modest suggestions was that the existence of decent CADCAM means
>we can go back to buildings with elaborate stone curlicues of
>arbitrary complexity without having to pay artisans.
Urm, yeah. You do still have to pay the designers and the masons, though.
>The sort of questions of whose answers I'm completely unaware are :
>What sort of level of automation would you find in a professional
>workshop nowadays? Would the operator have to do anything more than
At what size? Any decent (million plus dollar capitalization) kitchen
cabinet shop will be using a saw that is computer controlled and power
feeds sheet material. (usually by means of an air table - float the sheet,
then lock it down with differential pressure. Quite freaky to watch,
looks like antigravity technology becuase you can't hear the hiss over the
saw noise.)
Even little tiny shops can have a CAM milling machine or a laser alignment
gadget so you can slice up pine and _just_ miss the knots.
>move objects between machines? How close can you get to that in a $5K
>garage setup?
The operator has lots to do; the machine hasn't got any much judgement
about several important things, even for the very expensive machines.
5 K$ garage setup, probably not, but 10 k$, yes. (a basic woodworking
horizontal milling machine is about 5 k$.)
>But I fear my ignorance is more complete than that; I'm not sure what
>a horizontal milling machine *does* (though I can imagine it looking
>like an XY table with some sort of wildly-revolving bit), and you've
>certainly referred to items of woodworking hardware which I would not
>recognise were I to be hit over the head with them.
A horizontal milling machine is a big electric motor and a bit and some
sort of feed system, so that the workpiece can be moved around under the
bit. Think of it as a huge router with its own hands.
Todd D. Ellner
In article <199806100142...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
Tharsia <tha...@aol.com> wrote:
>BTW, have they deciphered 'linear B' yet? I know they've made good progress on
>Mayan.
Yes. Quite a while ago. It's Linear A which is still mysterious.
Todd
--
Todd Ellner | He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
Graydon
In article <357D6318...@erols.com>,
Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>Robert Sneddon wrote:
>> Laser-etched sheets of stainless steel, microengraved at 1000
>
>edition, huh?
It'd have the abrasion resistance of an over-ripe peach, and for the love
all the bright gods don't ever subject it to an electrical current.
Really lasting storage is that-there punched mylar tape in stainless can
full of inert gas.
If you want to go to metals, you have to do something that's both very
compact _and_ abrasion resistant, which is challenging. Doping nickle
with vanadium might work, and you might even be able to form letters.
Jay Random
edwa...@cc5.crl.aecl.ca wrote:
>
> I think Latin survived to the present day because no one was speaking it,
> except those who learned it from books and who therefore all learned it
> the same way. English will probably be unintelligible to the modern
> speaker in another century or two. Go with a proven winner. Write your
> plates in Latin.
The English of a century ago is fully intelligible to modern speakers;
listen to any Edison phonograph record for confirmation. As compared to
a century ago, English is more nearly standardized, more widely used, &
has much less difference between dialects -- this thanks to
sound-recording & electronic communications. Barring some catastrophe
that destroys the entire world collection of recorded speech, we can
expect English to remain sufficiently stable so that present-day speech
will remain intelligible to educated English-speakers for many centuries
to come. The written language changes even more slowly; Shakespeare is
not particularly tough going, & even Chaucer is intelligible if you can
get past the odd spelling.
--J. Random Olde-Litte Reader, D.G.F.V.
Thomas Womack
Graydon <gra...@gooroos.com> wrote:
: In article <6lk1a5$8mc$9...@news.ox.ac.uk>,
: Thomas Womack <mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
: >But you can copy CDs to new media in 37 minutes, or 18.5 if you spent
: >100 dollars more when you bought the CD writer. Ditto with Jaz
: >cartridges. It takes considerably more than 37 minutes to make a
: >backup stone tablet ...
: At the equivalent tech level?
: Horizontal milling machine'd do you quite some number of stone tablets in
: that length of time.
That's interesting; I'm clearly woefully badly informed about what can
be done with modern manufacturing tools. There was an amazing recent
article in Wired (Bruce Sterling reporting from St Petersburg -
http://www.wired.com/wired/6.01/sterling.html - more sense-of-wonder
in that article than I've got from a lot of purported SF), one of
whose modest suggestions was that the existence of decent CADCAM means
we can go back to buildings with elaborate stone curlicues of
arbitrary complexity without having to pay artisans.
The sort of questions of whose answers I'm completely unaware are :
What sort of level of automation would you find in a professional
workshop nowadays? Would the operator have to do anything more than
move objects between machines? How close can you get to that in a $5K
garage setup?
But I fear my ignorance is more complete than that; I'm not sure what
a horizontal milling machine *does* (though I can imagine it looking
like an XY table with some sort of wildly-revolving bit), and you've
certainly referred to items of woodworking hardware which I would not
recognise were I to be hit over the head with them.
Tom
Tharsia
> Oh, probably the book. The point was, paper isn't a guarantee > of survival
of information. We have plenty of artifacts from
> dead cultures that are basically meaningless.
Very few lingusitic ones, though, unless you consider descriptions and records
of dead cultures 'meaningless.' Some of the contexts are certainly unclear in
some written documents (ex: the 'boar-guards' in Beowulf only made sense when
they found the helmet in Sutton Hoo) but more searching -- and considering what
has been found in new lights, by different disciplines, including trying to
replicate ancient techniques -- does continue to shed light on things.
BTW, have they deciphered 'linear B' yet? I know they've made good progress on
Mayan.
>What's interesting is the possibility that print might effectively
> vanish sometime in the next century, leaving a total 'information > gap'
for archeaologists thousands of years hence. It might seem > that history
stopped sometime around 2050 or so...
Until it becomes cheaper to leave an electronic message for someone, or Palm
Pilots become a lot cheaper and easier to use, you'll still have some writing
going on -- at this point there's no non-hard-copy replacement for the sticky
note on the fridge or the grocery list in your purse.
ObSF ref - though the future is represented as having appopriate technological
gadgets, including working economical electronic memo pads, there's still a lot
of writing and printing going on in Dave Weber's books.
Coyu
>From: tha...@aol.com (Tharsia)
>Date: Tue, Jun 9, 1998 21:42 EDT
>BTW, have they deciphered 'linear B' yet? I know they've
>made good progress on Mayan.
Sure - it's Mycenaean Greek. You're thinking of Linear A (no).
The Mayan progress has been _astounding_.
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net>
wrote:
[massive snips fore and aft]
>Whereas CDs can only be copied if you have the right technology
The long and the short of it is that, if something is popular enough to
be stored on a network, it doesn't matter what the technology is, as
long as we have networks; the material will simply be copied onto
whatever medium is in use at the time. Moreover, there are
organisations archiving the Web (as well as the better-kown ones who
just try to index it), so if something goes out of fashion for a few
years, it will still be retrievable from the archive -- I'm assuming
that the archivists understand that the value of their archive depends
on its completeness. For such things, we simply will not have the
situation that old literary works are in, where only a handful of copies
survive at all and we are lucky to have those.
But if something goes out of fashion for decades, and fades away from
the Web and the archives, the price of re-creating the technology to
read it can become much higher. So we also may not have the situation
that old literary works are in, where if one copy of a work survives,
more can easily be made when it finally becomes popular again, so that
if we are lucky enough to have that one copy, things are fine.
So if you're an author, and feel that your works will be under-
appreciated for a century or so before their value is recognised, then
yes, print copies on paper sheets. Or micro-engrave copies on iridium
pinheads (the technology required is simply any good microscope, which
can always be re-developed). But if you're a scholar, and fear that
important information may be lost, but are not sure what will turn out
to be important, it's not clear to me whether you should aim to make
paper copies of *everything* at vast expense (and store them, for
centuries, at even vaster expense), or invest in a small number of large
archives that aim to be permanently funded to use one more or less
up-to-date technology (say no more than 10-20 years old). If there's a
short hiatus (decades) in funding, the size of the archive will provide
an incentive to reconstruct the technology when funding is restored.
The thing to avoid is (what quite a lot of people seem to do) buying a
little of each cutting-edge technology every 1-2 years but not buying
enough of it to convert all the things that were stored on old tech.
Actually, I suspect that information technology, including storage, will
settle down in a few decades -- it's not hard to think of other
technologies that went through a phase of wild growth and uncertainty
but are now mature -- and this debate will be seen to be an aberration.
And come to think of it, the iridium copies may not turn out to be that
expensive.
-- Richard and Beth
Mail sent to this account from the 2nd to 8th of June was lost.
If it was important, please resend it. Sorry.
Avram Grumer
> In article <avram-08069...@avram.port.net>, av...@bigfoot.com
(Avram Grumer) wrote:
> >
> >....which do you think you'd be able to decipher first, the book or
> >the CD-ROM?
>
> Oh, probably the book. The point was, paper isn't a guarantee of survival of
> information. We have plenty of artifacts from dead cultures that are
basically
> meaningless.
But having to overcome a technological hurdle just to realize that the
storage medium is a storage medium makes the survival less likely. Unless
it causes the non-techies to preserve the pretty shiney disks as religious
icons until someone comes along who can figure out what they are. (And
the Shroud of Turin is really a record recorded at the molecular level
left by time travellers who visted 14th-century Europe....)
> What's interesting is the possibility that print might effectively vanish
> sometime in thenext century, leaving a total 'information gap' for
> archeaologists thousands of years hence. It might seem that history stopped
> sometime around 2050 or so...
And all around them are technological wonders waiting for the people to
figure out what they are, and how to use them. The magical words that
will run the weather-control systems, the ground-based controls for the
orbital-defense satellites that can rain death from the skies, the golems
who'll do the bidding of anyone who enters the right control sequences
into the keypads on their foreheads.... Unfortunately, the software's all
written by Microsoft. "Aieee -- it is the Blue Screen of Divine
Disfavor!"
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
"There will never be a technology that beats having lunch." -- Jakob Nielsen
Phil Hunt
In article <301268582...@tvo.org>
tw...@tvo.org "Theresa Wojtasiewicz" writes:
> ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk,UUCP writes:
> > I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
>
> Considering there are books upwards of 800 years old still around and not
> requiring any special operating system (other than the ability to read
> monkish script) while electronic media has a shelf life of about 5 years, I
> think "storing information on bits of dead trees" is going to be around a
> hell of a lot longer than digitally stored material.
It is true that digital media rapidly gets out of date. However IMO
this is irrelevant. In the future, almost all new computers made will
have the ability to connect to the net built in, and it will be trivially
easy to move files from one machine to another across a net connection.
So the fact that different machines use different data formats will
not matter, becasue whenever people get a new machine, they will
easily be able to move the data from their old machine onto it.
--
Phil Hunt
"Dreaming something won't make it happen,
but not dreaming something will make it not happen"
Phil Hunt
In article <6lha3q$i97$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
paultr...@my-dejanews.com writes:
> I have to agree with Theresa: the main reason why books remain in our
> I love my Macintosh, I can't read articles on it in bed, in the car, on the
> toilet, out on the back porch, or in any area where I can't string an
> extension cord.
This is true. However, portsble computers are bound to get better in
future. Personally, I'd like to have one embedded into my body and linked
up to my optic and aural nerves.
Phil Hunt
In article <slrn6nor5...@grace.acm.rpi.edu>
ne...@acm.rpi.edu "Damien Neil" writes:
> On Sun, 07 Jun 98 00:50:59 GMT, Phil Hunt <ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >absurd.
>
Portable computers in about 10-20 years time.
> Human brain cells win, but tend to not last for more than a hundred years.
Best would be a human with enhanced longevity and an embedded computer.
Phil Hunt
In article <6li1a2$i1i$3...@neuromancer.echo-on.net>
acw...@wintermute.echo-on.net "Craig West" writes:
> Phil Hunt (ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> +>I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
> +>absurd.
>
> I agree, but for the minor detail that I have yet to see an e-book that is
> anywhere near as convenient to read.
Why not have voice output, and little headphones like you get with
a walkman?
liz...@mrlizard.com
>>What's interesting is the possibility that print might effectively
> > vanish sometime in the next century, leaving a total 'information > gap'
>for archeaologists thousands of years hence. It might seem > that history
>stopped sometime around 2050 or so...
>
>Until it becomes cheaper to leave an electronic message for someone, or Palm
>Pilots become a lot cheaper and easier to use, you'll still have some writing
>going on -- at this point there's no non-hard-copy replacement for the sticky
>note on the fridge or the grocery list in your purse.
>
A conversation with some of my friends last night revealed most of us are
literally losing the ability to write by hand -- I know I have to think in
order to make letters, and writing more than a phone number of quick note is
physically painful to me. When I need to leave a note on the firdge for my GF
to find when she gets home, I write it on my computer and print it out. I
don't think I'm unique, or even rare.
Kids routinely use calculators on math tests. How long will it be before kids
are taught to type in first grade, rather than to write? There are already
many children who have never learned to tell 'analog' time.
obSF:Isaac Asimov wrote a story in which reading, writing, and math had been
all but forgotten, except for those destined to become the scientific elite --
all information was handled by voice recording and speaking robots. The focus
of the story was a storytelling robot, but I can't recall the name of the
story right now, sorry. It's been collected a number of times.
Damien Neil
On Wed, 10 Jun 98 19:28:22 GMT, Phil Hunt <ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Do you, perchance, have a suggestion for an alternative medium that meets
>> the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and usable?
>
>Portable computers in about 10-20 years time.
You think these computers will have an operational lifetime of greater than
a century?
Hell, I'll be surprised if you can find a way to replace their batteries
twenty years after release.
I'll accept digital storage as potentially useful for the long haul once I see
a single example of a piece of worthless data surviving in a readable form
for fifty years. (Worthless is important; all data is considered worthless
at some point or another, and a medium which doesn't survive the experience
isn't going to be good for much of anything.)
>> Human brain cells win, but tend to not last for more than a hundred years.
>
>Best would be a human with enhanced longevity and an embedded computer.
I'll buy that for a dollar.
ObSF: The B5 episode I watched a couple of days ago, with the aliens who
exist to record all knowledge against a day when it is needed. (I'm trying
to think of examples from print SF, and failing. Anyone?)
- Damien
Elisabeth Carey
Phil Hunt wrote:
>
> In article <slrn6nor5...@grace.acm.rpi.edu>
> ne...@acm.rpi.edu "Damien Neil" writes:
> > >I think the whole idea of storing information on bits of dead trees
> >
> > Do you, perchance, have a suggestion for an alternative medium that meets
> > the criteria of: cheap, durable, transportable, and usable?
>
> Portable computers in about 10-20 years time.
Still needs a power source. And no, I do not believe in the magic
battery that will last for ten thousand years.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
Phil Hunt wrote:
>
> In article <6li1a2$i1i$3...@neuromancer.echo-on.net>
> acw...@wintermute.echo-on.net "Craig West" writes:
> > Phil Hunt (ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> > +>absurd.
> >
> > I agree, but for the minor detail that I have yet to see an e-book that is
> > anywhere near as convenient to read.
>
> Why not have voice output, and little headphones like you get with
> a walkman?
For starters, that's not what I want, no matter how much you think I
_should_ want.
Lis Carey
Tharsia
><HTML><PRE>In article <6lha3q$i97$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
> paultr...@my-dejanews.com writes:
>> I have to agree with Theresa: the main reason why books remain in our
>> increasingly digital world is because they're perfectly low-tech. As much
>as
>> I love my Macintosh, I can't read articles on it in bed, in the car, on the
>> toilet, out on the back porch, or in any area where I can't string an
>> extension cord.
>
>This is true. However, portsble computers are bound to get better in
>future. Personally, I'd like to have one embedded into my body and linked
>up to my optic and aural nerves.
>
>--
>Phil Hunt
Read Simon Green, huh?
There _are_ disadvantages, though.
Think _hackers_.
(which is why my _house_ is not going to be part of a network; it's bad enough
when the power goes out for a fortnight, as it has around here . . .)
Tharsia/aol.com (aka joan barger; standardize address to reply)
--Whoever does not study history is doomed to repeat it
"The idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone
every century but this & every nation but his own --"
(W.S. Gilbert)
Tharsia
>From: co...@aol.com (Coyu)
Sorry, of course it was Linear A.
(Undoubtedly _that_ script was actually written by the aliens who built
Stonehenge, Easter Island, the Pyramids, the big snake Mounds, the desert
glyphs and Atlantis.)
Pinochet
Phil Hunt wrote in message <897507...@vision25.demon.co.uk>...
>> I agree, but for the minor detail that I have yet to see an e-book that
is
>> anywhere near as convenient to read.
>
>Why not have voice output, and little headphones like you get with
>a walkman?
Why not just buy a book on tape? And a recorder? And maybe one
of those text-to-speech thingies..
Pinochet
John Moreno wrote in message
<1dafj6a.1sg...@roxboro0-011.dyn.interpath.net>...
>This reminds me of a bit in _Island in the Sea of Time_ which still
>seems a bit silly - who uses calculators with batteries any more?
Engineers and Calculus students? I haven't seen the equivalent of
a TI-8X or HP-48 something running on Solar-Cells, though my TI-34
does pack a lot of functions on it(not that I can figure out half of them..)
> And why wouldn't these way hi-tech ebooks use solar power too?
Not enough Power in a viable space area?
Avram Grumer
In article <897507...@vision25.demon.co.uk>, ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk
wrote:
> In article <6li1a2$i1i$3...@neuromancer.echo-on.net>
> acw...@wintermute.echo-on.net "Craig West" writes:
> >
> > I agree, but for the minor detail that I have yet to see an e-book
> > that is anywhere near as convenient to read.
>
> Why not have voice output, and little headphones like you get with
> a walkman?
This probably varies among individuals, but I don't find listening to be
an adequate substitute for reading.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
...and the computer replied "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus -- now."