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The nook lets you lend individual books out to other people with nooks, although I have no idea how that works in practice. Most of these have computer versions, so maybe you'd be able to lend one to a friend if they didn't mind reading it on the computer? No idea.

The Nook with wifi has been lowered to $149, likely due to the kobo, so I'm seriously considering getting one of those. It also works with project gutenberg and supports ePub

Edited, Jul 22nd 2010 2:03pm by Xsarus

My concern is that some day when the power goes away, we'll have all our data, stories, and whatnot stored on electronic media and have no clue how to do anything. That'll suck.

More short term, I've never gone on a trip and actually read more than one or two books during the trip itself. Tossing a couple paperbacks into the luggage isn't much of an issue weight/space wise. Also, it's less hassle taking a book on a plane (not sure if they consider e-readers "computers" in terms of going through security). Also, no need for an outlet, plug, converter, etc. And if I lose the paperback, I'm out a lot less money.

If the power goes away stories and data will be the last thing I care about. Paper won't help us in that situation. If you want to preserve data you chisel it in stone.

My e-reader fits in my pocket, syncs news from websites in the morning, and holds books for both the wife and I. I'll take it places I wouldn't take a book simply because it fits in my pocket. I can do things like read a few pages while waiting at the bank. I couldn't do that before. It also saves me a lot of money over the long run.

It really comes down to preference. I like books as well. I don't like having them all over my house or carting them around, and I don't like when the kids pull out my bookmark. This device solves a lot of those little issues for me.

I have this dread that crops up now and again (most recently after watching The Road, and also reading it from an olde worlde paper booke) that one day the power will all go away, along with everything else that makes our lives comfy and nice, and all of our memories that were once stored in books and in photo albums, but are now stored in data sticks and discs will become totally inaccessable to us.

Its not about 'data' being useless to us, its about being able to still feel connected to what went before. If the apocolypse comes via meteor or dumbass Presidential button pushing, I want to be able to hold some of my memories in my hand.

FUck thats morbid, I know, but have you guys read, or seen The Road?

No. But that's kinda exactly what I was talking about (did they not know how to make beer either?). There's a streak of futurist in me and part of that is the concern that as we put more of our knowledge as a species into electronic form, the more vulnerable we become to some event plunging us into a dark age. Put information on standard paper, and it'll last 100 years or so. Longer on better quality stock. That's enough time to recover from whatever may have happened and still have time to use the knowledge to rebuild sufficiently to continue to retain the knowledge (be able to make printing presses at a minimum). If, for example, all the designs for computer chips are stored on computers (and they pretty much are btw), what happens if a single event destroys every existing computer chip in the world? Without computers, we can't run the equipment to build more computers or even know how to build them. As the level of complexity increases, the layers of abstraction between the simple physical concepts which a human mind could design and manage and what we rely on to do work today grows to the point (we're past this point btw) where we can't just start over easily. It would take decades at least to reconstruct the ability to build computers capable of operating the equipment we currently use for fabrication and design work.

It would only take one interruption in our world to pretty much ***** us technology-wise. I'm not saying books are a solution, but if we can't get the computers back up and running, it would be nice to be able to get back at least to an industrial level society within a generation or three so we'd have a chance down the line. It's an interesting area to think about IMO.

How much paper do you have? Do you have an internet connection? Do the places you'd connect to (and every point in between) also have power? If not, how much critical and useful information do you actually have sitting on said computer?



A disaster which killed most of the people, but left the stuff intact would actually be easier and quicker to recover from than the other way around. Part of the reason is that with few people and lots of stuff, you could manage without sufficient supply of "new" stuff for quite some time before you run out, increasing the likelihood of rebuilding sufficiently to sustain the needed infrastructure. With lots of people and little stuff, most of the people will die anyway, but they'll consume pretty much everything along the way, leaving nothing for the survivors to rebuild with.


I also don't think most people realize just how completely dependent we've become on microchips. A global EMP (or super strong magnetic shift in 2012 maybe?) could fry every non-shielded device. And no, shutting down the computer while the EMP is going on doesn't protect it (silly TV shows!). Everything electronic stops working. And those few things that don't (because they're old enough not to have microchip circuitry in them) have no power to run on because our entire power infrastructure will also stop. And in case you're wondering, pretty much every single vehicle built in the last 25 years or so wont work either. Trying to get stuff back up and running before the populations of all your major cities riot because they don't have food or water is a pretty likely impossible task.


It would be very ugly.

With lots of people and little stuff, the survivors end up consuming other survivors.

Read, or watch (if reading is too hard) The Road. I'm telling you, e-books and computers are gonna be worth less than a tin of catfood.

You mark my words you young'ns.....

Gbaji, I don't think you understand how devastating a complete loss of power would be. Those books you think are preserving knowledge won't last a month. They'll be cooking fuel from day 2.

With no power 1/3-1/4 of the population would be dead within 1-2 weeks just from lack of water. In a month that number will have climbed to about 1/2-3/4 from starvation, violence, disease. By that time the cities would be empty and the rural areas that were relatively safe (relative to the cities) will become a battleground.

Most likely survivors in order:

Gangs. They have an organizational advantage over the rest of the population.
Sociopaths.
Single male adults with medical training that are not traditional hero types (paramedics).

We won't recover within a lifetime. It'll be generations before any group is organized enough to make anything that would require books and by then no-one will know how to read because no-one will have had the equipment to make pencils.

More than that, the most likely regions to recover are third world countries as they're already equipped to handle life without electricity. Those regions don't have a whole lot of books.

It's all a moot point really, anything that could wipe out the entire planets electrical capabilities would most likely kill us outright anyways.

I love the experience of going to the local barnes and noble buying a book grabbing a cup of coffee and reading a while.

I considered talking enthusiastically about a intense gamma ray burst sterilising the planet, but then I remembered it's impossible to discourage gbaji once he's got his grubby little paws on an idea.

It's not really that surprising a libertarian would fetishise apocalypse.

I live in Upstate New York and have a copy of "My side of the Mountain". My chances of survival are pretty good.

Yoda,

When people get desperate and trespass on private property with well armed citizens constantly on guard you end up with a lot of ex-desperate trespassers.

All we'd have to do to cut our valley off from society would be to fell a couple of large oaks. And our neighbors have fireplaces as well. Granted they'd probably come to us for food seeing as how we can everything but i'm sure they'd have valuable assets to contribute.

Oh and you're an idiot.

Pencils might degrade to the point of unusable over a few generations' time. I guess anything seems viable when you only read part of the post you're replying to, though.