If dead-tree books die, what will the poor read? | Hacker News Reader

If dead-tree books die, what will the poor read?

seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com

6 pointsColinWright12 comments

If disadvantaged homes can't afford ebook readers they will read on computers. They will go to the library and get online there and read millions, billions of free things on line, far, far in excess of what is available in a city's second-hand stores. Much is dreck, sure, but those who really hunger for knowledge can find it beyond what a room full of books can offer.

The selection can't be quite as grand as what will be available to people able to pay for ebooks, but the same is true of the author of this piece and being limited to second-hand, very affordable books.

Because libraries are absolutely brimming with computers. In Los Angeles, the libraries tend to have a clutch of general computers, a significant fraction occupied by the homeless (that's what I'd, can't fault them).

Well, sure, because they're full of books. But if libraries plan to survive in a future without books then they'll be full of computers.

I don't see why you'd do this, though. Readers will continue to fall in price and the expense of providing them to the poor is partially offset by using them for textbooks (both that we no longer need to supply them out of "library" budgets and that we reduce textbook costs). It might be possible in major cities to fund readers for the poor out of the liquidation of branch library real estate in favor of wireless access points or whatever.

They will borrow ebooks from the library on free readers. The cost of readers is likely to fall far enough, and their use be ubiquitous enough (think: schools), that providing readers will be a fairly low cost gap-filling operation. It might even be cheaper than the public libraries themselves.

Because libraries are absolutely brimming with ebook readers.

Yes, this is a copy of your comment to someone else, but yours instead. You looked to the future for yours, but not theirs.

I'll acknowledge that I was quick and snide. However, I do not think the future of libraries is to become banks of computers.

That would make little sense considering that the alternative would be cheaper and provide better service.

The price of ebook readers is coming down all the time because the price of computers is. It's perfectly reasonable to think that one day ebook readers will be as cheap as (new) books are today.

But long before that, it'd be cheaper for a 'library' (if they're still called that) to have 1000 ebook readers to loan out than 10,000 books. And it'd take a lot less space, too.

But I'm guessing once they're that cheap, people will just own them as a matter of course. You can already buy devices for $100 that read ebooks perfectly fine. Thinking they'll come down to $25 isn't that wishful.

And at that point, will libraries physically exist any more? Or will they be just an internet presence? Maybe we'll have spots around town that offer wireless internet access for free, to make sure everyone has it... Or maybe it really will become a commodity, and everyone will have full access to wireless throughout the city.

I don't know that that's the major source of price reduction. My impression was that the price of readers was falling because the price of peripheral equipment--displays and network chips--was falling. The price of small computer has presumably been low for almost two decades now, if game cartidges were any indicator.

Actually, near zero distribution costs will ensure that in the long term, the poor are going to have access to far more literature then ever before.

Trying to solve a problem that isn't a problem yet. By the time it is a problem, maybe ebook readers will be the cost of books et voila! No problem.

I'm seriously not worried about this, even if only for the fact that there are billions of print books and we're not burning them. They're just sitting there, waiting to be read.

Ebooks will drop in price. No problem. If the poor can afford $150 Nike shoes, they can afford an ebook.

The real problem is preservation of information. Dead-tree books can't be destroyed by magnets and EM radiation. One thousand years from now, can people still read our documents? With dead-tree books, they can.

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