E-book is short for “electronic book”. An ordinary book, known as a codex, uses paper, ink and string to make a book small enough to fit in your hand. An e-book does the same thing by using a computer, batteries and a single piece of special electronic paper.
If you work as a maid in New York, it will take you an hour to make enough money to pay for the first. For the second you will have to work four days – unless you happen to have an e-book reader lying about.
And yet it is a mystery to the great and good of Sony why the codex outsells the e-book a thousand to one.
Where a codex uses hundreds of leaves of ordinary paper, an e-book uses one leaf of special electronic paper which the computer inside can write and rewrite over and over again to be any page in the book that you want. This makes it easier to use than a scroll, but more difficult than a codex – or even one of those Japanese folding books.
The current e-books have two advantages over a codex:
- It can store many books, not just one.
- You can quickly search for words.
If you are doing research and are always on the road, then these are wonderful things. But for the sort of reading that most people do – one or two fiction books at a time – these are slight advantages at best.
Why then is the iPod doing so much better? After all, it just seems to be a sort of e-book for music.
Two reasons:
- The starting price for an iPod is far lower. Our maid will only have to work four hours to get the cheapest one. Further she will need some sort of music player (or go without) – since for music there is nothing as cheap and easy to use as the codex.
- Songs are far shorter than books. In the course of a day you could easily go through dozens of songs. But you are unlikely to get through even one book. That means that being able to carry a hundred songs with you wherever you go is a far greater thing than being able to carry a hundred books.
That said, I think the e-book will one day make the codex seem old-fashioned.
First, because in time an e-book will be able to contain a whole library.
Second, because the marriage between a computer and a book is a powerful thing. But right now it is just being used to create a battery-powered codex, and not even a good one at that. A shame, because the computer is capable of far more than that – far more than turning pages, finding words and remembering your spot in a book. But it seems it will take a genius to figure out what that far more is.
– Abagond, 2006.
See also:
- codex
- scroll
- shovelware
- Kindle – the Amazon e-book reader, which came out a year later
The codex is such a good invention that even in this age of invention it still holds its ground. E-books, for example, have made almost no headway against the codex.
This is about to change. I have a Sony 700 Reader. I used to purchase books (preferrably hardcovers), so this little contraption came in handy in that I didn’t have to carry several heavy books around, hell, I didn’t even have to carry one hardcover around! As most people know, carrying such weigh around can wreak havoc on a persons back, besides carrying around a large purse as well!
At first I was hesitant in buying the electronic reading device. However, as with everything electronic, the improvements have been extensive. The sales for Amazon Kindle for example have grown to be that in the hundreds of millions of dollars (for the device and ebboks) and there are sure to be more as Kindle is now international. You can also read newspapers and magazine on Kindle, you can’t as yet on Sony Reader.
The varieties of books available have grown also so there is a lot of choice. There are also more reading devices being developed and if not already on the market will soon be. Some are even speacialized. I think in the near future, most schools will eventually use reading devices instead of text books.
The usages are many! The Sony Reader is also compatible with PDFs, Word and rtfs. I have copied books off of Project Gutenburg and other sites where the copywrights has expired on the books so that they are free and transferred them to the Reader. I am also able to store the files on my hard drive. the only thing I don’t like about these devices is the DRMs when buying current books. You cannot store the files and move them in and out or around your hard drive. If your computer crashes, you will have to re-download and they only give you so many downloads of a book. Overall, a much more preferrable reading experience for myself as I can read several books at the same time without having to carry them around! (comment copied and paste from the codex post)
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“…That said, I think the e-book will one day make the codex seem old-fashioned…”
E-books may seem like a promising alternative to a book or codex, as you are terming them, but do we really really want to be solely dependent on electronic devices or computers for our knowledge?
What happens when the electronic device breaks down or ceases to function? How would we ascertain our knowledge or information?
“…A shame, because the computer is capable of far more than that – far more than turning pages, finding words and remembering your spot in a book. But it seems it will take a genius to figure out what that far more is…”
The real genius would be in figuring out how we can store and retrieve knowledge and information without the need for unsustainable environmentally damaging devices.
We might even discover that we don’t in fact need them at all. Many ancient civilizations were actual capable of this and far much more. The ancient Egyptians being a case in point. Would you not agree Herneith?
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