green i-pad
“With e-readers like Apple’s new iPad and Amazon’s Kindle touting their vast libraries of digital titles, some bookworms are bound to wonder if tomes-on-paper will one day become quaint relics. But the question also arises, which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?” NYT
thresholding
In the book realm there is distinction between writing and reading. Perhaps this is legacy of manuscript and print as one signified writing and the other reading. Now it is fashion to reconfigure the book realm digitally. OK, why not synthesize book writing and reading? Writing was reading as the author rewrote and reading was writing as the reader overwrote, or re-visualized, the text.
We could begin a future of the book synthesis with a keyboard. That is, a device of revision distributed to each reader. Slates, tablets, pads and pods appear as pure delivery devices but can bring up a touch keypad. Print books appear as pure delivery devices but can be mirrored by such devices. Just what kind of distance is there between?
The distance between is a threshold, the difference between lurking and discourse. And thresholds encountered in books are there for a reason. We do not need to dissipate them, but engage them. Can we use the threshold between paper and screen? A perfect place to start would be textbooks where the paper book could sustain unison reading and the device mirror could correlate homework and in-class commentary. The same goes for the academic monograph engaging both the scholarly record and community discourse.
All the other genres could be tempted into this thresholding. FotB smoke and mirrors?; Read both books by Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland, Print and the Digital World and Digital Technology and the Froms of Print. “Marilyn Deegan did her PhD at Manchester the same time as me, and Kathryn Sutherland was my eighteenth-century tutor! I’ll get the book.” Elaine Treharne, Florida State book studies program
i-pad footprint
“For all of this content to be delivered to us in real time, virtual mountains
of video, pictures and other data must be stored somewhere and be
available for almost instantaneous access. That ‘somewhere’ is data
centres – massive storage facilities that consume incredible amounts
of energy.” GreenPeace report
costing
A possible method of comparison of energy cost for paper or screen books is to discount the common overhead associated with both. Leave either a print book or a computer out in the rain and they become unreadable. Beyond that there is a difference in prerequisites for reading. Print books require space and screen books require electricity. Space for shelves and book opening are needed for print libraries. On the other side there is nothing more illegible than a black screen.
These prerequisite requirements of legibility may be a wash and the full life cycle costs of both products could be debatable and complex. Imagine mapping the life cycle costs of batteries! Other energy costs are in delivery, device display and data storage, especially in a longer term. Here print has a distinctive attribute that is a single one-time cost for delivery, device display and data storage while these costs are all separated and extendable with electronic books.
There are other kinds of costing as well. These are costs for sustainability in content certification and authentication and outright persistence of service. The research libraries have a good record of persistence and a preservation mission that is necessarily lacking in the corporate world. In other words, research libraries factor a “cost” for culture transmission provided by reliable reaccess. In this perspective print has yet to be obsolete and can bridge our cultural needs.
i-reader
“As a text delivery system, the iPad is perfectly suited to readers who don’t read anymore.” Nicholas Carr