I am now reading Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity Is Near." It is about how biology and technology will become indistinguishable from one another in the future. I've only gotten to page 65 so far but I found something interesting about why paper books are still superior to electronic books. Or rather, why books are not dead yet.
From page 55:
"Paper does not flicker, whereas the typical computer screen is displaying sixty or more fields per second. This is a problem because of an evolutionary adaption of the primate visual system. We are able to see only a very small portion of the visual field with high resolution. This portion, imaged by the fovea in the retina, is focused on an area about the size of a single word at twenty-two inches away. Outside of the fovea, we have very little resolution but exquisite sensitivity to changes in brightness, an ability that allowed our forebears to quickly detect a predator that might be attacking. The constant flicker of a video graphics array (VGA) computer screen is detected by our eyes as motion and causes constant movement of the fovea. This substantially slows down reading speeds, which is one reason that reading on a screen is less pleasant than reading a printed book. This particular issue has been solved with flat-panel displays, which do not flicker.
"Other crucial issues include contrast - a good-quality book has an ink-to-paper contrast of about 120:1; typical screens are perhaps half of that - and resolution. Print illustrations in a book represent a resolution of about 600 to 1000 dots per inch (dpi), while computer screens are about one tenth of that.
"The size and weight of computerized devices are approaching those of books, but the devices are still heavier than a paperback book. Paper books also do not run out of battery power.
"Most important, there is the matter of the available software, by which I mean the enormous installed base of print books. Fifty thousand new print books are published each year in the United States, and millions of books are already in circulation. There are major efforts under way to scan and digitize print materials, but it will be a long time before the electronic databases have a comparable wealth of material. The biggest obstacle here is the understandable hesitation of publishers to make the electronic versions of their books available, given the devastating effect that illegal file sharing has had on the music industry.
"Solutions are emerging to each of these limitations. New, inexpensive display technologies have contrast, resolution, lack of flicker, and viewing angle comparable to high-quality paper documents. Fuel-cell power for portable electronics is being introduced, which will keep electronic devices powered for hundreds of hours between fuel-cartridge changes. Portable electronic devices are already comparable to the size and weight of a book. The primary issue is going to be finding secure means of making electronic information available. This is a fundamental concern for every level of our economy. Everything - including physical products, once nanotechnology-based manufacturing becomes a reality in about twenty years - is becoming information."
I know many people now say they still prefer paper books. But I wonder if that preference is not simply because we have grown up with books. What will generations of the future, who might be raised on electronic or virtual books, have to say about paper books? Perhaps in the not too distant future we will be loading book files into our "Book-pods" and shuffling through the menu with our thumbs, then filling our screens with the words of either the latest authors or those of the classics.
