What is Digg?65 Comments
- Rhine23, on 10/12/2007, -1/+42You cant beat the new book smell and the opening of never opened pages that's damn right awesome. I will continue to buy books, especially because I hate staring at a screen all day.
- musicbear, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28"...the book is an outmoded means of communicating information..."
Nonsense. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27A lot of people still read. Maybe not you or the author, but that's your shortcoming not books.
- moylan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23the book is an amazing piece of technology. its lasted hundreds of years and the originals are still still usable. it can be dropped, kicked, can survive an incredible range of temperatures and environments. its incredibly cheap and accessible to all.
i'm all for electronic formats but until the manufacturers/writers/distributers can get together and create 1 single format that surpasses the book it will still win out.
this format will will have to
a) be usable by the simplest people who don't want to learn how to use complicated/buggy/crap software
b) be very cheap
c) have a fantastic battery life. day not hours
d) some sort of drm for the publishers to be interested. i hate drm. i cannot say this enough!
but writers deserve to be payed.
they deserve to be able to make money from their creations.
they deserve to be able to distribute their works without fear that it's going to be be copied duplicated and spread around without them earning a penny.
we the readers deserve the right to be able to transfer the book between our devices without having to repay for it.
we deserve the right to be able to loan the book for a while to somebody for a fixed period of time.
e) be robust enough to stand been dropped and sat on.
till then raw ascii texts on my mobile phone will have to do... - n1qaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Time and again, since the advent of the personal computer, someone has extolled the end of the printed page. I have read several books in different electronic mediums. The latest Nebula awards clearly shows the power that can be had from publishing electronically, But reading online or other electronic offerings, just isn't the same. I can't speak for others, but reading for me is a singular form or recreation. A portion of the day set aside for introspection and relaxation. The very low tech nature of the book lends itself well to this. No worries about power, annoying flickers or obtuse controls. Reasonable lighting and a comfortable place to sit or lay are my only criteria. Anachronistic? maybe, going anywhere in the near future? I dint see it.
- Haroldx, on 10/12/2007, -9/+25I'm not going to go on the Internet to read The Bible.
- deut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I was reading some of Ray Kurzweil's "Singularlity Is Near" in the bath last night. - nuff said.
- PDAIsAOk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10How many copies of The Da Vinci Code have sold? Not to mention the fixation with Harry Potter. I don't think the book is dead. Nor will it be any time soon
- bwd01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Books will always be easier to read. They are more malleable, sturdy, and easier on the eyes. It doesn't require anything other than sunlight to read.
I still buy lots of books. I can't stand reading a lot of text of my laptop. - stealthboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"They are frozen in time without the means of being updated and corrected. "
I consider that one of the best attributes of a book. - AdverseEntropy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I believe that he was referring to the statement, not the grammar.
- bluephoenix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen on the homepage
- molsen311, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7what an uneducated statement....that books are outdated. there are a hundred reasons why this is crazy.
- Brian48216, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4doesn't paper outlast the integrity of data stored on CDs and hard drives?
- stealthboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Books and written materials have survived for hundreds and thousands of years. They are still readable. Do you think the new-fangled electronic media will be around and readable in 400 years? Not likely. For archiving knowledge, the book will always be the most simple, cheap, and long-lasting method.
- sautter, on 06/21/2008, -0/+4I never have to worry about what file format a book is, I can just open it up and read.
Also if I take a paperback book to the beach and lose it then I'm just out $5 or $10 dollars. I wouldn't dare take a laptop to the beach. - Daychilde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have a feeling I'm about to be modded down for what I'm about to say... heh. So let me first emphasize: I really like Digg a lot.
But Digg suffers from the same problems that Fark and Slashdot suffer from: People are stupid ignorant idiots. So if you design a site to give power to the people - you'll get a lot of idiots. Sorry, facts of life here...
Is that all bad? No. Not at all. I love a lot of things I only see on Digg... :-)
But it sure as hell is annoying a lot of the time... :-D
Is there an easy solution? No. Not at all. heh.
(At least, not until I become an evil overlord and my absolute power corrupts me and I abuse my power to get rid of the stupid people... or.... something......) ;-)
I get frustrated along with many others -- and it's hard to remember sometimes that just because you disagree with someone, it doesn't mean they're an idiot. (Although in many cases they probably are) ;-) - Aurarch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3agreed
- ScottPictures, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Both forms of media have there place.
- Aslan72, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@LP2 - No kidding.
This was lame on a couple of levels. First, reading a book is not necessairly about information transfer (or even entertainment transfer); it's about the process of geting there. The process is entertainment by itself. We're tacitle creatures that find interactive process rewarding...it's rewarding to touch/smell a book and to work your way through it. Anyone who has read a book to a 2 year old before they go to bed understands this at some level.
Not dugg because it's a lame, not well thought out argument. - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I get the feeling this person isn't talking about fictional novels, because most of his criticisms don't seem to match them:
"The problems with books are many: They are frozen in time without the means of being updated and corrected. They have no link to related knowledge, debates, and sources. They create, at best, a one-way relationship with a reader. They try to teach readers but don’t teach authors. They tend to be too damned long because they have to be long enough to be books."
Is he talking about textbooks or something? Regardless, I disagree. I think having a physical book is great because I like to do most of my book reading away from a computer. I like to read outside, in the bus, on the beach, etc - boxomojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3and the grammar is fine...
- Ignignokt01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"The problems with books are many: They are frozen in time without the means of being updated and corrected. They have no link to related knowledge, debates, and sources. They create, at best, a one-way relationship with a reader. They try to teach readers but don’t teach authors. They tend to be too damned long because they have to be long enough to be books."
1. Its a good thing they are frozen in time. My only problem with the internet is that it can never be clear-cut, because of the mixture of opinions and biases that make it up. Books provide the writer's opinion, and nothing else. You don't read a book to get a multitude of opinions, you read a book because you respect the writer and want to hear his opinion.
2. "They try to teach readers but don't teach authors". Ok, that is really stupid. The authors do tons of research ( they learn *****???) and then they write their books. The author is the one who learns the most from writing their book, because of all the knowledge they have to accumulate in order to make the book worth reading. Everybody learns something, its just through all the hard work of the author.
3. "They tend to be too damned long because they have to be long enough to be books." Do you know WHY they are long? Don't you think that if an author could say all the things he wants to say in 3 pages that he would make a book that long? Isn't it obvious that most people don't like reading a big book? If all writers wanted to do was sell their book, they wouldn't spend countless hours coming up with good material to put into the book. Who wants to read a book thats 3 pages long, but has no important content. Books are long because the information in them cannot be presented to the reader in a small format, without compromising the complexity and importance of the information.
It is obvious this guy has never written a book before, or even has a clue how much work goes into writing books. - dhuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wow. What a ridiculous statement. The only reason people are going to digg this is because its so crazy.
no digg for me. - tecknoplasma, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11"The Bible" can be found in the fiction section of most online book stores, and for those of you who don't enjoy reading you may enjoy this SciFi thriller on DVD! All thanks to Mel Gibson...
- ill0gical, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4or for that matter the Bible
- dave5700, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have a simple solution, when you buy a book, you get a CD of the book in pdf format.
What's the point: When doing reports / essays you can control+f to find the phrase you remembered reading. - gamesector, on 10/12/2007, -0/+246 million copies :)
- nuclearpenguins, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'm going to go ahead and mark this as inaccurate. The only thing that will stop physical book printing is when all the trees of the world are dead, and at that point I don't think anyone of us will really care about reading anymore.
- pairanoyd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"The problems with books are many: They are frozen in time without the means of being updated and corrected."
What an idiot.
The above "feature" is a printed books strong point.
Digital media can crash, be altered or deleted to suit the whims of any tin horn tyrant.
Or to the frantic "PC" crowd that has to run around and rewrite history or reword things just because the truth and or particular words my hurt someone's delicate feelings.
Once printed and delivered a book is a very hard thing to recall.
You can pry my books from my cold dead fingers. I love printed books, the older, the better. I have several full encyclopedia sets that go back as far as the 1920's. It's interesting to through them and see how history is altered over the years to fit the *current world view*.
Big Brother loves digital media. Doubleplusgood it is. Yes? - xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The problems with books are many: They are frozen in time without the means of being updated and corrected."
That's the beauty of books, they capture time and ways of thinking; the problem is the authors perspective. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4nothing beats a good quality porn mag
- Daychilde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2and the statement is nonsense...
:-D
(Just trying to cover all the angles here!) ;-) - sert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I hear statistics every other day about the constantly declining amounts of adults that read literature for pleasure. For everyday information hunts most people turn to the internet, I don't think anyone is disputing that. But on the other hand, for better or for worse, people are slowly but surely turning away from literature as a form of entertainment in favor of the instant gratification available through modern day technology.
And no, just because you and your friends happen to read regularly or because The Da Vinci Code has sold however many million copies doesn't change it.
And the sad part is when I say that this all sounds eerily similar to Fahrenheit 451 people will think I just misspelled Fahrenheit 911. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I give books a digg++. Cannot say the same for this article.
- Surreal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Why are we still linking to opinionated blogs that have no journalistic integrity? I saw a few spelling and grammar mistakes here, and not only that, why do we need this to tell us that the book is outmoded, outdated, whatever. People have been saying this for many years, but still to this day there seems to be no threat to books. Lamed - and if I could old news.
- AdverseEntropy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This statement is extremely premature. I think that us more technologically-apt forget that not everyone gets all of their information on the web. I'd say that more than three quarters of the U.S. population still get the majority of their information via print.
- ohhhL3ThaL, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Communicating refers to the transfer of information from point to point with the intenetions of acknowledgement or replies from the sender.
Books are sharing ideas and stories, or presenting facts or fiction to further enlighten or educate the reader.
You sir, are a moron. - gamesector, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Books will never be dead because you can read them without having to listen to a bloody fan in the background and also, reading off a comp screen for ages hurts my eyes. People that dont read suck anyway.
- strcmp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Marked as inaccurate.
Author, please read some good literature (i.e. not bestsellers) and then reconsider. - rideagain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2One could say that electronic publishing in general (be it in blogs, webpages, whatever) is a disruptive technology when compared to books: it's not better than a book at being a book, but it brings new things to the table.
Everyone who's saying that the book is far from dead: you're right. In just the same way that the radio is far from dead. The question is not who will die and who will survive, but what content fits best in book form, and what content fits best in electronic form. - AdverseEntropy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wholeheartedly agree.
- Nessguy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Actually The Bible is usually found in the Religous section.
- sapo916, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I almost thought this was about Macs but anyway, digital methods are obviously not as nice to use as paper. Hopefully E-paper will fix this.
- sert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Except you cant search PDF's natively so that would kind of defeat the purpose.
- gamabunta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"But the book is an outmoded means of communicating information."
More like an overpriced form of communication. Expecting someone to pay 30 or more for a new release is insane. - Daychilde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Au contraire - a real live -insert gender of your choice- beats (hur hur hur pun intended) even the best quality porn mag, hands down (or, hands *somewhere*, at least)
- MrLunar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For research purposes, yes, I would prefer digitized media. But for reading a novel? I can't stare at a computer screen for more than 10 minutes. Plus books are much more portable (unless you read books from your PDA, in which case, you're just stupid).
I will always buy books for entertainment. - dtatom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is a very sophomoric argument. Almost all of his points against books are exactly why books continue to endure. In fact, the annoying DRM movement is a attempt emulate in digital a situation that books give us naturally; it is difficult and expensive to duplicate them in their entirety. Other point for books is that they are difficult to change but extremely easy to edit. They represent a single snapshot in time, and exists unchanged long after their author has turned to dust. Good or bad books endure.rnrnIf you really insist on updating a book, red ink is available at most dollar stores.
- xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I was recently given a copy of "Where The Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein, a book I had when I was a kid. It was interesting to read again and consider how it (among other things) helped to influence my development.
Contrast that with the idea that 30 years from now "kids" can reread old documents they once read online that have been altered 100x over by unverifiable sources that made "alterations" simply because the original material conflicted with their own agenda. -
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