Hi Dark,
Oh, i know the value of the internet for research, and you are
absolutely right about it being a valuable tool for any university
student. Programming games is a lot like studying law because it is
constantly changing, evolving, and there is no way printed books can
keep up with changes in APIs, tools, and programming languages as they
evolve on a fairly regular basis. Internet websites and e-books can be
updated easily with the changes, and is ultimately better for our
environment because we don't have to cut down millions of trees to make
paper books that will be out of date in a year or two anyway.
At the same time though its nice to have a copy of a favorite book in
hard cover. Something physical to put on your bookshelf and read. I
guess what I'm saying is that printed books have more a value to
collectors than they do to a student, because collectors buy books for
there nostalgia value more than anything else. Its for this reason that
first editions of classics tend to go for an extremely high price. Its
not that the story inside is all that different, but you are buying the
original copy of that book which is often several years old. The better
the condition of that old book the more it is worth.
In other cases there are errors in the early editions that were
corrected in later reprints of the book which are interesting to read.
What I mean by that sometimes those mistakes reveal something about how
the book, story, evolved, and you can see minor changes the author or
editors decided to make later on as they noticed mistakes in the text.
Perhaps the most obvious case of this I can think of is the original
1977 first edition of Star Wars: A New Hope.
As I understand it the book was being written at the same time George
Lucas was filming the first movie, and the author who wrote the book
basically had to put the book together based on Lukas's notes and sample
screen plays. As a result the book ended up being slightly different
from the movie. Instead of a light saber the author often referred to it
as a laser sword, which was a correct description, but in hindsight many
Star Wars fans would have hung the author for reducing the mighty light
saber of the Jedi Knights to a mere laser sword. Lol!
Anyway,after Star Wars became a smash hit both at the theater and the
book became a New York Times best seller someone decided to edit the
book and correct some of the terminology etc. Instead of a laser sword
later editions identified it as a light saber to bring the book more in
sink with the movies. Thing is that first edition, warts and all, are
worth more than any other Star Wars book that has ever been printed
simply because it was the first to ever have been printed. Collectors
pride themselves in being able to take it down off the bookshelf, look
at it, read it, or just show their friends the original first edition of
the most famous sci-fi book of all time.
Beyond that I think for a lot of reasons it would be nice if we could
have access to every book ever printed in a digital format. Its possible
now to store hundreds of pdf documents on an external drive, and
websites like wikipedia make it easier to get the basic facts a person
needs for a research project. Plus at the bottom of most Wikipedia
articles there is a list of original sources you can go to for more
information on the topic, and can use as a guide for the essential
references you need on a particular topic. Plus a digital format saves
time having a physical book, document, etc shipped to you via plane,
train, or truck when it can be downloaded in a matter of a couple of
minutes.
A few years ago my mom was working on her side of the family tree. She
managed to trace our families roots back to Scotland, and then hit a
stone wall. The archives and documents she needed simply were not
available in the United States and were only available from a library in
Scotland. Well, it so happened my step-sister Katlin was over in
England, doing a year at Oxford, and agreed to drive up to Scotland and
make photo copies of the documents my mom needed for our family album.
As it turned out she came home from the U.K. with hundreds of pages of
material on our family containing birth and death records, where they
lived, who fought and died fighting the English, and so on.Besides the
documents she braught home she had a flash drive full of pictures of
Scotland and pictures of where the records say my family lived. She also
took pictures of a few graveyards and of tombstones of people listed in
the records for research purposes etc. Basically, had Katlin not been
over in the U.K. at the time valuable information about our family prior
to the 1700's would have not been available to us.
This is where the internet and electronic media really shines. If all of
those documents had been scanned and made available online it wouldn't
have been necessary for a family member to actually visit the actual
libraries that contained those documents. Granted Katlin brought back
more than just documents when she went, but the bottom line is I wonder
how many other people are in a similar situation needing to do some
background historical research on someone or something and the print
documents are locked up in some European library rather than on the
internet in some massive online library. :D
Anyway, to get back on topic here. I am pretty sure the fighting fantasy
books are being printed in hard cover or paperback form simply for their
nostalgia value. It might be hard to purchase an original edition of the
book, and for many people like myself getting a reprint is just as good.
It might not be the original, but I can have something similar for a
reasonable price. I am in my mid 30's now, and I'm sure guys my age
probably want something as close to the original as possible. Having an
e-book version just doesn't have the same feeling as holding a physical
book for some people.
Cheers!
On 5/11/2012 6:11 PM, dark wrote:
Hi Tom.
I can accept your view about the sentimentality of books, though never
having read in print myself it's not really something I can mentally
get a handle on, ---- nindeed I'd much rather read in audio than
braille because of the time and convenience factors involved.
The funny thing is however, yesterday was my dad's 65th birthday and
what did we buy him? a kindle, precisely because! it is convenient to
use. my dad loves reading, and with modern E inc screens which are not
back lit, can be read in sunlight and (according to a friend of mine I
researched the kindle with), actually give a far closer experience to
reading print than you'd think, from the look of the cover even to the
paper look of the pages.
With research, it's actually a huge bennifit to students. When for
intance for my phd I wished to know the exact British legal
specifications for low IQ, moderate, severe and profound learning
disability, I just used wikipedia.
when my brother was studdying law, because very small parts of the law
change, lawbooks needed to constantly be reprinted every year, ----
not electronically however.
then of course there is the cost factor, though quite typically amazon
and other book producers aren't exactly passing on those savings to
their customers as they should do (though hopefully once sights like
podiobooks and other E publishing becomes more common the larger
companies may see sense on this matter).
I actually E-mailed publishers of both sets of original gamebooks that
are being reprinted, and got no answer, but what I suspect is that
they are going very much for the nostalgia value, hoping to appeal to
fans of the original fighting fantasy and lone wolf series with print
originals, though happily a lot of new gamebooks are being published
exclusively on the Iphone and other mobile platforms, so again this
might change in the future.
While I suspect there will always be some sort of desire for paper
printed books, I do myself look forward to a time when these are
reduced to a curiosity only, and the vast majority of information is
available as electronic, accessible, none tree killing form, (though
whether the big wigs of publishing will let this happen i'm not sure).
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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