Packing Light for a Long Journey | 45 comments (45 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Something to realize about books.

Michael Hart of gutenberg project fame estimates mankind has produced so far about 2 millions books (all languages), about 1 millions are lost. If we assume 400 pages per book on average, with each page having 50 lines of 50 characters and one byte per character, that's 1 megabyte per book and 1 terabyte for all of mankind still available books. With compression of one bit per byte that's 125 gigabyte, a hard drive of this size currently cost less than 50 euros TTC in France.

Current "bistable" display technology use no power for static display.

So when we ask what book I want to take, just remember that if we have to choose it comes from intellectual property laws, not from physics or technology limits.

The whole wikipedia text in several language already fits on your cellphone or PDA MicroSD card (assuming you have an open software cellphone or PDA).

by Laurent GUERBY on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 04:37:42 PM EST

Re: About books (4.00 / 3)

But... I don't really like reading from my PDA or cellphone. I like books. With actual pages.

I sure hope they never stop printing them.

by the stormy present (stormypresent aaaaaaat gmail etc) on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 04:55:21 PM EST
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Re: About books (4.00 / 2)

How sustainable is this? If billions of people have the same library than you?

by Laurent GUERBY on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 05:00:14 PM EST
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Re: About books (4.00 / 2)

That's where well-stocked public libraries come in.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 05:03:00 PM EST
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Re: About books (none / 1)

That's for ultra-dense urban areas.

by Laurent GUERBY on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 05:20:08 PM EST
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Re: About books (none / 1)

The well-stocked libraries of medieval monasteries were not in ultra-dense urban areas.

At 20/25 Km/h (comfortable biking speed on a suitable terrain) you just need enough people within a 25 Km radius to provide the necessary demand for the library's services. At the average population density of the EU, that holds about 175k people.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 05:27:50 PM EST
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Re: About books (none / 0)

Neraly no one had access to book in medieval times :).

How many books a library does have? Assuming two books borrowed per person at any time, that's 350k books out at any time, plus say a similar number in stock (many copies of each book).

by Laurent GUERBY on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 05:51:38 PM EST
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Re: About books (none / 1)

That's still more sustainable than having everyone keep dozens of books at home, with duplication, when they are not reading them.
You don't have to have all the books in one library. The 175k figure is just an estimate of the number of people in the catchment of any given library even in a rural environment.
How big of a building do you need to store 1m volumes? A back of the envelope calculation tells me I can accessibly store 1m volumes in a 3-storey building with a 40m x 25m footprint.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 06:12:53 PM EST
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Re: About books (4.00 / 2)

The swedish public library system gives acces to lots of books. Each library does not have all books, but you can order books from the whole system and get a notification when the book gets to your library.

This system encompasses the whole of Sweden (lots of rural areas) and while built on a backbone of traditional libraries, at least one in each kommun (municipality and surrounding area, closest translated with county) it also has bookbuses and other ways of reaching the population.

I do not see libraries as a thing of the past. Books are a very popular format.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Wed Jun 13th, 2007 at 07:37:23 PM EST
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Re: About books (none / 0)

The problem is that it's likely current public libraries are under used. If you push this as solution, it has to scale to the whole population.

Another problem is that public libraries are already labelled as thieves by authors those days so if you scale up it will get worse intellectual property lobbying wise.

by Laurent GUERBY on Thu Jun 14th, 2007 at 06:43:15 AM EST
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Re: About books (4.00 / 2)

Another problem is that public libraries are already labelled as thieves by authors those days

Any author that makes that argument instantly loses my respect.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Jun 14th, 2007 at 06:44:36 AM EST
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Re: About books (4.00 / 2)

After the DMCA was passed in the US there was a big push in Europe and in France on this topic, a trace here from an author who denounced the editor's request to sign a letter refusing free book lending in public libraries:

http://www.freescape.eu.org/biblio/article.php3?id_article=92

Mourir plus vite
Mis en ligne le jeudi 9 mars 2000.
Nos éditeurs nous sollicitent avec insistance pour signer une lettre, dont les auteurs ne sont pas à l'initiative : refuser le prêt de nos livres en bibliothèques tant que n'est pas instauré leur prêt payant.
[...]
Refuser le prêt de nos livres en bibliothèque, mais quel ridicule : juste comme vouloir mourir plus vite.

by Laurent GUERBY on Thu Jun 14th, 2007 at 05:48:45 PM EST
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