Space Time Stories » commentary http://www.spacetimestories.com Space and Time Travel Stories. A Science Fiction Blog By Sean O'Brien Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:27:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 A world without books http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/a-world-without-books/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/a-world-without-books/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:27:53 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=625 Will we be able to read today’s e-books 20 or more years from now?  I’ll show you why it’s absurd to hope so.

This is a picture of the Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas printed in 1663, 347 years ago.  The book is easily readable, the typeset is a little archaic but not dramatically different from the font you are now reading.  I have several other books in my home which are over 300 years old.  I estimate these books will be readable for 300-400 more years before they are too fragile  to be read.

Summa Theologica

Summa Theologica printed in 1663

Completed in 1274 this edition of the Summa was printed in 1663 and is readable 736 years after the book was written.  Will that be true for most or even some e-books which never see paper?  I would not take that bet.

Also shown is a 5.25″ floppy disk which contains an electronic copy of my PhD thesis written 22 years ago on an MS-DOS machine in Word 2.0 (or something like that).  This disk is not readable for several reasons:  1) I cannot find the hardware to read the disk,  2) Microsoft has intentionally obsoleted this old .doc format, and 3) the magnetic bits have begun to degrade.  This disk was essentially unreadable 10 years after it was written.  Typical computer storage media have a lifetime of about a decade.  The primary driver of this limitation is the economic pressure to stop making outdated equipment.  The plastic CD/DVD may survive 20 years, but soon most people will buy pads and phones instead of computers, and few people will live in a home which has the hardware to spin and read a plastic disk.

Many bloggers are joyfully touting the end of bookstores, libraries, and paper books.  I believe this will be a disaster for our society because the durability of e-books is measured in years. How many times have you accidentally discarded a book?  Now how many times have you accidentally deleted a file, in the past month?  Files are lost every day in countless mishaps.  Can you imagine a world where the only copies of The Lord of the Rings are electronic and could be permanently lost by a simple keystroke?  Or how about a world where we have lost the encryption keys so the only way to read “A Tale of Two Cities” is by an illegal brute force decryption?  I don’t want to live in that world.

I predict that within 10 years we will be not be able to buy an e-book reader which can read some files purchased for today’s Kindle or Nook.  This may sound absurd but note that I’m not necessarily talking about a technical limitation.  If Barnes and Noble cannot find a buyer it may disappear.  If Amazon is purchased by Microsoft the obsolescence of the e-book format could become embedded into the product cycle.  If the EFF and Cory Doctorow succeed in eliminating the DMCA then the current encryption standards could be judged illegal and a producing a reader which decrypts such materials could also become illegal.

The Long Now foundation Rosetta Project is working on a “book” which will be readable in 10,000 years.  That book will be printed using atoms because no 21st century electronic file will be readable in 10k years.   Anybody who wants to be able to read books 20 years after purchase had better not buy bits, you should buy atoms.  And if books printed with atoms disappear from our lives then God help our society because we are doomed.

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/a-world-without-books/feed/ 0 Creativity http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/creativity/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/creativity/#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:11:14 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=595 Interesting ideas on creativity from Creatologue.

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/creativity/feed/ 0 Scifi Optimists versus Scifi Pessimists http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/scifi-optimists-versus-scifi-pessimists/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/scifi-optimists-versus-scifi-pessimists/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:19:41 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=413 Scifi pessimists say – we’ll never be able to feed 8 billion people.

Scifi optimists invent algae which can fix nitrogen from the air, generate fertilizer, and live in a symbiotic relationship with roots of food plants in airborne greenhouses.

Scifi pessimists say – global warming will kill us all.

Scifi optimists invent CO2 scavenging algae which generate carbon nanotube filaments used for building space elevators.

Scifi pessimists say – the sunspots won’t come back and we’ll all freeze in another ice age.

Scifi optimists invent CO2 storage bins which absorb or release tons of CO2 every day for precision climate control.

Scifi pessimists say the ozone layer will disappear and we’ll all fry.

Scifi optimists invent airborne ozone replenishing units staffed by extremely attractive people.

It’s too bad there are so few scifi optimists.

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/scifi-optimists-versus-scifi-pessimists/feed/ 2 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:20:58 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=370 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I have never cared about the zombie theme, but I can’t wait to read this.

Related posts

  • No related posts.
]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies/feed/ 0 Joe Haldeman’s Accidental Time Machine http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/joe-haldemans-accidental-time-machine/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/joe-haldemans-accidental-time-machine/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 18:00:32 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=353 Just finished listening to Joe Haldeman’s “The Accidental Time Machine” from Audible.

As a time travel story it was excellent, there was a time machine, multiple uses of that machine, time travel was a key element of the story, and there was even a time loop. The overall story dragged at many points, especially when he fell into the trap of anti-Christian ranting.  Then it rushed far too quickly through the climax.

Why is it that smart scifi writers can’t imagine a world where Christians are heroes and live respectable lives? At least the anti-Christian stuff was relatively tame and the rest of the book was good enough to overcome it.  The narrator was well casted, he sounded about 23 and exactly like a physics graduate student.

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/joe-haldemans-accidental-time-machine/feed/ 0 Six word Scifi stories http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/six-word-scifi-stories/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/six-word-scifi-stories/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 21:14:48 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=305 Six word scifi stories are excellent !

Mine says:

Time machine broken, dinosaurs are drooling !

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/six-word-scifi-stories/feed/ 1 Great writing = Verbs http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/great-writing-verbs/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/great-writing-verbs/#comments Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:09:03 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=237 Want to be a great writer?  Quit using adjectives and adverbs.   Use verbs.

Here’s a list of verbs.  Right-click “Save As” to save these to a file.

Study them and use them. Your writing will shift to a new level.

If you like this list perhaps you might consider reading your next book on a Kindle !

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/great-writing-verbs/feed/ 0 Data Robotics http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/data-robotics/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/data-robotics/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:42:54 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=234 The data robots have started to take over, see http://www.mydl.me/ for details.

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/data-robotics/feed/ 0 Singularity, a free audiobook http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/singularity-a-free-audiobook/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/singularity-a-free-audiobook/#comments Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:08:13 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=222 I have started listening to a free audiobook, Singularity by Bill DeSmedt. So far it’s great, it’s about the real cause of the Tunguska explosion.

I’ll review the book when I’m done listening to it.

I listen to it as a podcast feed.  I had some trouble setting up the feed in iTunes, the response of the podiobooks website was VERY slow, but it did finally work.  You can choose to get one chapter per day, per week, or all at once.

Related posts

]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/singularity-a-free-audiobook/feed/ 3 Your own personal stereotype http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/your-own-personal-stereotype/ http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/your-own-personal-stereotype/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:23:19 +0000 Sean http://www.spacetimestories.com/?p=195 This is slightly off topic for this blog, but I found this ZenHabits post to be deeply profound.  To sum it up, virtually everyone fits into a pidgeonhole:  the smart guy, the cold physician, the golf hack, the office gossip, the troubleshooter, the troublemaker.  It applies to scifi writers too.  How many pidgeonholed authors have an opportunity to break out into a different genre?  If Terry Brooks tried to write a hard scifi story about alien robot colonies invading Earth would you give him the benefit of the doubt?  Many people would not.

Most famous people are pidgeonholed:  George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Brittany Spears….the list is nearly endless.

The best advice is to make sure that your pidgeonhole is a good one.  You need a positive image associated with respect and dignity.  Because you probably will be stuck in that hole for the rest of your life.

Related posts

  • No related posts.
]]> http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/your-own-personal-stereotype/feed/ 0