Alternatives to Books

The e-book has been a long time in coming. Way back in the 1980s, when the Personal Computer was in its infancy, we were told that the logic was inescapable: now that ordinary people could read text on a screen, then the days of the printed page were numbered. There was a better way. After all, the Personal Computer  we were assured  would soon be in every office, in every home, and it would give everybody access to the biggest library in the world, in digital form. In the future, so the story went, you would walk into someone's new house and the most striking feature would be that there would be no bookshelves. There would be no need for any! All data would be stored on disks, out of sight.

That first myth is the easiest to deal with. People still have shelves, but they're not necessarily groaning under the weight of books, no. But they probably contain other media, such as CDs, DVDs, videotapes (since people haven't all moved on yet) and, even, surprise, surprise, that throwback to the 1970s, the cassette tape. Well, cassettes are considered a bit old-fashioned now, and many home entertainment centres don't include a means to play them, like they used to. But people like cassettes. They are small, convenient, easy to carry around in your pocket, and could be played anywhere  in the home, the office and your car. Yes, but CDs are better, we are told. Better sound quality, better  Hold on, they aren't better. As many a computer nerd knows, a round plastic disc is not more convenient than a small plastic box. The disc rolls off the desk or table, it gets scratched, it slips down the side of things and can't be retrieved. Also, it doesn't do well what people actually want. In the days of vinyl when cassettes were invented, ordinary residents found a terrific use for the cassette. You could borrow your friend's record, tape it at your house, give it back and have a workable copy. No, that's not happening now: CDs don't do that well. Even without 'borrowing' your pal's music, and using access to the internet and download sites, the problem is that some CD players refuse to play 'home made' disks, for whatever reason. So you can't slip your favourite tracks in your pocket and carry them round and play them anywhere  ah, but that's why someone invented the i-Pod, you say. Yes, that does do the trick of storing music from anywhere you are lucky enough to find it  the web, your friends', something someone gave you for Christmas  but it adds a layer of technology, the computer. If you look at a friendly old cassette recorder now, the most important thing was how simple it was to operate, how few controls. Compare that to the laptop computer. Ouch, there's no comparison. Saving and storing music is now more flexible, people will tell you. Yes, but nothing like as downright simple!

Back to books. I can load up text on my laptop. If I have access to the web on my laptop or desktop computer, I can download just about every book that wasn't written yesterday, but there is a problem: the computer screen. A screen isn't as easy to carry round in my pocket as a book. Compare the situation on a crowded commuter train, early in the morning. People with paperback books can read them in any corner, whether squeezed against the door or hanging on to a dangling support. The person with the laptop needs a table, or even a seat, but room to move their elbows. Ah, but that's why someone invented the PDA, you say. You can download your text onto your little pocket machine and scan the words in any tight corner. But when you start listing the attributes of a PDA, you come to a very strange conclusion. The hand-held device is portable, handy, will fit in your pocket and can be carried around. Can be accessed anywhere and shared with friends. It's small, friendly and human sized. In fact, it's exactly like a book! There are only two differences, one good, one bad. One is that you can store more than one book on it at any one time. Wow, you're saying that a device the size of a paperback book can actually store dozens of paperback books inside itself. It's almost like a fairy tale: imagine a book that had blank pages and every day you could wish for a new story and it would show you it. Then it would blank its pages until tomorrow, when a brand new, undiscovered story would appear. What could be better than that? Well, something that was actually readable. Printers have been working for years to discover fonts that are easy on the eye and readable in all lights. The PDA has to try and duplicate the sheer joy of black writing on a white background, a trick that can fail in poor ambient light or when the batteries are low. In fact, the problem for hand-held devices is exactly that. They can't deliver a printed page, it's just a pretty average copy of one. That's their weakness.

Still, the market progresses and every year 'the e-book' we are told is upon us and finally delivered to our specifications. Unfortunately that means  if you go to the web again and look for e-books to read  that they are downloadable in a variety of confusing formats as machines vie to become the new, universal standard. Perhaps it will happen. Perhaps, even now, the hand-held device is being developed that will become the new, acceptable alternative to the novel in pocket form. But the test is back here in reality, not in the laboratory. Just like 'the paperless office', it's a promise that hasn't delivered, a vision that hasn't become a reality. For some reason  some annoying, illogical, all too human reason  the people who actually enjoy reading are, as yet, addicted to the touch, the feel and maybe even the smell, of the printed page. They stuff books into their pockets in the morning, and read printed novels in their spare moments and lunch hours. Not yet will they pull out of their pockets their small electronic friends in order to indulge in stories, tall tales and inventions. Why not? We can only speculate. It's frustrating for the marketing manager, but interesting for the sociologist. The e-book is here, they cry, so why won't people just co-operate and start using them?