Hacker News Reader

Comment by _lx4l | Hacker News Reader

"The OPA man, Anderson Dawes, was sitting on a cloth folding chair outside Miller’s hole, reading a book. It was a real book—onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent."

- Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

View on HN

Great quote, thanks for posting it.

Books are not just decadent, they're also a reliable store of information which cannot be erased or altered easily without our knowledge.

There's immense and irreplaceable value in paper books, and I've taken to collecting the best ones.

I just don't think there's much value in this particular one.

As it relates, the only reason I could find that quote to reply to you was because I have the book in digital format. I remembered the word leather, and "leather" only appears in Leviathan Wakes 8 times, making it easy to find.

I love paper books as well, but I think the authors have prophetically captured the inevitable. Cutting down forests to only add tangibility to our bytes just isn't worth it.

The quote is particularly relevant when discussing space though. It's specifically the weight to data ratio that's called out as decadent. Something that's more relevant if you're used to travel with severe constraints on weight much more often than we are.

I agree that it's inevitable that things move that way - my only paper books in recent years have been to complete my collection of Ian Banks because that particular edition looks gorgeous, and Stålenhag's art books. I don't anticipate buying more paper copies of novels or textbooks unless there are books I can't find in digital version.

But at the same time, I just published a scifi novel and was surprised at how large a proportion of sales are still made up by paperback (not exactly selling millions, so it's not exactly a large sample of the market). It seems like it will take a long time before paper books become unusual to the point of being considered decadent.

Plenty of existing books to be found without having to source new ones.

Many, many books are being discarded these days, so I don't have to buy new, or buy at all.

Many towns' library systems do giveaways as well.

My old hometown's system used to do a semi-regular culling at the yearly mini arts & crafts fest in the park. They'd lay out 5 long rows of tables and cover them in old books that had to be retired. You could take as much as you could carry for a donation of any size.

I used to go when I was in my teens and had two dollars to rub together, and I still go back now in my 30's if I'm in town (with more of a donation). I've found some real gems.

We assume books are permanent because we've always had them. But in medieval times books weren't permanent. We only have the knowledge that we do now because monasteries had a dedicated team of monks who constantly copied and rewrote books onto new parchment.

True, good modern paper of the types those monk used lasts about 500 years or so in the typical case. (meaning no fire-flood, both of which were common; and not in a carefully climate controlled area which can add thousands of years). We haven't really improved on paper since then. There is a lot of cheap paper that will fall apart in less than 100 years, but those monks didn't use that.

What digital storage do you have that will last that long? A few CDs would in the ideal case (but most are not that grade). I'm not clear how long SSDs will last. Magnetic tape becomes brittle and single read in about 30 years as we know from history.

The only advantage of digital is IF you care at all it is easy/cheap to copy to something new.

It only seems like we’ve always had them because most people want books from this century. The further back you go the harder it is to find any type of book, even mass produced dime novels, because a lot of them have rotted away.

If you actually want books to last a long time, they must be stored under controlled conditions by an actual archivist.

Narp, I mean some will probably end up as collector's items in a hundred years, as a glance into 2021 design trends - 100 year old advertisements and catalogs are great collectibles and time capsules nowadays - but at the moment they're more of a nice to have for the next year or so. I do like leafing through things like that sometimes, but at the same time I don't mind going to the physical store for a browse. More useful.

Most paper books don't last. Paperbacks are printed on cheap acidic paper that yellows and eventually starts to crumble. The glue in the spine dries and cracks.

Hardbacks are more likely to last, and premium heirloom hardbacks = special print runs with special materials and extra assembly effort - are most likely to survive.

But for what? Most heirloom hardbacks are better-than-average novels for well-heeled fans and collectors, not a complete guide to rebuilding civilisation.

I'd be all for an apocalypse-beating Self-Study Handbook of The Important Stuff We Worked Out and Did, but good luck finding a publisher to fund what would be a massive project.

I have several paperbacks that are getting close to their centenary. They are getting slightly fragile but that is a long way from saying that the content is unusable.

And I have several books published in the nineteen thirties and forties that would serve well to reboot civilization having comprehensive instructions for building all sorts of necessary machinery, buildings, clothes, etc. There were many such books with titles such as "Everything Within" and "The Handyman's Complete Self-Instructor".

There is no need for a publisher to fund a massive project; most of what is needed is already available on paper and increasing amounts of it have been scanned so that anyone with a laser printer can make their own permanent copy.

Of course those 1930s and 40s books won't tell you how to build a modern computer but they do tell you how to build a radio without needing to build a chip fab first.

And it seems that there is sufficient interest (presumably as conversation pieces) for some such books to be republished: https://bookshop.org/books/the-handyman-s-complete-self-inst...

100%. My half-kidding "end of the world/zombie apocalypse" plan was always to pile some food into Robarts Library (Toronto) and gather the books I'd need to make it.

1) Endless knowledge

2) It's a bloody fortress

Kidding aside, though, and also being one that maintains a small library I have to agree. Most of them are not so cheap as to actively degrade so fundamentally as to be unreadable. Maybe old dime-store dramas. I mean, unless you've left them open in the sunlight for 50 years.

Further to my remark about things being scanned take a look at this from 1909: Modern electrics ... v.1 no.10 1909 Jan. <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015067294929&vi...>

Sadly as radio goes the way of tv and switches to HD over time, I fear the analog equivalents that you can somewhat easily tune with a simple circuit may not still be around in 20, 30, 40 years.

Henry Stephens Book of the Farm from the 1800s can still be useful today, for example.

Some of the most valuable books have more to do with the inner world than the outer.

Other than binding, which can be re-done pretty easily, paperbacks are readable after 50-100 years.

The paper may yellow, but crumbling takes a bit longer.

You may have been unusually lucky. I barely dare open some of the paperbacks I bought in the 70s and 80s.

Although I have PDFs of all of them, so it doesn't matter. The fact that I can change the font size to make them legible now does, to me at least.

The hardbacks are still fine. (Except for the print size.)

> But for what? Most heirloom hardbacks are better-than-average novels for well-heeled fans and collectors, not a complete guide to rebuilding civilisation.

They're not a guide for rebuilding civilization. They're something that can last through whatever dark time you're considering in some semi-forgotten corner, so the next civilization can learn about and study what came before. And honestly, they don't need to last the whole time, but rather only until thins recover enough that you start to have copyists, etc.

You're in luck, someone already has [0]

[0] "The Knowledge" by Lewis Dartnell

Books (especially used ones) are also generally cheaper than digital copies.

Well, we're likely one strong magnetic pulse away from having only paper books as a source of information, so there is that.

Electromagnetic pulses can't wipe CDs or DVDs, so we'd definitely still have anything stored on those, and most data centres are designed with EM shielding so we could still have data stored in the cloud unless it was a massive pulse. I think we'd be OK.

CD’s and DVD’s require players which are susceptible to EM pulses. It seems extremely unlikely for that kind of global EM pulse to happen, but I can’t exactly say it’s impossible.

I'm no EM-pulsicist, but I believe an EM pulse capable of inducing destructive currents in conductors as relatively short as those you'd find in an (unplugged) CD/DVD player, and doing that all over the globe, such a pulse would have to be ridiculously, absurdly massive. Are there any events or things we know about that could do this without also, say, sterilizing the planet?

Coronal mass ejections can cause geomagnetic storms that will mess with electronics globally.

It happened back in 1859, but it's effects were limited as the only susceptible tech was telegraph systems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

On the other hand of all the books I'd like to save, the Ikea catalogue isn't top of the list.

I've been watching the series and haven't heard that quote. Might just have to read the books now.

I started with the series as well, after the previous season ended I became desperate to continue the story so I started reading them. They did such a good job with the series but the books were so good already.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com