Econundrum: Kindles vs. Books

or even 10 years on - the Kindle 1 will have been replaced by the Kindle 2 and the Kindle 2s... touch-screen, colour, smaller, lighter, longer battery life, etc, etc are just some of the improvements I guess are on the cards.
Do Kindle have a recycling scheme in place? How long before the batteries need replacing?
Compared to books - I have a number of books that are fully functioning even though they are a hundred years old and there are many that are 500 or even a thousand years old... compared to these the Kindle looks like a very short term idea.

There is no conundrum here. A few trees is a small price to pay for the dissemination of intelligence. I would gladly chop down a tree myself to fill a classroom with books for the cause of literacy.
Its like basic hygiene, one shouldn't feel guilty about washing their hands. It seems to have helped cut back on the number of black plagues we are seeing lately.
The biggest issue might be the diminishing quality of what actually gets to print, and that is perhaps the fault of the growing number of bad editors allowing too much garbage to get printed. Thats where you could save a lot of trees.
But you are right get thee to a library!

but while both produce it I suspect paper processing is more cleanupable and far better in lifecycle terms. Imagine: locally or otherwise written, locally grown, milled, printed, bound, distributed and finally recycled books as a new cottage industry revitalizing most areas and reducing GHGs and other harmful ecologic and economic effects. Walking and bike trips to libraries and other places/forms of sharing completes the tranformation.

I too am a big fan of buying used books.

There is the green factor, but another is that finding a good book usually is coordinate with early publishing dates. To cliche the thing, they don't publish books like they used to.

Norman Mailer once posited that book stores in America usually put their mainline fiction on shelves up front, but that was soon replaced by self-help books occupying those shelves. He stated that bookstores had become "spas for narcissists."

It is a truly baffling situation--the inescapable green factor threatening the spread of information and truth not yet subjected to internet sanskrit, wherein the first casualties are a rich vocabulary and clarity through the rules of syntax and punctuation.

I myself would begin by outlawing advertisements sent through our mail. It would clean out the clogs in the mail system, and since my daily amount is around a fifth of a novel, it would give fair license to continue publishing books that can be read with a cup of coffee, a comfy chair, and not the glaucous sheen of my monitor, which takes a whole lot more energy to read because of the glare.

Buy used books - good

Walk, ride, or drive to the library - good

But if you like to REALLY read - support those writers that will NEVER get a start with an established publisher!

Some of them will be the great writers of tomorrow.

If I were a lot younger I would start writing today.

I hate to say it, but the whole article reads like an ad for Kindle.

Books, magazines and newspapers are about the exchange of ideas.

CleanTech is a company organized for the promotion of profitable new technology that claims to be cleaner than older technology.

Contentions by CleanTech that the Kindle and other E-readers are better for the environment than books are simply self-serving. Perhaps a Kindle is better for the environment than reading books on your computer, but there is no wholly reasonable comparison to reading books.

Regarding the contention that printing is wasteful, the figures used in the article likely include advertisting as well as any materials a consumer voluntarily purchases. Additionally, the publishing industry often prints far more books than it ever expects to sell - the cost of a book includes the vast amounts of wasted materials. (it would be great to find a way to encourage the publishers to cut back on print runs, and print as needed.)

Of COURSE the article writer's friends will rave about their new purchases. They are like someone newly in love and on their honeymoons. When you commit to something that is an investment, you will feel that you must recommend its virtues to assure yourself that you didn't waste your money!

Once you HAVE a book, it doesn't require any electricity to use it.
You can read a book without batteries.
A book can be read on the beach (I can't even use my cell phone in bright light.), and nearly anywhere, and if you drop it, a book usually can still be read.
A reader-gadget is attractive to thieves.
You can write in the margins of a book.
You can photo-copy pages of a book.
Can you kill spiders and flies with an E-reader?
How does an author inscribe an E-book?
How do you write a gift note to someone on an E-book?
Generally, nobody in Africa dies getting rare metals out of the ground for a book.
Will the E-reader fail if you forget it in a hot or cold car? Will it be stolen from said car?
What happens if it falls into your bubble bath?
Does anyone get to admire your rows of stored e-books on a shelf?
Can you open and read two at once?

Reading from a lighted screen at night upsets your melatonin production, upsetting sleep patterns.

I prefer my life to be less cluttered (we have plenty of it already!) and one more gadget which can breakdown (books don't general breakdown) is one more thing I have to take care of, rather than it taking care of me!

Books are nearly sacred in my family - it would be crazy to suggest you could survive happily without books. Books have a sensuous nature, from the weight to the print type and the texture of paper, each time you hold a book, it gives something back. You become imprinted by more than the words, by the very pulp of the tree or the cloth that once were parts of living plants.

We buy used books, borrow books, and go to the library. A used book store near here which also has a new-book club. When enough people sign up for the same book, the store buys it, and each person pays a portion. They get two months to read it.

When you buy any tech item, between six months and a year later, you'll find that it is now old hat, and in two years or more, the "current" software will be so new that you may not even be able to use the old machine. I have books that are more than one hundred years old. They still work.

Technology can be great, and there is a place for E-readers, I guess. I'm not really a Luddite, but E-readers are just one more gadget set out to impress and seduce me. More tech doesn't usually make more happiness.

To the above poster, its obvious you do not own a kindle or the like. You made comment about reading a bright lit screen at night messing up your body. The screen on a kindle is not lit. You need a light on just like a real book. You make arguments about it could get stolen if left in a car. Yeah. and the whole car could get stolen and you'd lose your book too. I can make up what ifs to look like i'm proving my point until the cows come home too.

To the above poster who mentioned it has helped in his reading performance with font size, I too have used that to the same effect. I tend to get bored or drift off when reading and then spend a lot of time finding my place. With changing the fonts i can keep it large enough that I'm flipping pages before it happens.

A key is to turn off the wireless to reduce battery drain. I only have it on when I'm downloading a new book.

I have purchased 1 more kindle book than regular book during the time I've had my kindle 2. I got it right when it came out, whenever that was.

Some things don't work well on the kindle or the like. Cookbooks I see, or art books as mentioned above.

As long as I get a couple years out of this device, I can't imagine it will be worse for the planet than if I had bought the books in print. A single battery charge takes almost 2 weeks for me to go through. Longer if I only read at work.

I did find this by googling the topic, so although the article started well, I feel it drifted off into a debate not included in the title. Reading vs TV. Oh well...

There's no mention of how outdated any technology becomes. Can kindle assure that their readers will be up to date ten years from now or will formats be so different that people have to buy an updated reader? Given the motivations to sell as many as possible, it seems unlikely that they would be motivated to let people keep a reader their entire lives. I may read 20 pounds of traditional books a year but twenty books in a landfill have got to be better than a single reader in the landfill.

Libraries are great and, while this is a topic for another occasion, libraries haven't done well with keeping up with the times. When I walk into a chain or even independent book store it's usually bustling with activity. That's rarely the case with a library. Libraries have got to be more inviting and user friendly.

Ever hear of a used book store? Between the Library and used book stores there really is no need to buy new books anymore. Buy buying used, you stop supporting the logging industry one reader at a time by eliminating the need to destroy trees to entertain and expand the human experience. Word up.