Do you remember when film photography was ubiquitous and consumer digital cameras were just starting to come onto the market? (Worryingly, there will be readers of this blog that won’t.)
At the time, there was any amount of commentary from the tech boosters who said that of course digital photography would supplant film soon enough. Meanwhile the naysayers trotted out a list of reasons why they wouldn’t be trading in their “real” cameras for these second-class substitutes and couldn’t see why anyone would.
I don’t need to tell you how that one worked out, but let’s look at the process by which this happened.
Mass-market consumer digital cameras started with the Casio QV-10 in 1995. With a resolution of a quarter of a megapixel (0.25MP) combined with pathetic image processing it was clearly a pale precursor to the intelligent and vivid cameras we enjoy fifteen years later. Yet it was essentially a modern digital camera: A (large) pocket-sized device producing colour pictures, with internal memory, a colour screen on the back and the ability to transfer pictures to a computer. The digital camera technology of today may be better but it isn’t fundamentally different.
In this first stage, the mass market and many pundits view the new technology as a loser. It’s both far more expensive and has far worse quality and usability than the thing it’s supposed to replace. This is the “birth” phase of a technology, where the early adopters spend a fortune to get something that’s massively compromised, yet shows promise and provides a fair amount of exclusivity.
I got my first digital camera in 2000, five years after the QV-10. It was a Fuji MX-1700. Costing around £400, it produced 1.3 megapixel images and had a 3x zoom lens. There were cheaper cameras, but they had even lower resolutions, worse image processing and no zoom lens. On the upside, it was extremely pocketable and produced crisp, well-exposed pictures. On the downside, the pictures were still very low resolution and it was very slow to use, with a lag of what seemed like around a second between pressing the shutter release and the camera capturing and storing the image. Compared with most compact film cameras, it was incredibly expensive toy. Yet for these faults, it was a good replacement for much of my film photography. I could see my images immediately after they were shot and show them to other people. Having paid for the camera, each shot was effectively free. Best of all, I could transfer them to my computer and put them on my website, which was in the process of becoming a far more common way of sharing photos than making prints. For its time, and for the things I did, it was fantastic. But not everyone “got it”, or was prepared or able to spend that amount of money to replace the “perfectly good” film camera they were used to using.
This is the “growing-up” phase of a technology, where products reach a wider audience who are prepared to make some compromises in respect of older devices in return for benefits in areas which they consider to be more important to them. Often these benefits are in cost and convenience rather than quality.
Now digital cameras are ubiquitous. When we talk of “cameras” we mean “digital cameras” and tend to specify “film cameras” if we mean otherwise. Film is the preserve of retro enthusiasts and a tiny minority of professionals. Businesses based around film technology have either died or revolutionised their operations towards digital. Any discussion of “will digital replace film?” now seems anachronistic and nonsensical.
In this “mature” phase of the technology, the new technology is superior in almost every way to the old. Generally, it’s cheaper, quicker, more convenient, more flexible and has better quality. Not using it involves a large degree of compromise to get a niche benefit that the mass market simply doesn’t care about.
This is where I see ebooks and ebook readers going. Right now they’re in the “birth” stage. Often they’re more expensive, lower quality and more hassle than just buying a printed book. It’s easy to see why relatively few people bother — and why those that do are considered a little strange. To most people it makes little rational sense.
But before long — and I believe we’re just entering this phase with devices like the Kindle and particularly the iPad — we’ll be in the “growing-up” phase. There will be definite pros and cons to ebooks and printed books, but not a clear-cut overall benefit either way. Which you choose will depend on what matters most to you. Cost, convenience (of carrying, purchasing and storing), display/reading quality, the ability to share and annotate, style and image. Some (richer) students will plump for an iPad over carrying a rucksack full of half a dozen fat textbooks. Other people will stick to the venerable printed book for a variety of reasons, including simple cost.
So how long before ebooks reach their “mature” phase? Five years? Ten? Almost certainly not any longer. Whatever device you’ll use to read them (phone, tablet, laptop, something else) you’ll have anyway, so no-one will think of that as a significant cost. The ebooks themselves will be much cheaper than their paper equivalents, where those even exist. Ebook reader quality will far exceed what’s possible on the printed page, in resolution, clarity and flexibility. Annotating ebooks and sharing those notes will be far easier and more powerful than on a paper page. You can’t search a printed book in any automated way at all, yet the ways we’ll be able to search, analyse and navigate ebooks in a few years will seem incredible compared to the best search technology we have today. And while some will wax nostalgic about the heft, the texture, the smell and the patina of the traditional printed book, in most cases they simply won’t be buying new ones. “Book” will mean “ebook” in common speech, and discussions about “ebooks vs. print” and will seem as quaint as the battles between digital and film photography advocates in the mid- to late-1990s.
I’ll miss printed books in some ways but I’ll be constantly reminded that the ebooks that have replaced them will have done so because they’re in every reasonable sense better. Rapid, incremental technological advancement will turn that potential into reality.
I just hope I’ll have the time to read more, but I won’t bet on that.
But the iPad doesn’t use e-ink which will make it uncomfortable to read as is a laptop screen. Until there’s a colour e-ink e-book reader or tablet I’m keeping away.
I do agree though with your overall view in comparing the e-book with cameras.
This made me envisage a future where I walk into someones living room and am NOT faced with walls covered in shelves groaning with the weight of old books which were read only once (if they were lucky).
Without all this “padding” (reverting to css-think now) rooms will be larger or maybe rooms can become smaller, cheaper to heat etc.
On the downside, I wont be able to make that sweeping scan of titles which might provide the briefest hatched thumbnail about the background and past interests of the owner of the room – but I guess I’ll be doing that from his/her FOAF file or online profile somehow.
You just opened a little window onto the future for me, thanks.