Practicality vs. Necessity
By Bryan Guignard
30 April 2001
Editor's Note: This article is a response to the article by Ted Padova titled Where are we headed with eBooks" and the response by Kas Thomas, Printed books have a few years yet...
Overall, I agree with most of what has been said so far, but I also doubt any of us will see the end of paper in our lifetimes. The arguments for the survival of paper are, in my opinion, very sound, so I cannot dismiss them. Yet, the arguments for eBooks are equally sound. So how can all this balance itself out? My impression is that it will become a delicate balance of practicality vs necessity.
There is one thing that I believe hasn't been adequately defined in this discussion. There is a lot of talk of eBooks vs paper, but the context that was set in the initial essay seems to be broader than what can be defined as eBooks, since the overall demise of paper is involved. As we all know, paper is used for many more things than just books. I submit the term ePaper (to borrow it from Adobe) as more appropriate in this discussion.
There is a case to be made for the speed and efficiency of ePaper, its enhancements and tools. There are many situations where access to information is of the essence. A few examples are: medicine, emergencies, legal writings, tech manuals, harsh environments, when paper is too bulky, for the visually impaired. These are necessities that ePaper can meet. The hindrances of paper (the tree pulp kind) far outweigh the benefits in these situations.
On the other hand, ePaper simply can't be used for things such as packaging material, posters, displays, business cards, labels, CD jackets, sticky notes for your refrigerator, restaurant place mats and napkins, my favorite 3 ply tissue, toilet paper and paper towels, grocery bags, gift wrap, the nice calendars I get from my bank and Chinese restaurants, and by those who don't own or have access to electronic equipment, oh, I almost forgot, my cherished $11.95, plastic coated, Peterson Field Guide to the Birds which I regularly drag through swamps, muddy ground, rain, and the car's excessively hot glove compartment (all places where I prefer not to bring my costly electronics with the $95.00 eBook version).
Another issue is the fact that as electronic usage has increased, so has our appetite for paper, which brings me to my next point.
There is also a strong case to be made for the preservation of nature. I have no arguments about trees being a renewable resource, but being mostly a country boy, growing up in a part of the country that had, and still has forestry as it's main economic engine, I have also witnessed, first hand, the devastation, long term damage and sometimes permanent damage to entire eco-systems (not just trees) in countless square miles of forest and nature. Granted, a lot of that is due to negligence and greed by the foresting companies, but it is good to keep in mind that this negligence and greed is largely fueled by consumer demand.
Getting back to trees being a renewable resource. Human reforestation is not without some significant problems. Reproducing the diversity that is naturally found in forests is very hard and costly for humans to accomplish, so a lot of this diversity, if not all, tends to be avoided. This leads to large plantations based on only a limited number of species, and usually just a single species. This sort of specialization is a boon for insects, plagues, soil depletion, and all sorts of other trouble, which cannot easily occur in a naturally diversified forest.
So why not let the harvested forests replenish themselves naturally? Well that used to be the way it was done, but in the last few decades, the demand for trees has far surpassed nature's built in ability to replenish itself, so man has had to interfere to ensure a future supply that would meet the demand.
Paper is far too valuable a commodity to be completely abandoned, but at the same time we cannot stay on the present course of tree over harvesting much longer. I feel that ePaper has a tremendous contribution to make when it comes to restoring a wise and sustainable balance in our use of trees.
The widespread adoption of ePaper in areas where it offers definite advantages, and in all other areas willing to use it, might just be enough to tip the scales of human consumption towards a healthier and greener environment. And let's not forget that there is more than just tree cutting involved. Harvested trees usually have to be transported to paper mills by soot blowing diesel trucks. They then have to be processed by these mills which in turn produce massive amounts of toxins such as hydrogen sulfide, dioxin, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen and sulfur emissions. And I'm just scratching the surface of the problem. I could also mention the destruction of countless rivers by log drives, and the contamination of ground water by leaching produced by tons of used up and abandoned industrial equipment. ePaper can also help reduce these pollutants.
Yes, building computers and ebook readers creates pollution too. But one computer or ebook reader can be used to hold and read hundreds or even thousands of ebooks. Overall, this is far less polluting than generating all the paper necessary to print these books...providing these ebooks are not printed.
My hope is that ePaper will become popular enough to allow us to reduce our excessive appetite for paper to a point where a wise and healthy balance can be achieved in the use of our natural resources. Harvesting trees is not a problem, but doing too much of it is. ePaper could become a powerful enough technology to help bring us back to a sustainable and wise use of our trees.
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