October 1, 1995

Geek News: Drive to multimedia leads to mediocrity

“Electronic books are better than paper books. They must be; they have sound and video. Paper books are going the way of the dinosaurs. Don’t expect them to be around for long.”

Have you heard this nonsense recently? I seem to be running into it all the time. People keep asking me why my books aren’t published “online.” I’ve even had people tell me they should be published online, as though these people, who invariably don’t work in the book business, know how to sell books better than my publishers.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Internet.” I’ve had people say that this ought to be available online, on the Internet, though none can explain how someone who needs a book with this title is going to find the book online.

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It’s become common for people to assert that electronic books are better than the more-mundane paper variety. Hey, they’ve got sound and pictures, they are more “compelling,” they hold your attention, and all sorts of other good stuff.

It’s not that I’m completely against the electronic versions of books. Some subjects seem made for it. “Jazz: A Multimedia History,” for example.

Originally a paper book, the CD version has some great advantages. After all, it’s a book about music, so what could be better than reading about a musician, then hearing the music.

Another example is the U.S. Census Statistical Abstract. Robert Samuelson, writing in Newsweek, recently complained that the census is being put on disk, but doing so makes perfect sense.

It saves huge amounts of money, and it’s not, in general, the sort of thing you read on the beach or in the bathroom. It’s a research tool, and it should be easier to use in electronic form. (Samuelson says that using the CD is too slow; this may be so, but if it is, it’s due to bad software design, not the hardware.)

No, what I really object to is that the move to multimedia is all too often a move to mediocrity, a move from substance to shallowness. Have you noticed all the CD encyclopedias around these days? Did you know that they’ve not actually encyclopedias? They’re children’s encyclopedias.

Compton’s, in its paper form, was sold as a kid’s encyclopedia. The same goes for Microsoft’s Encarta (originally Funk & Wagnall’s).

Meanwhile, a real encyclopedia, Britannica, is on the rocks. About 100,000 people a year, who in earlier years would have bought Britannica, now are buying CD encyclopedias.

So families who now could have a true encyclopedia have a kid’s encyclopedia. That’s OK, if they understood the tradeoff: a lower price, and much less information. But the shame is that most of these families may never know the difference.

Indeed, they’ve probably bought the hype and believe they are getting the very best: It’s a multimedia book, after all!

Of course, there’s one way Britannica can compete; they can stop writing wonderfully detailed articles about almost anything you can imagine and concentrate on adding a bit more sound, a bit more video. You know, the neat stuff.

In this age of hype, form is more important than substance. I first noticed the trend when I bought a CD drive about three years ago. It came with several disks, one of which was the Software ToolWorks World Atlas.

Well, that’s what they call it, anyway. It’s not an atlas, though; it’s a collection of large-scale maps, and there’s an important difference.

A real atlas has detail. If you look at the map of Brazil, you don’t just get the outline, a few cities, and the mountains and railroads. You get detail. You get most of the cities, and many of the smaller towns, roads, rivers and more. I love maps, so this was the first CD I looked at. My first disappointment, too.

We live in an age of sound-bite communications. Television has taught us to believe that, given enough pictures and sounds, we can learn anything we need in 30 seconds. Television news is atrocious, yet millions of Americans form opinions about important issues through five minutes of garbage each night. And, if we’re not careful, that’s the fate of books.

We’re being told, for instance, that listening to Martin Luther King’s famous speech is a “richer learning experience” than “merely” reading the speech. Why?

Sure, it can’t hurt to hear the speech; it may even make learning about the subject more interesting. But when speeches and pictures are used to bulk up a CD, at the expense of a detailed description of events and a sensible interpretation, we’ve lost, not gained.

At least for the moment, we’re not in danger. You see, when you get past the hype and advertising, electronic books are damn inconvenient. The vast majority of e3lectronic books require a PC, which makes them very awkward. They don’t travel well, and the text is difficult to read. And it’s difficult to settle into a sofa or a beach towel and read one. I haven’t touched on these “convenience” issues; I’ve run out of space.

So I’ll end for now by saying that you can expect the paper book to be around for decades. While we’ve seen an explosion of online activity, and while millions of people now have CD drives, “Publisher’s Weekly” reports that paper-book sales are strong, and rising.

Peter Kent is a Colorado-based writer specializing in computers. He recently completed the PGP Companion for Windows (Ventana). Peter can be reached at pkent@labpress.com.

“Electronic books are better than paper books. They must be; they have sound and video. Paper books are going the way of the dinosaurs. Don’t expect them to be around for long.”

Have you heard this nonsense recently? I seem to be running into it all the time. People keep asking me why my books aren’t published “online.” I’ve even had people tell me they should be published online, as though these people, who invariably don’t work in the book business, know how to sell books better than my publishers.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called “The Complete…

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