why is college so expensive?

[Subvet642]

Originally Posted by 357

I don't get why all college books, and high school books for that matter, aren't electronic. I mean Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440. Do you think after nearly 700 years we could move on to another form of media? Perhaps one that is free to distribute?

I'm not suggesting we do away with copyrights, just the bulk of the cost which is printing and distribution.

Once the format becomes obsolete, the electricity goes out, the battery dies, you drop your reader, or whatever; then where are you? Books are already perfect the way they are, and require nothing else in order to read. All electronic media requires hardware, software and power support in order to function. A book requires only itself.

[loki]

Originally Posted by Subvet642

Once the format becomes obsolete, the electricity goes out, the battery dies, you drop your reader, or whatever; then where are you? Books are already perfect the way they are, and require nothing else in order to read. All electronic media requires hardware, software and power support in order to function. A book requires only itself.

you can misplace a book, you can get it wet, books become obsolete and are more expensive to change leading to fewer changes and they are all but unsearchable. Books are dead tech, it's time to move into another format.

[Subvet642]

Originally Posted by loki

you can misplace a book, you can get it wet, books become obsolete and are more expensive to change leading to fewer changes and they are all but unsearchable. Books are dead tech, it's time to move into another format.

You can misplace a reader, it can get wet, dropped, corrupted by a virus or destroyed by EMP. Books are indeed searchable; it's called an index. If you lose a book, it's one book; if you lose a reader, you lose all your "books". If you drop a reader, it's toast. I wonder how old the oldest surviving e-text is. The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 2000 years old. Does anybody expect any electronic text to survive that long?

[loki]

Originally Posted by Subvet642

You can misplace a reader, it can get wet, dropped, corrupted by a virus or destroyed by EMP. Books are indeed searchable; it's called an index. If you lose a book, it's one book; if you lose a reader, you lose all your "books". If you drop a reader, it's toast. I wonder how old the oldest surviving e-text is. The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 2000 years old. Does anybody expect any electronic text to survive that long?

I can count on one had the number of times I've damaged a piece of electiontics to the point they needed repaired, it's one, and the number of times I've lost one is never. I'm not going to argue this with you because there's no reason to. you like books and I prefer ereaders. not a big deal in the grand scheme of the board. have a good weekend mate.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by loki

you can misplace a book, you can get it wet, books become obsolete and are more expensive to change leading to fewer changes and they are all but unsearchable. Books are dead tech, it's time to move into another format.

Aren't all these true for electronic devices as well? Not a good counter-argument.