Why Is This Hill So Steep?

by Steve Jordan

  Certainly the electronics industry was no environmental saint. Electronics processing involves various forms of oil-based plastics, as well as various precious and toxic metals, some of which are mined in very dirty processes. Copious amounts of electricity are involved with electronics production, in their case, not to shift heavy machinery, but to orchestrate the myriad finely-detailed processes of operating precision machinery, lasers, calibration and testing equipment, and microscopic monitors required by fine manufacturing. The industry also uses water and chemicals in many of the formation and polishing processes. Electronics manufacturers are noticeably better at recovering and recycling materials for re-use, again thanks to being monitored by environmental organizations from the beginning. But they still consume a great deal of energy and a variety of materials in the process of turning out their electronic devices. And they also require transportation, and its requisite environmental costs, to get the devices to the hands of consumers.

  The largest concern with electronics is not with its manufacturing, in fact… it is with its recycling. Although, as described, electronics manufacturers take care to be clean producers, the industry does not have a well-established recycling method. As electronics are discarded, many of them are simply landfilled, causing their plastics and toxic metals to end up in the watershed. In some cases, landfilled electronics are manually broken down by individuals seeking to recover their precious metals, but in the process they are exposed to the toxic metals alongside them, putting their health at severe risk. Governments and institutions are working to establish methods to safely reclaim and recycle those materials, but the methods are not yet in place in most regions and countries. The majority of electronics are still being landfilled, and polluting our planet after use.

  And there is the fact that e-book reading devices must consume energy to be used. Though the latest devices are very miserly, they still require power to be added to them at intervals, contrasted against printed books, which require no power just to read.

  ~

  Given these two realities, it has been difficult to establish a clear winner and loser in the battle for cleaner book delivery. Both sides are experienced in pointing out the shortfalls of the other to claim dominance, and with heavy lobbying on both sides, the printing and electronics industries have remained at an environmental stalemate.

  There is, however, one more consideration to make that can shift this argument: The fact that a single e-book reading device, while possibly polluting the environment as much as one (or even, depending on the figures used, a number of) equivalent printed books, can in fact store in its memory hundreds, even thousands, of books. In an environmental comparison, there seems to be a clear environmental winner between a single reading device, and hundreds or thousands of printed books: The e-book reader has a distinctly smaller environmental footprint than 100-1000 books. Further, the e-book’s footprint can still be improved by establishing better after-use recycling methods, and designing for less energy-usage. The methods have already been demonstrated effective, it is just a matter of putting them to use.

  The printed book can undergo better recycling efforts—unknown to most of the public, presently only about 5% of printed paper is recycled—but the reality of the material is that it can only be recycled 2-3 times before it is useless as a paper product (and not good for much else). And despite the suggestions of the logging industry to the contrary, the trees they replant after harvesting are not filling the wilds as fast as they are being harvested… we are still losing more of the equivalent volume of trees than we are gaining, with their ability to interact in the environment, sequester carbon and mitigate forest damage. Paper’s environmental footprint cannot be shrunken significantly enough to offset its environmental impact.

  Unfortunately, the green movement does not control the publishing industry, which has already established its desire to maintain the status quo of its existing operations. Big Pub quietly supports the logging and paper industries as-is, and has so far responded to escalating paper and production costs by simply passing them on to the consumer. Until the consumer begins to object to the rising cost of their paper products, as well as a concern as to the environmental impact of that paper production, Big Pub has little incentive to alter their processes, and every reason to prop them up as much as possible.

  21: The technology—My reader’s better than yours! (Nyah!)

  Previous chapters have alluded to an issue that has been as hotly debated as the various formats, the quality of content, the prices, the security, the environmental friendliness and the ethical ramifications of e-books: The technology of e-book reading devices; or, to be more specific, the display screens.

  When e-books were beginning to develop, the state-of-the-art in electronic display was the liquid-crystal display, or LCD. LCD technology was just beginning to supplant cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology in computer displays, and was being developed for the second generation of laptop computers (the first generation used monochrome light-emitting diode, or LED, displays). LCDs were more expensive than the venerable CRT display technology, owing to the fact that CRT technology hadn’t changed in decades, and manufacturers had by then found the most cost-efficient ways to produce screens; but LCDs were more portable, and capable of running on significantly less power than a CRT, which made them ideal for laptops.

  At first, LCD display technologies were being redesigned almost every other year, requiring manufacturing plants to retool for the new display type on a constant basis. As a result, during the first decade or so of development initial LCD displays were kept very expensive to cover the plant retooling costs. Eventually, though, display technology settled down, plants no longer incurred the high costs of retooling, and LCD displays began to come down in price. By the mid-2000s, LCD displays sold for prices comparable to CRT displays, and soon the sleeker, more power-miserly displays began to replace the CRTs on desktops everywhere.

  LCD quality varied greatly during its early history. Some LCDs tended to flicker, especially when viewed under fluorescent light displays. They were also often a harsher, colder light than that created by CRTs. And the image itself was a digital display, made up of pixels that often did not have the apparent resolution of scanned display CRTs. For people who had grown up around CRT displays, many of them had a hard time getting used to the first LCDs. LCD manufacturers responded by adding settings adjustment controls to all LCD displays, allowing the user to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, as they could with CRT displays.

  Unfortunately, many people did not take the time to adjust their screens, accepting them in their default settings (which were usually set by the factory to look good on a store display shelf), and often not knowing how to operate the control settings, or even realizing they were there. The default settings looked good in the store, but were much harder on the eyes when viewed for long periods of time. Consumers therefore began to complain about the “quality” of LCD screens, and of experiencing eye fatigue and strain. These complaints about LCDs continue to this day, often subjective complaints without hard physical evidence to support them… on the other hand, LCD screen use is a relatively new phenomenon, and the lack of hard data may be more an indication of a lack of time to adequately study the phenomenon, not a lack of veracity. And not everyone’s eyes react similarly to screen use, so LCD screens could hardly be condemned as bad for all human’s visual health.

  When the first e-book reading devices were introduced, LCD screens were the displays being developed at the time. Though some consumers took to them right away, those who had previously experienced eyestrain with other LCD screens immediately criticized these devices, saying they could not stare at them for long periods without suffering the same eyestrain they’d experienced with their desktop or laptop monitors. For the same reason, they said, using their laptop or desktop with its LCD display to read an e-book was similarly unacceptable.

  LCD manufacturers, hearing the complaints, experimente
d with new hardware drivers, the software that controlled the display quality of the screens. Microsoft, itself interested in becoming an e-book reseller, responded by developing a new display rendering process designed to address many of the problems reported by consumers. Called Cleartype, the display system replaced the sharp, bitmapped edges of digitally-rendered text on LCD screens with a boundary of progressively-greyed pixels that “softened” the edges of the text. The human eye was essentially fooled into seeing smooth edges and shapes, and did not need to apply the same effort to focusing and interpreting the shapes as letters, so fatigue was lessened.

  Today many users of the Cleartype setting, and similar display settings used by non-Windows devices, swear by its quality and comfortable viewing nature, and declare it a vast improvement over early LCD displays. I, myself, have used the Cleartype settings on my desktop, laptop and PDA screens for years, and find it an infinitely better reading experience, allowing me to work with or read on an LCD screen for hours without fatigue or discomfort.

  As effective as Cleartype was, however, it was still buried in the display controls of every Windows computer, and remained elusive or invisible to most users. LCDs continued to be considered by a sizeable segment of the population to be hard on the eyes, and not preferable for reading.

  ~

  There was still enough of a concern for the quality of reading electronic displays, not to mention a desire to create a display that used less energy, to keep display research alive. And in the early-2000s, the Electronic Paper Display (EPD) was developed.

  Unlike the light-based LCD, LED and CRT displays, EPD was a different animal altogether: A sheet of organized spheres, each sphere holding tiny particles, half of them black and half of them white, in a fluid. The spheres would be charged with a minute current, which would push the desired black or white particles forward to be displayed. Then the current could be turned off, and the particles would stay in place without continuing to use power.

  Not only did the EPD displays use less power, but being a composite surface that reflected light to the eyes, as opposed to shining bright lights at the eyes, visually the experience was more like reading ink on paper (also a reflective medium). Users immediately compared the reading of EPD screens to “reading on paper,” and many consumers clamored for the display technology. The technology was soon to be known by its trade name, “eInk.”

  Companies like Amazon and Sony saw this as the technological component they finally needed to create well-received e-book readers, as so many consumers still seemed to rail against LCD displays, and as the eInk screens would provide a battery life of literally hundreds of hours to the devices. 2004 saw the first eInk device introduced by Sony… though expensive, its display was lauded by industry and consumers alike. Soon e-book reading devices were coming equipped with eInk technology, and more and more consumers trumpeted the visual quality of their devices. Amazon’s Kindle, also an eInk device, was an instant success, partly because of the lack of complaints consumers had with the display… they were finally willing to read on electronic screens.

  ~

  As the new eInk displays proliferated, many e-book consumers were still reading on older devices, including laptops, PDAs, cellphones, and other devices with LCD displays. Many of these were small, handheld devices with screens of 2x2, 2x3 or 3x4 inches. Reading on these devices was a novel act for most early users, but after awhile, those who enjoyed the advantages of being able to read content on-the-go got used to reading on the smaller form factor… often to the amazement of friends and bystanders. Others did not really like the LCD displays, but for the sake of functionality, put up with them as long as they had to.

  The introduction of eInk changed that for many LCD-reading consumers, who snapped up the eInk devices and instantly swore by them. However, there was still a population that was perfectly happy using their existing LCD devices. People began to take sides, creating an ongoing debate as to which display technology was “better.”

  Manufacturers watched the debates with interest. Many of them wanted to get in on the e-book market. However, the eInk-based readers and the LCD-based devices used very different hardware systems. Manufacturers wanted a simple plan to follow, a single design on which to base all future manufacturing. But that single design did not seem to be forthcoming, amidst all the arguments for one display or the other, and the young age of the eInk industry. Faced with an uncertain market, some manufacturers bowed out of the device market and set their sights on other markets.

  The hardware decision also affected e-book software developers, because they had to be able to create rendering engines for each type of hardware… and those rendering engines often included more complex DRM systems. They likewise wanted to minimize the number of platforms they had to support. Unfortunately for them, the various platforms were already established, and as new hardware types came along, they were immediately pressured to create versions of their format software for each device. Some developers managed this better than others; some only had the resources to support one or two platforms, leaving the rest hanging.

  Hardware issues also impacted those who wanted to get in on the e-book action, but could not divine the best way to do that without standardized tools. Among those groups were entities like library systems and educational institutions: Public clamoring for e-books had forced many of them to look into everything from supplementary programs to replacing their printed stock with e-books. But without a standardized piece of hardware to format their programs around and endorse, many found it difficult to impossible to begin a program that would be all-inclusive for their customers.

  Eventually this manifested into the current market of e-book formats that are supported on some devices but not others; or that were once supported on a certain device, but since abandoned when the developers shifted their concentration on to newer devices. Some third-party and amateur programmers have filled in a few of the software/hardware gaps, and the emergence of ePub as a default e-book format has simplified the issue for many developers. However, many legacy e-books are not being retroactively converted to newer formats like ePub, and those who have existing e-book collections must keep in mind (and sometimes guess) which devices will allow them to continue enjoying their books in the future.

  The format situation remains fractured amongst the many different hardware platforms available to the public… leaving consumers forced to choose what they can and cannot read based on the hardware they have, and which formats it does, or will, support.

  22: The marketers—Ads about nothing?

  Unlike the established parameters and practices for marketing printed books, both hardback and paperback, there was no such established marketing method for e-books.

  Taking a look at past publishing practices, this might seem surprising. Publishers have always concentrated their marketing efforts first on hardback books, their highest-profit item, and generally the first version of a book made available. When paperbacks were introduced, publishers would bring them out after the hardback had largely run its course, and would switch their marketing efforts to promoting the paperbacks. So why don’t the publishers plan to release the e-books after the paperbacks, and switch their promotion efforts to e-books?

  The reason is that publishers expect e-books to effectively kill all future sales of their books in one fell swoop. With the issues of piracy prominent in their consciousnesses, publishers assume that the release of the e-book will spread to all interested readers who have not already bought a printed book, making the printed books unsellable at that point. Further, they expect e-books to be heavily pirated and bring in little real income themselves, effectively signaling the end of the point of profitability for a book.

  Therefore, publishers like to act like the e-book version isn’t there (in prominent commercial venues), in order to get the most mileage out of their printed books.

  Marketers have explored the possibilities of selling e-books to the public. But with publishing�
��s concerns about the cannibalization of a book’s profitability, much of the marketers’ efforts thus far have been to promote e-books, if at all, in a general sense … and to leave individual books out of it. To an extent, this begins to hurt the publishers themselves, as many individual books and series books could be sold beyond the point at which the printed matter has ceased to sell. But as the publishers continue to believe the e-books will only be pirated, they see no potential for further profit for books or series that have outlived their printed shelf-life.

  Marketers either do not seem to be able to come up with selling points that would make e-books attractive products for consumers, or are being restricted from doing so. Many of the public perceptual issues persist, such as the inherent “inferiority” of the reading experience on an electronic display, as opposed to paper. Also, marketers are hampered by the costs of most e-books, set by the publishers and/or sellers, which most consumers reject as being too expensive (especially after they might have paid $2-300 for a reading device). They can hardly consider DRM a selling point, and there is nothing that can be done with an e-book once it is bought… it cannot be resold to others or to used bookstores, or returned for a refund.

  In the past, portraying a product as reflecting personal intelligence could be an effective marketing tool. Sadly, though, we seem to be in a period of emotional, as opposed to intellectual, appreciation; being smart, or even appearing smart, does not have the attraction it once had.

  There is, of course, always the standby marketing method: Sex. Sex has sold every type of product known to man since the first huckster commented on how good a bolt of hide made a man or woman look to others. Unfortunately, these days there is little to nothing considered sexy about reading. (On the other hand, that has never been an impediment to sex-based sales before...)