[verisimilidude]

For adult fiction, I doubt any of us care how or where people read. It's an uncomplicated example. Instead, consider something like scientific research. The possibilities seem endless when it comes to putting research online: richer multimedia, raw data sets, crowdsourcing, timely publication, etc. But paper (and parchment) is still a more reliable archival format, which could be crucial on some unfortunate day in the (hopefully distant) future.

For content that matters, I wonder how long paper will be able to keep up with digital, and what the long-term effects will be either way.

[6d0debc071]

Scientific journals haven't done diddly with the internet but use it as a glorified magazine printing device in the time they've been on it so far. It's possible that's just because they're stupid, but I wonder how much of it is creating scarcity. e.g: You don't make money by sharing your raw data with the world and having it networked with other data to make it easily searchable, you make money by keeping a stranglehold on the data and charging £20 a pop to read a summary with the analysis you want people to have of it stapled to the front.

[stephengillie]

Do scientific journals count as books? Have they ever been novelized? I feel like they might fall outside the scope of the topic.