Affected by the remnant circulation of Typhoon Dusurui, some areas such as Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, and Henan experienced extreme heavy rainfall and suffered severe floods. Located in Zhuozhou, Hebei, the Beijing Southwest Logistics Center covers an area of 400 mu. Nearly a hundred publishing houses, publishers and middle-market warehouses are located here and in the surrounding areas. Affected by the flood, the loss may be as high as tens of billions of yards (a batch of total price of the book). Some bookstores saw 25 million yuan (S$4.67 million) disappear within an hour as they watched the flood soak their books.
Fortunately, librarians were not injured, but it is heartbreaking that a large number of books were soaked in water and destroyed in an instant. This situation not only makes people reflect on the site selection of library warehouses, warehouse design and quality improvement, but also may prompt all people who care about books to jointly promote the transformation of book content and form.
In fact, the transformation of books has come a long time ago, that is, e-books. It's just that this deluge could lead to a bigger, faster change, or a shift to another form of book change, e-books or other forms of books.
There have been many discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of e-books and paper books. Even though people value the advantages of e-books more, they still cannot do without paper books in reality. A large number of paper books were damaged in this flood, which is enough to prove that there is still a large market and readers for paper books.
Since the Amazon China official website officially launched the Kindle store in 2012, and users can directly purchase Kindle e-books, the development of e-books in China has also advanced by leaps and bounds, and forced Kindle to stop operating in China on June 30 this year. The reason is not that e-books are not good, but that local e-books or e-reading forms are catching up and are more in line with Chinese people’s reading habits, such as online reading apps, the rise of domestic e-book brands, and interoperability with mobile phones and notebooks. More usable, practical and down-to-earth.
However, this is only a competition between e-books, and if it is to compete with paper books, the latter still has a strong strength. Why do people love and hate paper books? David Pearson of the United Kingdom pointed out a mystery in "The History of Books in the British Library". Books are an integral part of the aesthetics and value of a certain era, and they are also a representation. This actually means that paper books are cultural and historical handicrafts. Through the exquisite design of editing, art, printing, and binding technology, readers can get a special reading experience and enhance their reading interest. All of this is realized through the basic physiological functions of human beings, that is, the sensory experience of touch, vision, and even hearing.
Some people think that e-books are only used as a carrying text, and their demise is imminent. This is extreme, and deeply nostalgic and conservative, because e-books can also improve the tactile and visual senses and improve the reading experience, but people are not used to it yet.
A flood exposed the shortcomings of paper books. As the oldest carrier of knowledge and information, paper is not only afraid of flooding and extinguishing, but also afraid of fire, and also afraid of insect bites, mildew, wind, rain and sun. Too much space, etc., will also make people look at paper books again, and promote the improvement of e-books to further replace paper books.
On the one hand, e-books can adjust font size, background color, etc. to meet the needs of different readers. On the other hand, e-books can also be designed to be visual and tactile when turning pages, even with rustling sounds when turning pages, as well as highlighting and folding pages for content that has been read.
The advantages of e-books can be further developed, with real-time synchronous search and sharing with book friends and friends. E-books can quickly find relevant content and explanations through the built-in search function. When reading, readers can share, comment, and discuss with others in real time and after reading, such as reading on WeChat, which can broaden the reading experience of each inpidual. When everyone has their own unique understanding of Hamlet, sharing and communicating with other readers can gain a different understanding of Hamlet; compared with the personal reading experience of paper books, e-books can deepen the depth and breadth of reading comprehension .
From these perspectives, it can be seen that if e-books can develop faster and win the favor of readers, it will not only prevent paper books from being damaged by floods, floods, mildew, sunshine, etc. in the future, but also reduce typesetting, printing, paper, storage, etc. Expensive costs for storage, management, etc.
However, one of the unique drawbacks of e-books is that they require energy, and they are not very useful in places without electricity and Internet access. Future books that solve this difficulty are also on the horizon, and this is the biological (DNA) book.
Assuming that a single strand of DNA can store the entire Wikipedia (English version), 1 gram of DNA can store a huge amount of information, and about 1,000 grams of DNA is enough to store all the current data in the world, including books and media and all data on the Internet. Moreover, books made of DNA do not take up much space and can be carried and read as you like. (Editor's note: DNA storage technology has been intensively studied in advanced countries in recent years)
But at present, the decoding and reading of biological books are relatively slow, and the next step is to develop a faster decoding reader for biological books. On the other hand, biological books must present the same arts and crafts appearance and visual, tactile, and auditory experiences as traditional paper books before they can become mainstream books in the future.
After a flood, people can see the evolution direction of books, from paper to electronic, and then to DNA books. Of course, the revolution of books is not that one form completely replaces the other, but that one kind becomes the mainstream and the others are supplemented. Just as in the future, e-books will inevitably become the mainstream, and paper books will become supplements. In the more distant future, it may also be that DNA books become mainstream, and paper and e-books become supplementary.
The author is a Beijing scholar
