Film, literature and music on your shelf - thing of the past?

[Fate]

I just bought an iPad w/ retina display for Christmas. I don't think I'll ever buy another hard copy of a book. The screen is just so... gorgeous. The only exception might be large medical anatomical atlases and such... but those are really just office decoration.

I've slowly migrated to the cloud. For $10 a month I can get 200 gigs of storage from Google. I keep all my pirated books, movies and music on there. Right now a terabyte of storage costs $50/mo, but I bet in 5 years it'll be half that.

Retina display? Whats that?

My mam just got my a kindle fire for xmas- never asked for one though she knew my kindle had died and she didnt quite understand why e-readers are so good so thought she was just getting me the latest and best version of a reader. I'm quite liking it as a little tablet computer but can't see myself doing much reading with it due to it being a conventional screen...

It's apple-speak for a really high resolution screen. 264 PPI compared to the 1st/2nd generation iPads at 132 PPI.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think they're a thing of the past, at least not for me, yet. I'm quite conservative on all of these.

With books this could be because I have a Kindle, not a tablet so my e-reader experience is more limited. There's a few reasons I want actual copies.  If I'm likely to refer to again, to annotate, to follow the footnotes or that has many pictures in then I want a physical copy. I find it easier with books than with the Kindle versions. I'm more strict about clearing my bookshelves every now and then though.

Another reason is if there's a beauty in the book itself. I've a few auction house catalogues or reference books that I can't imagine in any other format. Also there's sort of serendipitous books which, for me, are a physical thing. I never accidentally come across something on Amazon, like I do in a Waterstones or charity shop. Occasionally I get good recommendations from internet sites but it's not quite the same.

I only have DVDs for films. I can watch files on the TV with the PS3, but I only use that for Iplayer or the like. My flatmates download lots but I don't personally get the attraction.

Also I generally only have CDs which I copy over to my computer and ipod. My laptop was stolen a few years ago and for whatever reason my back-up copy wasn't able to fully load everything (they were there and I could see them but couldn't get them working). That's made me have a lot less music but also want to slowly build it back up with physical copies just in case.

[Monoriu]

I like to hoard stuff too, and I agree that digital mediums are much better than physical ones.  I can see the appeal of reading an actual book and flipping the pages rather than reading from a monitor.  But I am tired of finding space for the stuff, organising them, and above all, finding the CD/DVD when I want it.  The search button is probably the biggest reason why I want my stuff to be in digital form.  Having a DVD is no good if I can't find it, or if I need to spend an hour to find it. 

[Tonitrus]

Though having access to a digital medium on a cloud server is just as (or more) useless, if that company that operates it goes out of business/takes it down/gets sued by copyright holders/or is nuked/hacked by the Chinese/North Koreans/Russians.

I think I may have gone overboard with the "/". 

[sbr]

Though having access to a digital medium on a cloud server is just as (or more) useless, if that company that operates it goes out of business/takes it down/gets sued by copyright holders/or is nuked/hacked by the Chinese/North Koreans/Russians.

I think I may have gone overboard with the "/". 

You should have done 25 edits like MadBurgerMaker.

[Neil]

I don't have romantic feelings for piles of pressed dead trees filled with chemical inks and glue.  Nor do I have an interest in a "vanity mirror to the soul"  (good line BTW) - if I want to feel culturally smug and superior, I just have to check in to the languish drinks thread.  The ability to carry entire libraries worth of music of books in a small hand-held device cannot be underestimated.

See, I can definitely see your argument here.  On the other hand, a lot of my kind of books don't exist as ebooks or are extremely heavy on charts, graphs and colour photographs.

[Monoriu]

Though having access to a digital medium on a cloud server is just as (or more) useless, if that company that operates it goes out of business/takes it down/gets sued by copyright holders/or is nuked/hacked by the Chinese/North Koreans/Russians.

I think I may have gone overboard with the "/". 

The solution to these issues is to buy a few external harddrives 

[CountDeMoney]

Though having access to a digital medium on a cloud server is just as (or more) useless, if that company that operates it goes out of business/takes it down/gets sued by copyright holders/or is nuked/hacked by the Chinese/North Koreans/Russians.

I think I may have gone overboard with the "/". 

No, not really;  I'm sure there are a few more examples of potential fail points for relying on make-believe stuff like the cloud.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Though having access to a digital medium on a cloud server is just as (or more) useless, if that company that operates it goes out of business/takes it down/gets sued by copyright holders/or is nuked/hacked by the Chinese/North Koreans/Russians.

I think I may have gone overboard with the "/". 

You should have done 25 edits like MadBurgerMaker.

Not my problem if you're too slow to keep up. 

[Tonitrus]

Though having access to a digital medium on a cloud server is just as (or more) useless, if that company that operates it goes out of business/takes it down/gets sued by copyright holders/or is nuked/hacked by the Chinese/North Koreans/Russians.

I think I may have gone overboard with the "/". 

The solution to these issues is to buy a few external harddrives 

That's fine for stuff you can download.  Most on-demand media relies on companies or services that could vanish at any time.  I wouldn't include in that, pirated movies, YouTube rips, or squirreled-away pr0n.

[merithyn]

I find that I can only read on my eReader for so long before my eyes start to get tired. This has never been a problem with a printed book. I'm not sure what the particular problem is - probably brightness on the Nook or something like that - but so long as it's an issue, my Nook is not likely to be my primary source for reading material.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I find that I can only read on my eReader for so long before my eyes start to get tired. This has never been a problem with a printed book. I'm not sure what the particular problem is - probably brightness on the Nook or something like that - but so long as it's an issue, my Nook is not likely to be my primary source for reading material.

Probably just a sign of genetic inferiority.

[merithyn]

I find that I can only read on my eReader for so long before my eyes start to get tired. This has never been a problem with a printed book. I'm not sure what the particular problem is - probably brightness on the Nook or something like that - but so long as it's an issue, my Nook is not likely to be my primary source for reading material.

Probably just a sign of genetic inferiority.

Potentially. Let's hope not, though, since I've done such a great job of putting those genes out there via a slew of kids. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Well, we (the elite) need a stock of workers ala the morlocks (just hope they don't come to run things ala the morlocks.) My daughter for example is going to need people from the grunt-class to clean her house, do her landscaping etc.

[Neil]

Well, we (the elite) need a stock of workers ala the morlocks (just hope they don't come to run things ala the morlocks.) My daughter for example is going to need people from the grunt-class to clean her house, do her landscaping etc.

Won't she have sold the house in order to get her meth fix?