The term 'Dead Tree Book'

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You're hurting me, I am in mourning about the pumpkin spice, my country is STUPID

 

[B.J.]

I've used the term "dead tree format" before, no idea where I picked it up though. My wife, who's a high school teacher, will occasionally use it when assigning research projects to be sure that her students use actual published books as some of their sources rather than just googling a bunch of web pages.

 

[Kor]

It sounds like political correctness run amuck, to vilify something that's commonplace.

Kor

 

[TrickyDickie]

Haven't encountered it before but didn't find it difficult to figure out what was meant by it.

The one 'tree issue' that I shake my head about is the natural Christmas tree thing. Yes, more are raised for that specific purpose all the time. But the idea of growing them for a number of years and then killing them off to turn around and display them for only a few weeks or less....but, the floral industry does basically the same type of thing on a smaller time scale.

I'm not an environmental zealot, but the 'throw-away' practices do seem to be very excessive in this society.

 

[C. Cole-Chakotay]

The term DTB annoys me. I just call them books and let it go at that. Now matter the format, you are still reading books. And personally, I enjoy what you call DTB books. I like the feel of them and turning the pages.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I enjoy them too but I still call them DTB especially in discussions about what we are reading in forums such as Trekbbs and LibraryThing. In those discussions we generally do indicate whether we are reading it in DTB, e-book or audiobook format because not all books are available in each format.

In my last post in the What Are you Reading thread I identified all three current reads by their format and added who the narrator was in my audio read.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I don't find the term annoying. I just don't use it. I distinguish between "reading" and "listening to" a book, but it wouldn't occur to me to specify the format of a book that I was reading. It's irrelevant to me.

 

[BigJake]

It sounds like political correctness run amuck, to vilify something that's commonplace.

That's a bizarrely humourless take on it. Mostly the phrase is just a mordant acknowledgement of the fact that yes, we print books on trees. I've never heard anyone use it to "vilify" anything, not remotely.

 

[Kor]

That's a bizarrely humourless take on it. Mostly the phrase is just a mordant acknowledgement of the fact that yes, we print books on trees. I've never heard anyone use it to "vilify" anything, not remotely.

I was being facetious.

Kor

 

[BigJake]

I was being facetious.

Ah.

Carry on, then.

 

[scotpens]

I've heard it many times and it's fine with me. While I prefer dead tree books for nostalgic reasons, the term acknowledges that we don't really need to deforest the world to make books anymore.

The world isn't being deforested to make books. Nearly all of the wood pulp used for paper comes either from tree plantations or from natural forests that have been harvested and naturally regrown, generation after generation. As I mentioned upthread, trees for timber and paper production are a managed, sustainable crop.

 

[think]

back when, this was a type of underground business... making trees from books...

we also would sell things that we had posted as a cyber-print. Sometimes it gets to that pointless level of conversion when we scan the books we printed from the net that were originally scanned in before the net printed them..(again)

 

[Nerys Myk]

I've used the term one or twice. I also used to sell them. Never heard it used in a environmentalism context and I used to live in Humboldt County, California. Where hippies and loggers stare daggers at each other.

 

[scotpens]

back when, this was a type of underground business... making trees from books...

Making trees from books? That sounds like it could be fun.

 

[trekyourself]

Books are those things you get star trek on of you don't have a tv right?

 

[trekyourself]

1. Books are those things you get star trek on if you don't have a tv right?

 

[TrickyDickie]

Right now, I can't think of anything else that's still so beautiful after being dead for so long than a tree:

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I've never heard the term. But my first thought was "books made from trees that died of natural causes, instead of being chopped down"

 

[Jedi_Master]

It reminds me of when power hand dryers tried to play up the fact that they were "environmentally" safe because they "saved" trees from being used for hand towels. Of course the power hand dryers depend on electricity, which is often generated by burning coal, which can at times require entire mountaintops to be blasted off so as to facilitate mining.... but its ok. Those dryers are saving the trees....

 

[TrickyDickie]

It reminds me of when power hand dryers tried to play up the fact that they were "environmentally" safe because they "saved" trees from being used for hand towels. Of course the power hand dryers depend on electricity, which is often generated by burning coal, which can at times require entire mountaintops to be blasted off so as to facilitate mining.... but its ok. Those dryers are saving the trees....

That's a very good point and those hand dryers remind me of the other elements of the public restroom experience along the interstates these days. The whole water management system done with sensors doesn't work very well. Sink faucets are often difficult to activate. But the toilets are especially problematic. If you move around a little to adjust your clothing or whatever you have to do, those darned things are flushing themselves five or six times or more before you can escape their presence. That's not exactly saving water.