[HN Gopher] Why do old books smell so good?
___________________________________________________________________
Why do old books smell so good?
Author : conse_lad
Score : 246 points
Date : 2023-08-19 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scienceswitch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scienceswitch.com)
| mimd wrote:
| We just need a Franciscan friar with a melodious Scottish voice
| and we're all set for a murder mystery.
| djmips wrote:
| My father worked in a paper mill and told me about the incredible
| fact that artificial vanilla was a byproduct of the forest
| industry!
|
| https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/vanilla_is_a_forest_industry_b...
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Nowadays I would be curious, and rather worried, about known
| carcinogens in those old books. I remember buying in the 1990s a
| fantasy trade paperback from Tor Books that had an enchanting
| floral scent, such that I frequently stuck my nose into the book
| while reading. I don't know if the publisher and author had
| deliberately used certain paper or treated it with a certain
| scent, or this was just a nice coincidence. But now I wonder if I
| was just giving myself cancer from some chemical that was
| considered innocuous at the time.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Everything is basically giving you cancer according to
| California.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Especially Californians.
| zwieback wrote:
| "There's no cure, there's no answer, everything gives you
| cancer!" One of the great Joe Jackson tunes.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Good point. In general pay attention to old stuff. Pathogens
| can be chemical or organic.
|
| And indirectly, there seems to be agent spread on books you get
| from amazon too. I have an old 80s english CS book that smells
| too bad, so much i get a light headache. (not too far from what
| you get from some made in china plastics). It may be anti-fugal
| treatment.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| Life causes cancer. Which causes death. Not living life also
| causes death. In short, don't fret about it. Enjoy it while you
| have it.
| BoppreH wrote:
| And I can enjoy life for longer if I don't live in a house
| with lead paint or eat scraps of forget my teflon pan on the
| stove.
|
| I dislike platitudes like these that don't acknowledge that
| life is about tradeoffs, and sometimes a little caution gives
| large rewards.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or deal with flaking paint in an old house--which
| inevitably does have lead paint that has been painted over.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> eat scraps of Teflon from my pan_
|
| I'm sure there's a doctor or a chemist in here who can
| correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always understood Teflon
| to be super-duper-ultra inert. They literally make arterial
| grafts out of Teflon.
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| Doctor-chemist here. You are correct. The carbon-fluorine
| bond is very inert to metabolism. Ingested Teflon would
| be almost entirely eliminated unchanged.
|
| Takes pretty harsh conditions to break Teflon, but
| interestingly it can react with explosive violence, as I
| have witnessed, when combined with small particle sized
| Mg.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Why all the recent fuss about ingesting PFAS and "forever
| chemicals" then? I thought Teflon is a kind of PFAS?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| I think it is the glue or chemicals used to bind teflon
| is the issue.
| StackOverlord wrote:
| > Birds are susceptible to a respiratory condition called
| "teflon toxicity" or "PTFE poisoning/toxicosis." Deaths
| can result from this condition, which is due to the
| noxious fumes emitted from overheated cookware coated
| with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE).
| culturestate wrote:
| Sure, but _burning_ Teflon and inhaling the fumes is much
| different from _eating_ pieces of Teflon that flake off
| in your pan. Plenty of otherwise-harmless things are
| suddenly _not_ harmless when you burn and inhale them.
| xeromal wrote:
| I think it is but I believe the rub is related to cooking
| temp. You're not supposed to heat it above x (400F? not
| sure) and it breaks down beyond that.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yes but treating everything like possible lead paint is a
| sure way to live a miserable life. We need to be careful if
| there is proof of harm, not assume that everything is
| harmful.
| BoppreH wrote:
| That's a perfectly fine message, but the original post
| had none of the necessary subtlety. If your life advice
| could be used in a cigarette ad, you've diluted it too
| far.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Immediately what I thought of was smoking cigarettes.
| Enjoy life but educate yourself about what can extend it
| and reduce it. Indulge (or not) with open eyes.
| postalrat wrote:
| Are you enjoying life?
| BoppreH wrote:
| No joke, I'm writing this comment from a sunbed at the
| beach, watching the crystal clear water with loved ones
| around and a dog nestled at my feet.
|
| Yes, I'm enjoying life, thanks for asking :)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Sure, but you should also probably avoid asbestos.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Don't you want to take a leap of faith? Or become an old man,
| filled with regret, waiting to die alone!
| j4yav wrote:
| Those lead paint chips aren't going to eat themselves, live
| a little!
| jjgreen wrote:
| A friend of mine used to tell a story of when he was young,
| and asked an elderly relative at a family do how old he
| was, "67" he replied; "I wouldn't want to live to 67!",
| "You would if you were 66".
| pluijzer wrote:
| I think I will not lie on my death bed regretting not
| having lived in a lead painted house, not having smoked or
| having showed some common sense. Also I think I will not be
| alone because of it.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "Not living life also causes death."
|
| Well, if you sit around all day and don't move much, sure.
| You will shorten your lifespan by a lot.
|
| Or you'll live long, boring life anyways since you have good
| genes. Nothing in life is certain.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| There are two certain things in life: Death and taxes.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Yes but some forms of death are a good deal worse than
| others. Many cancers in particular can be an awful way to go,
| especially when it's happening with your full knowledge of
| its inevitability and lack of ability to do anything about
| it. I'm not going to give up something I enjoy (or even the
| indirect benefits of using a particular substance) just to
| live a few extra years, but if doing so significantly reduces
| the chances of a drawn-out painful death, then there's surely
| an alternative worth looking for.
| Balgair wrote:
| I've had a few close family members pass from cancer. I was a
| caretaker during these times for them. Talking with them,
| changing them (people are really heavy!), feeding them,
| medicating them, bathing them, etc. We had very good hospice
| support and paid a lot for it, but during the pandemic,
| everything kinda went to shit, so it was up to me and a few
| others most of that time.
|
| Dying of cancer is unique to every person and their cancer's
| progression. But, from my own experiences, dying of cancer is
| a _fucking horrible_ way to go.
|
| The pain is quite bad as it colonizes various nerve bundles
| and organs. Morphine only does so much and wanes as the
| person gets addicted to it and requires more and more to get
| the numbing results. As such, your mind goes with the
| morphine intake, a welcome relief really. You can lose
| function in your limbs and bowels too, though not always. You
| stop eating and drinking, but you don't stop thirst and
| hunger. Death really does become a welcome relief after
| enough weeks/months of this. Then there is the just normal
| health hazards and pains of laying down and generating filth.
| The rashes and sores, the muscle loss, the boredom. It's
| quite horrible. And that's with loving family members helping
| you at a moment's notice. One pro-tip here, if you can get a
| death doula.
|
| Look, I get the sentiment here. Yes, live your life, don't
| worry so much about how it's going to end. There's likely
| nothing you could have done different anyway. Your end is
| going to really suck, no matter what. Better to have it be
| quick and as painless as possible.
|
| But, I do want to advocate for taking common sense measures
| about carcinogen avoidance. Those are absolutely worth the
| time and effort. Do not smoke, don't have lead paint in your
| house, don't be stupid or lazy about getting these things
| away from you. Your future self will be very thankful you did
| that. I know, I've helped dying people who didn't.
| meristohm wrote:
| I've been reading So Much For That, by Lionel Shriver, and
| the description of a slow decline due to mesothelioma has
| much in common with your experiences. I've learned more in
| the last week about what it might be like to have some of
| the many forms of cancer than I ever knew before.
| david_allison wrote:
| Be especially cautious around emerald green books. There's a
| possibility they contain arsenic
|
| http://wiki.winterthur.org/wiki/Poison_Book_Project
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/these-gre...
| foobarian wrote:
| And this gem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624037
| bighoki2885000 wrote:
| [dead]
| sethammons wrote:
| Every now and then you realize people have vastly different base
| experiences. The smell of old books makes me crinkle my nose and
| take shallower breaths. I don't like it. Old dust is what I think
| of. Stale. My physical reaction has always made me assume it is
| bad for your health. Maybe hints of mold?
| rwl4 wrote:
| Not to be THAT guy, but I'm getting a definite ChatGPTish
| generative text feel from that article. The short sections, the
| FAQ restating the details from the article three paragraphs ago,
| etc. I hate to lead a witch hunt, but...
| brookst wrote:
| Does it matter, any more than it would matter if a human author
| was a 10 year old or a Nobel laureate?
| Matumio wrote:
| Yes, the author's background matters when judging the value
| of a text. A nobel laureate is usually correct about the
| basics of their own field. I wouldn't trust a 10 year old
| child's knowledge about poisons. Even though some 10 year old
| child somewhere might know their poisons better than most
| experts.
| [deleted]
| xp84 wrote:
| I felt that the FAQs were definitely bolted on by an LLM. Maybe
| they were trying to pad it out?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Yeah the FAQ section was weird and unnecessary. I figured
| it's some kind of SEO gimmick.
| canvascritic wrote:
| chatgpt vibes, huh? maybe the author's just a fan. or we're all
| bots in disguise. plot twist!
|
| On a side note, i can't help but wonder if, in a few centuries,
| someone will be analyzing the 'VOC' equivalent of old USB
| sticks to determine which early 2000s computer they came from
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Why really really old books smell so bad:
|
| In the scribe days in England when literacy was exclusive and the
| texts and manuscripts were intricate and long-term artistic
| endeavors...
|
| ...the most frequent sealant used was sheep urine. IIRC.
| Basically there's a LOT of reasons to wear gloves and a mask in
| the kind of places where they are stored for longevity.
|
| Source: Early-Middle English course taught by an Oxford Man.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| AFAIK, this claim of requiring gloves when handling old and
| rare books is an outdated misconception [0] [1].
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/arts/rare-books-white-
| glo...
|
| [1] https://ask.loc.gov/preservation/faq/337286
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| I'm not saying anything is mandatory and tradition in the
| English scholarship field is...curious.
|
| Source: inducted to Sigma Tau Delta last semester I think to
| cover their ass if I do something great eventually. The only
| STD i knowingly have.
| fauria wrote:
| Jordi Roca, pastry chef from 3 Michelin star restaurant El Celler
| de Can Roca, designed a dessert based on the scent of old books.
|
| He captures that characteristic smell using a technique called
| enfleurage, soaking an old book in a neutral fat and then
| distilling it using a device called Rotaval.
|
| He then pours some drops on thin wafers that resemble book pages.
|
| Here is a short video describing the process:
| https://youtube.com/shorts/zN2uHgX0rRA
| Solvency wrote:
| That's legitimately disgusting and incredibly unhealthy (on top
| of being a dessert). The amount of chemical shit being imbued
| into that is nightmare fuel.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Madam or sir we should chat about your strawberry flavoured
| whatever... I'm sure you've accidentally or on purpose
| ingested paper before and are alive. Saw
| fauria wrote:
| Do you have any source supporting that claim?
|
| Reading the article, the compounds mentioned (benzaldehyde,
| vanillin, ethylbenzene and 2-ethyl hexanol) are either
| already used by the food industry, or exhibit low toxicity in
| animal models.
|
| Considering the tiniest amount of any of them is used, I
| wouldn't describe the dish as "incredibly unhealthy".
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Hate to break it to you but people literally soak alcohol in
| wooden barrels for years in order to leach a multitude of
| chemicals out of the wood just for the flavor.
| [deleted]
| spamizbad wrote:
| Eh I'd eat it
| switch007 wrote:
| Is he...OK? There's eccentric and then there's needing help
| fauria wrote:
| Apart from suffering from dysphonia and as far as I know yes,
| he is OK. He was awarded World's Best Pastry Chef in 2014 and
| his restaurant has been awarded either best or second best
| restaurant in the world by Restaurant Magazine (50 Best) 5
| years in a row. Not sure if he needs much help, to be honest.
| switch007 wrote:
| I wouldn't care if he won a Nobel Prize - dirty old books
| sound like a disgusting ingredient to use.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| There was movie about that process (though not with books):
| "Perfume, the Story of a Murderer"
|
| I liked it.
| mola wrote:
| It's also a very engaging book
| resbaloso wrote:
| Not particularly appealing for someone dealing with the
| [Marikio Aoki phenomenon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_
| Aoki_phenomenon).
|
| Walking into a library and smelling old books triggers the urge
| to defecate for me.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Wow, that's wild. Certain rooms do that to me. In the house
| where I grew up it was the upstairs room. (It wasn't the
| stairs themselves; no other stairs in the house did it) In
| our current home it's the basement. Sadly those rooms are not
| filled with books.
|
| I can't tell if it's a statistically real effect. I had
| always told myself it was _not_ real, but having heard of
| "Marikio Aoki" phenomenon for the first time just now, I'm
| wondering...
| qup wrote:
| I have a workshop that I credit with the same effect. Every
| trip to the workshop is at least two trips, because I'm
| interrupted.
|
| Also I associate this with gambling, no matter the stakes
| or the location, including locations that don't trigger any
| response in different contexts (like my living room).
| Tokumei-no-hito wrote:
| This is an incredible wtf article. It's so absurd it has to
| be real, I don't know how it could be made up.
| PaulBGD_ wrote:
| One data point, I've been affected by this for decades now.
| I had no idea before the article that others experienced it
| too.
| croisillon wrote:
| Well that's interesting, i was in a paper shop this afternoon
| (i love paper shops), and i suddenly wanted to go to the
| bathroom and realized it happens often there!
| jjw1414 wrote:
| "Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a
| foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there
| were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go". Ray
| Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451. After reading this as a kid, I always
| found this to be true. In particular, the public library pulp
| paperbacks on those rotating wire racks back in the 1980s.
| lonetools wrote:
| Apparently I wasn't the only one.
| demondemidi wrote:
| I never understood this. They smell like old attics. Or old
| closets. Or, old people. None of which smell very good. I must
| have that soap/cliantro gene but for books.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Old books don't smell good. They provoke allergies.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| My favorite scent maker sells one that captures this, and it's
| pretty good:
|
| https://www.cbihateperfume.com/306
| jrmg wrote:
| Ha! This post immediately made me think of this old gem:
|
| https://smellofbooks.com/
|
| I'm glad someone made it real!
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| I wish the artical attempted to address the "good smell" part of
| the title.
|
| I read this article and I didn't find it engaging... It lists
| some of the chemicals that cause the small. It's no suprise that
| there are aromatic chemicals that cause it.
|
| I would really like to know why they small _good_? Is it like
| petrichor? Childhood experiences that influence my perception?
| kortex wrote:
| Vanillin, benzaldehyde, and 2-ethylhexanol are all found in
| edible plants, and in particular, those three smell very good.
|
| Paper is wood pulp (natively comprising lignocellulose) where
| the lignin has been broken down. The lignin breakdown products
| are primarily polyphenols (the building blocks of lignin),
| including vanillin and related compounds, which for whatever
| reason smell really good to us. The smoky smell of wood char
| and campfires? Polyphenols.
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| Always loved the smell of ink in books and graphic novels. Often
| times the first thing I do when I have a new book is just open it
| halfway and burry my nose in between the pages. Maybe it is a
| fetish? Hmmm. Never thought of that.
|
| I also always enjoyed smelling the gas at gas stations when I was
| a kid, would open the window.
|
| I do wonder if it's a psychological thing, or if there is really
| some chemical substance that is slightly addictive.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >What chemicals cause that nostalgic old book smell?
|
| >Compounds like benzaldehyde, vanillin, ethylbenzene, and
| 2-ethyl hexanol are often responsible for old book scents.
| Benzaldehyde has an almond-like scent, vanillin smells like
| vanilla, ethylbenzene is sweet and plastic-y, and 2-ethyl
| hexanol is lightly floral.
|
| All of these are chemicals having very characteristic strong
| odors in their pure form, and can be somewhat overwhelming.
|
| Ethylbenzene is an Aromatic hydrocarbon normally found in major
| concentrations in some paints and thinners, and industrial
| felt-tip markers containing the xylene-based inks which are
| flammable, toxic and can make you dizzy breathing too much.
|
| 2-Ethylhexanol smells even worse, it's really rough. If you get
| one drop on your foot, you're going to want to leave your shoes
| outside when you get home.
|
| These kind of things just smell unique and are detectable in
| such low concentrations, plus can form a type of barely
| perceptible "bouquet" that imprints well enough to guide a
| potential effort toward its elusive source.
|
| I would have to estimate the dose makes the poison like so many
| other things. Freshly printed publications seem to have more
| solvent offgassing than aged materials.
| kortex wrote:
| > 2-Ethylhexanol smells even worse, it's really rough. If you
| get one drop on your foot, you're going to want to leave your
| shoes outside when you get home.
|
| I find it really fascinating the differences in subjective
| experience of various smells. Personally I find 2-EH to be
| sweet, almost sickly sweet but not overpowering, floral and
| vaguely fruity. It's not directly nice, like vanillin, but
| it's not bad, like pyridine or butyric acid.
| canvascritic wrote:
| Lignin breaking down smells nice, sure. but let's not forget, old
| books might be carrying mold spores that can trigger allergies or
| worse. Not to mention asbestos which was used in bookbinding till
| the 70s.
| snvzz wrote:
| _sniff_ _sniff_
|
| i-is that a BOOK I smell?
|
| _sniff_ _sniff_
|
| mmm yes I smell it! BOOKSMELL!!!! I smell a book! W-What is a
| book doing here?!?! omygosh what am I gonna do?!?! THERE'S A BOOK
| HERE! I'M FREAKING OUT SO MUCH!!!! calm down calm down and take a
| nice, deep breathe....
|
| _sniff_ _sniff_
|
| it smells so good! I love booksmell so much!!!! It makes me feel
| so amazing. I'm getting tingles all over from the delicious
| bookscent! It's driving me bookCRAZY!!!!!!
|
| if u are a book and u are reading this, I just wanted to say
| hiiiii cute book!!!! I love you!
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| I was hoping this would be a copypasta but googling throws up
| nothing
| snvzz wrote:
| It indeed is a copypasta[0].
|
| I became aware of it through the vtuber community.
|
| 0. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/boysmell
| jjgreen wrote:
| That smell makes me want to crap, and I'm not the only one:
| https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/general-science/unbearable...
| braymundo wrote:
| This is fascinating. I always experienced this uh, urge. Glad
| to know I'm not a unique weirdo.
| jjgreen wrote:
| For me, old books in particular ... a bit of an issue as a
| researcher often needing to go into the deep stacks of the
| University library. I always had to, err, prepare myself,
| beforehand.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Wow I never knew this was a thing... thank you for sharing,
| I think :-)
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The question of "what is old book smell?" is well answered. I was
| hoping to get some musings about why. That is, what is it about
| us that makes us associate those chemicals as positive?
|
| I think there can be coincidence. Some things just have a smell
| because like chemistry and such. The brain must represent that
| particular chemical signal somehow. But when it's a noteworthy
| smell, when it's the kind of thing people write articles about, I
| expect a little more.
|
| Truffles smell good to animals because if they didn't, animals
| wouldn't dig them up and help distribute the spores. Decaying
| meat smells bad to animals because if it didn't, we might eat it
| and get sick (that battle having been already lost to the
| decomposers).
|
| So with that in mind, why do old books smell so good?
| inimino wrote:
| Publishers wouldn't choose papers and ink that smelled bad.
| There's a lot of ways to make paper and ink, so it's not that
| surprising that we'd eventually nail the aesthetics.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| I don't know, I think it's not so much the smell but how
| distinctive it is, that mixed with knowing what it is (compared
| to something macabre) reinforces nostalgia. I think it also
| helps that many books are timeless
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| Because they want to be read.
| dools wrote:
| There's another book smell which I noticed in lots of kids books
| when I was a kid, that totally smelled like vomit. For years I
| thought it was because kids barfed all the time but it turns out
| it was the printing chemicals and paper.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I remember a magic school bus book with this exact smell.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| I wonder if that's to prevent kids from eating the paper.
| Similar to Nintendo's cartridges having a bad flavor.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Parm also contains butyric acid.
| cosmojg wrote:
| It's a common additive in baked goods as well! I used to work
| at a bakery that would pump it through the HVAC to attract
| customers. People loved it, but all I could smell was vomit
| after being around it for so long. I rarely eat pastries
| anymore.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| What's parm?
| behrlich wrote:
| Parmesan cheese
| purerandomness wrote:
| Who calls Parmesan cheese "parm"? Is that a US thing?
| djmips wrote:
| Yes
| sshanky wrote:
| On the east coast you'll also hear "pruhjhoot", "Muhtz"
| and "Sopresat" (prosciutto, mozzarella, soppressata).
| Solvency wrote:
| I remember exactly the same thing as a kid in certain books. I
| acutely remember the feel/texture of the paper of those vomit
| smell books too. So funny.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Oh wow I forgot about that specific smell for 30 years and
| suddenly I can smell it again.
| hanniabu wrote:
| So is it a health hazard to work in a museum library?
| wrp wrote:
| If you mean a library of old books, yes, it can be if toxic
| books are not properly handled.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Depends if the building has Legionnaire's or asbestos.
|
| Moldy books also exist. Those can't be great for your lungs.
| nologic01 wrote:
| I was under the impression that all books smell "good" (or in any
| case, smells that are quite distinctive and generally not
| disagreeable). With time the scent changes.
|
| Together with the tactile feel of the densely stacked pages the
| physical experience of books is just phemomenal.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Whatever it is, I'd you concentrate it 10000x and inject it in
| mice it probably causes cancer.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Fisher library in Sydney Uni. Millions of volumes in open stacks
| over 9 (i think) floors. "Buzzing with knowledge and light" as
| someone said back on campus many years ago. Very cool place to
| just go hang out. It was where I first discovered some old worn
| copies of Murakami "Hear the Wind Sing" and "Pinball 1973" in
| English. Only place I've ever seen them in fact.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I wonder if there is something to that association, mentally
|
| I've been more into digital books my whole life, but before the
| last 10 years or so, my preference was seen as absurd by
| seemingly anyone that prided themselves in reading books
|
| I wonder if that book smell experience is core to those people
|
| I can smell it, and I remember it from being a kid too but the
| downsides to me outweighed it and I had choices then too. The
| downsides being that physical books don't keep their page and are
| uncomfortable to hold, more so for kid hands, and laying down in
| bed to read or trying to prop up a book exacerbated its
| technological inferiority.
|
| I always suspected for others that the smell was a greater part
| of the experience and association with reading a book. and maybe
| some prior social benefits doing it in public.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| There's some combination of snobbery, appreciating the tactile
| nature of physical books, and having bookshelves and piles of
| books in the house that appeal to many people.
|
| IMO ebooks are inferior for some purposes. Books that are meant
| to be appreciated as books--e.g. books of photography.
| Cookbooks in which I make notes and put stickies. Various other
| cases.
|
| But if I'm mostly just reading flowing text, especially fiction
| but non-fiction as well I appreciate a format that lets me
| carry a library in a form factor that's smaller than a
| hardcover and which I can easily read in any lighting
| conditions.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| I think ereaders are a worse UI for all but wholly linear,
| light reading. If I'm reading some trashy fiction, ereaders
| don't bother me--anything else, and they're worse than a real
| book.
|
| The two-page-at-a-time interface is a ton better and enables
| features like facing-page translations or setting a full-page
| illustration or other graphic opposite some text. Got two
| (largish) books, you can have both open and visible at the
| same time, four total pages. Footnotes are a lot better in a
| real book. Typesetters can control formatting--text placement
| on the page, were page-turns fall, that kind of thing--much
| better, so poetry texts may be better in a real book. I find
| holding or marking an endnote or index section and flipping
| back and forth to that faster, and less error-prone than
| doing the same on an ereader.
|
| The book being a distinct physical object aids with memory.
| You see the title and author as it sits on the table in a
| room you're occupying, even if you're not reading it (I'll
| often forget who wrote an ebook I'm reading, even if I've
| spent hours with it). Spatial memory is powerful. I not-
| uncommonly use it to locate parts of a book kinda by _feel_ ,
| like tracing a familiar but poorly marked trail in the woods.
| Ebooks feel like trying to find a particular spot on the open
| ocean, with no stars and out of sight of land.
|
| Full text search is the only directly book-related feature of
| ebooks that I think gives them an edge, but that's no
| replacement for a good index, and if I had to pick only one
| of the two, I'd take the index. It's pretty good, though.
|
| What remains in their favor is _compactness_ , and boy is
| that a big advantage, so I do read ebooks even for some books
| I'd prefer to read on paper. But IMO the UI is, overall, a
| whole lot worse than a real book.
|
| [edit] oops, sold ebooks short on one point: you don't need
| to hunt down separate large-print editions, with them. Same
| thing that makes them so bad for text that benefits from a
| human having taken care with text formatting and placement,
| makes them great if you need large print.
| kristianp wrote:
| I remember Dr Dobbs journals in the 90s would have a strange
| plasticy smell. Whenever I smell that smell in a new book I have
| memories of the newsagent I used to buy them from and nostalgia
| for the enjoyment a new issue would bring.
| hoyd wrote:
| I once blogged about the lack of word for this smell[0], and came
| across someone else that has asked this[1] too. Just like
| 'petrichor' for the smell of fresh earth following rain.
|
| I made up my own word for this, in Norwegian: 'Gammelbokduft'.
|
| [0] https://earth.hoyd.net/lukten-av-gamle-boker-118/ [1]
| http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/57416/word-for-th...
| pohuing wrote:
| Does that just translate to rotting book smell?
| logdahl wrote:
| I would say it translates to old book smell
| hoyd wrote:
| Yes, that would be it. The word "gammel" means most of the
| times old, but I can see where it would be used as
| something rotten too.
| mjochim wrote:
| In Scandinavian languages, gammel or a similarly-spelled
| cognate means "old". I dont know about rare cases where
| it might mean "rotten", I dont speak any of them well
| enough. But in German, "gammeln"/"vergammelt" doesnt mean
| old. It means to rot/rotten.
| carlmr wrote:
| Not Norwegian but sounds like it to me, a German. In any case
| in German this is exactly how you'd create a new word.
| Gammeln (rotting) + Buch (book) + Duft (scent). Then you have
| Gammelbuchduft.
|
| In French maybe you can make it _parfum de livre_.
| amelius wrote:
| Kind of disappointing that we don't have the technology to store
| smells, say, in an iPad, and retrieve them when we open an
| e-reader app.
|
| Scent was the first sense that we acquired in evolution, yet the
| last one we technologically master.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| This was exactly what I was contemplating when I read that
| article. I believe that olfactory-augmented innovations could
| undoubtedly enhance the value of devices that are currently
| only performing acrobatics (flipping and folding).
| amelius wrote:
| Don't forget VR helmets.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| There have been multiple attempts at this. None have ever
| been successful.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_scent_technology
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_and_sniff
|
| Novelty items at best, I can't imagine any VC getting excited
| about this stuff. But I didn't imagine they'd get excited
| about crypto either :)
| falcor84 wrote:
| To actually synthesize the smell molecules would pretty much
| require (Star Trek) replicator levels of technology.
|
| Also, if/when we do have them, I'm sure that HN will fill up
| with inflammatory content about whether it's ok that the
| companies that make them only sell a "censored" model that
| disallows synthesizing toxins.
| neontomo wrote:
| That's only if we're trying to replicate the smells
| physically though right? I mean, we could also trigger the
| brains neurons to "think" that we're smelling something. Not
| sure how we'd know which ones to fire, but with brain
| implants advancing I wouldn't be surprised if this became a
| reality one day.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| _" But I want the real, cancer-causing new car smell with
| benzene and styrene VOCs!"_
|
| Home theater odor playback was already tried in the 70's and
| 80's and it was a colossal failure. Argument about it is moot
| because it's a stupid idea that went nowhere, and that
| doesn't even begin to address attempting to make a mass spec
| digital nose. Plus, it's unlikely odors are noticed or
| perceived uniformly across individuals.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm not sure if that is true. E.g. we might be able to
| synthesize smells like we cook food, where there is little to
| no danger of producing toxins from innocent ingredients.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Neither desirable nor possible.
| soligern wrote:
| My dad lost his sense of smell during a surgery and he says he
| doesn't miss it in the slightest. Makes no difference in how
| good food tastes or anything else he encounters in life. In the
| modern world, it really is a "nice to have" sense.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I have always thought that food taste is much more smell than
| actual taste. Taste is rather limited in complexity with only
| 5 tastes, compared to hundreds of different smells. Or so I
| heard.
| nmeagent wrote:
| This article immediately brought to mind a particular
| conversation in season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
|
| Jenny: "Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so
| much?"
|
| Giles: "The smell."
|
| Jenny: "Computers don't smell, Rupert."
|
| Giles: "I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory
| there is. A certain flower, or a a whiff of smoke can bring up
| experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich.
| The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no no
| texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If
| it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh,
| tangible, it should be, um, smelly."
| inopinatus wrote:
| There was an attempt to standardise scented content back in the
| '80s, but it didn't stick. The root cause of market failure was
| consumers deterred by a format war between the compressed odour
| format, Nosepeg, and the higher fidelity (but patent-
| encumbered) WIF
| dmoy wrote:
| But the real failure was the always-bad-smelling PNGent. Not
| sure why they thought that would have worked at all.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My brand new economics textbook in college smelled like vomit.
| I since noticed other new textbooks now and then with the same
| smell.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Do you think it might be psychosomatic? The quality of many
| textbooks' content would be sufficient to evoke the odour of
| vomit, I tender...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I expected a comment comparing the smell to the content,
| but it really did smell like vomit, from the moment I
| opened it. I kept my other textbooks, but sold that one as
| soon as the semester ended. Didn't need it stinking up my
| bookshelf!
|
| I'm sure it was the VOC's in the glue.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I know; sorry, I couldn't resist :D
|
| In all seriousness though, there is a lot about textbook
| publishing that is inexplicably different from other non-
| fiction books. For instance:
|
| - Why not use the conventional paperback size if the
| textbook is not reliant on large diagrams? Why do
| textbooks always have to be massive?
|
| - Why are there so many 'infoboxes' and 'did you knows'
| and 'warnings' (a characteristic that textbooks share
| with do-it-yourself and self-help books)?
|
| - Why do almost all textbooks start with lengthy 'How to
| Use This Book' chapters? If you're in a course, you
| should have already been told, and most of those seem
| pretty common-sense anyway.
|
| My favourite business textbooks that mostly avoid these
| disadvantages (as I see them):
|
| - Managing without Profit, Mike Hudson: an almost
| complete guide to the mechanics of non-profit
| organisations; perfect if you already have a good grasp
| of for-profit business fundamentals.
|
| - A Manager's Guide to Self-Development, Mike Pedler,
| John Burgoyne and Tom Boydell: mostly tests in the same
| vein as Myers-Briggs, explaining various aspects of
| personality, behaviour and strategy.
|
| - Interpersonal Skills at Work, Maureen Guirdham (not the
| John Hayes book of the same name!): very academic look at
| the social dynamics of workplaces, with proper citations
| to actual studies for further reading; very thought-
| provoking and genuinely useful if applied carefully.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Oxford UP textbooks always smelled like this, Atkins in
| particular
| SECProto wrote:
| Butyric acid is a highly unappealing compound characteristic
| of vomit. Cellulose acetate butyrate is used in inks and
| coatings and can decompose to butyric acid. Maybe how it
| happened
| WalterBright wrote:
| The explanation I was looking for!
| kabdib wrote:
| I have some Radio Shack solder that I bought in the mid 1970s.
| It smells /wonderful/ and takes me back to building kits when I
| was a teen.
| ktpsns wrote:
| Computers can be smelly, too. Ever booted up your old Windows
| 95 box from the basement? The dust blown from the fans has a
| particular smell. It is even more dramatic for real vintage
| computing like punch card machines, which smell very oily, in a
| similar way like very old cars and planes.
| Retric wrote:
| The complaint is more websites don't have a distinct smell.
|
| Walk through a library and a dozen different books can all
| have distinct smells. Perhaps this book was taken to the
| beach a few times while that that one used a slightly unusual
| glue. Based on book age and the publisher involved you can
| even encounter similar smells looking at different copies of
| the same book at different libraries.
|
| So yes a computer has a distinct smell the way a library does
| but that smell doesn't change based on the knowledge you're
| browsing.
| roguas wrote:
| I am from eastern europe, my dad was vice principal in high
| school. I would pay good money today to smell again that
| dusty computer lab room filled with good'ol 386 and mario
| sounds.
| bombcar wrote:
| > Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was
| young
|
| How come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from?
|
| I'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it
|
| Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I'd probably only
| sell one
|
| It'd be to my brother, 'cause we have the same nose
|
| Same clothes, homegrown, a stone's throw from a creek we
| used to roam
|
| But it would remind us of when nothing really mattered
|
| Out of student loans and tree house homes, we all would
| take the latter
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| As well as teen spirit and napalm
| listenfaster wrote:
| How about the smell of a dying C64 power supply? Anyone else?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Computers can be smelly, too_
|
| Yep. The specific smell of the VOCs burning off a new
| Commodore 64 or 1541 brings back a flood of memories of cold,
| dark Winter evenings standing in the driveway waiting for the
| UPS guy.
| biofox wrote:
| Disassembling and building computers as a teen, the smell
| of a freshly booted motherboard was almost intoxicating.
| The clicking and buzzing of the floppy drive. Crackling of
| the screen. Warm hum of the fan. It all transported me to
| another world where anything was possible.
| semireg wrote:
| I feel like this could be rendered as a 16 bit screen
| saver.
| stpe wrote:
| Indeed so. Once in my youth I brought my Amiga 500 to a
| friend's place, and he had a cat that peed on the edge of it.
|
| The computer was ok, but it was basically a flood of cat pee
| seeping in into the memory expansion slot underneath.
|
| Tried everything to get rid of the smell. Including perfume.
| Didn't make it better. Especially when it got hot.
|
| Still today, when I smell cat urine I instantly think of
| Motorola 68000 assembly.
| temac wrote:
| > Still today, when I smell cat urine I instantly think of
| Motorola 68000 assembly.
|
| I did not expect to read that today. Or ever.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| There's some kid today who will experience future nostalgia
| from opening an Alibaba package.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| When a friend incorrectly wired up an AT power supply,
| causing the power cord to explode on power up, that made a
| distinctive smell.
| chaxor wrote:
| I love the smell of doing a good wipe on my hardware by
| sticking all of it in the microwave.
|
| The smell of burnt silicon in the morning is what keeps me
| waking up everyday.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| Ooops, I forgot to put the paste on the processor
| thret wrote:
| It reminded me of a similar sentiment by Marcel Proust:
|
| "So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't
| recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we
| are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer
| love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance
| we come across an old glove we burst into tears."
| Sinidir wrote:
| Funny i know about Proust from The Sopranos.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| If we're sharing I learned about him from the preeminent
| Proust scholar in the United States, while I watched Little
| Miss Sunshine.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Same
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| When i'm sawing wood and the dust starts smelling burnt, I'm
| immediately transported back into my late dad's workshop.
| Easily happens when the teeth are wearing out. Also, somehow
| the fumes of his sigars smelled very similar.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| We call it "Madeleine de Proust" in French.
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_de_Proust
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory
|
| "Proust Effect" or something like that in English.
| jwmcq wrote:
| I think I've seen "Madeleine Moment" most often in English.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Apple trackpads have a certain smell and I don't exactly know
| how to describe it, but it's similar to Scotch tape. I really
| like that smell. More things should smell good like that.
| dhosek wrote:
| Then there's the scene in the beginning of Gary Shteyngart's
| _Super Sad Love Story_ where the protagonist is reading a book
| on an airplane and the young woman next to him complains about
| the smell.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| The first computer shop that I went to as a kid (back when
| computer shops were a thing) had a very distinct smell that
| still evokes very strong memories for me now. I guess it
| probably wasn't the computers themselves, but maybe that foamed
| rubber material used for mousepads and such, plus maybe some
| static charge in the air from CRTs or something? Any time I
| catch that smell, I'm immediately back playing Loom and Monkey
| Island and oogling at Pentiums and 1 GB hard drives.
| YZF wrote:
| Dust burning in those monitors perhaps?
| Forge36 wrote:
| I don't know what you smelled. But this conjured up the image
| of an old blue mousepad I used as a kid (and the smell!).
| Well done.
| hattmall wrote:
| Are things just not as fascinating now? Is there anything
| similarly cutting edge today. I know that part of it I was
| much younger but I also remember most of the people around
| were way older and seemed to share in the wonder and
| amazement at those GB+ hard drives and the thought of 32mb of
| ram.
|
| I guess there's just not anything new that's advancing so
| rapidly.?.? Like my computer is 13 years old and is still
| overpowered for 99% of tasks. And they are still selling
| brand new computers with far lower specs. Imagine in 1997
| being satisfied as a developer with a computer from 1984!
|
| I also have other interests and it feels like they have
| plateaued similarly. I guess I'm still getting some dopamine
| from solar and battery tech, price drops at least, and some
| neatness around microcontrollers and IOT but like even food
| has stopped seeming innovate. It used to be worthy of a day
| trip to drive into the city to eat at new exotic offerings
| and now every small town has mostly the same stuff and
| there's nothing really new in the city either.
| grogenaut wrote:
| You missed out on 3d printers in the last 2 decades
| apparently. Those have gone leaps and bounds from very
| rickety prototypes like the og MakerBot to cheap
| workhorses. Stepper motors used to cost like $75 ea and are
| now like 4 for $15.
|
| Smart phones as well.
|
| Many of these things you don't notice till they're
| everywhere.
|
| If I spent more time I could list many other things I think
| but I don't know your filter
| serialNumber wrote:
| Please list more things if you have some time
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Electric bikes and scooters
| echelon wrote:
| The last two decades seemed to have progressed glacially
| slow.
|
| We've had smartphones for fifteen years and they haven't
| really improved much. Better camera, a few more sensors,
| more durable glass. Incremental improvements. About the
| same for laptops and desktops.
|
| 3D printing has come a fair way, but we're still not
| printing cars at home. (I totally would download a car.)
|
| Now all of a sudden we have AI/ML, self-driving cars,
| high fidelity consumer mocap, AR/VR. The types of things
| coming out now seem way more sci-fi, cutting edge, and
| optimistic. A return to the imagination and dreams of the
| 1950's - 1990's.
|
| 2000 - 2020 was a speed bump.
| [deleted]
| xcv123 wrote:
| From 2000 to 2010 we progressed from the Nokia 3310 to
| the iPhone 4.
| failuser wrote:
| Nokia also released 9210 about the same time as 3310.
| From that perspective iPhone was even less of an
| improvement and a step back in some aspects.
| buescher wrote:
| In 2001 you could get the Kyocera Palm phone, which is a
| more valid comparison. But yes.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| The point is more - today's smartphones are the first
| iphone with a better camera and faster data connection.
|
| That said in other areas there's much more improvement,
| for example EVs, solar panels, intelligent search
| engines. Remember the days when we used scripts that
| would parallelize searches over lycos, yahoo, webcrawler,
| altavista, alltheweb, ...
| wddkcs wrote:
| The counter point is that the innovation never stopped,
| it just moved down a level. We 'optimized' the hardware
| (as in gave it sufficient form to fulfill necessary
| functions) then did the same for the application space.
| Twitter, Facebook, Google, music streaming, all
| solidifying their phone presence over the past ten years.
|
| Just as the application space has begun to stagnant,
| suddenly our data is speaking back to us through LLMs.
| Such models will be the next space we'll 'optimize', but
| these models will also be optimizing themselves. Strange
| loop.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| the short answer is pretty much all tech we use was
| invented in the 1970's and is just being iterated on at
| this point. There really is not much new coming out and all
| the really cool stuff has turned out to be too difficult to
| be reliable or require too much power to ever get beyond
| toy status.
| shubb wrote:
| The smell of a newly opened rewriteable CD
| Schiendelman wrote:
| What you're experiencing is largely that now everything is
| nearly instantly discoverable. In the 1980s and 90s, you
| would find out about new technology or product _at_ a
| computer store. You might read an article in a computer
| magazine about a technology, but for a product, you 're as
| likely to learn about it from a knowledgeable clerk. And
| clerks had to be knowledgeable because they _were_ that
| initial discovery mechanism.
|
| Now, you find out about a new technology or product
| instantly, and you learn about them _constantly_. It is
| rare that a company develops something new enough that it
| 's significantly differentiated from something you already
| know about (or even have) that it's exciting.
|
| Even Apple had a lot of leaks before Vision Pro (which is
| potentially the most exciting new technology product, at
| least for me, in years). They had to balance when to
| announce it with the leaks - to maximize the impact while
| ensuring you didn't have to wait _too_ long to get one.
| causality0 wrote:
| It feels like the consumer base is much less diverse than
| it used to be. Tech used to look like a cornucopia of
| different shapes, colors, features. Now it's all the
| same. Twenty years ago the "gaming phone" was an Ngage
| and the "fashion phone" could pass for a tube of
| lipstick. In 2023 the "gaming phone" has an extra pair of
| invisible touch sensors and the "fashion phone" comes in
| pink.
| sublinear wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. Even the Vision Pro is
| just incrementally better than Hololens almost a decade
| later.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > the Vision Pro is just incrementally better than
| Hololens
|
| Hololens had 1268x720 per eye[1] or 1.8MP across both
| eyes. Vision Pro is 23MP across both eyes. Are you
| _seriously_ saying that 's "incrementally better"? It's a
| literal order of magnitude more pixels!
|
| [1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/419869/we-
| found-7-critical-h...
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I know it was just a quote in a show but I can call to mind the
| electricy smell that old computer labs had and it puts me at
| peace
| Solvency wrote:
| What about Magic The Gathering cards? I started playing during
| Weatherlight as a kid and the smell of those cards was like crack
| for some reason.
|
| I'm sure it was just some carcinogenic chemicals though.
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