Big Stone Head: Easter Island and Pop Culture deals in
part with the environmental disaster that befell the Rapa Nui
people centuries ago. The complete deforestation of an
entire island, which once contained an estimated 16,000,000
palm trees, was part of a century of disaster that reduced a
healthy population of as many as 20,000 people to a starving
remnant of 110 survivors.
Given the lessons learned by the collapse of Easter Island,
it seemed hypocritical to print this book on trees.
Therefore, a decision was made to release it as a downloadable
PDF file, or for collectors, as a bamboo USB drive within a
gift card. The card is printed on 100% recycled
paper. Bamboo, of course, is one of the fastest growing
and most readily renewable materials on the planet.
The author is aware that many people like to have a hard copy
of a book in their hands, and is also aware that a book as
lushly filled with spectacular color images as Big Stone
Head is, begs to exist as a "real" book. The
possibility of Big Stone Head coming out as a printed
book does exist in the future (pending an appropriate printing
and distribution scenario), but for now we are interested in
exploring the possibilities of the experimental, futuristic,
and environmentally-friendly eBook format.
We think of it as "a coffee table book for your computer
screen", but if you must print the book out at home, we urge
you to at least set up your print queue to use both sides of
each sheet of paper!