The new bibliomaniacs(engelsbergideas.com) |
The new bibliomaniacs(engelsbergideas.com) |
On the other hand I have a ton of physical books on my shelf, and can specifically look at one, remember what it’s about, and where I read it. The book itself is a kind of memory totem, and over time I’ve built up a nice little physical collection of what I’ve “emptied into my mind”, to quote Franklin.
I don’t have the same thing for the ebooks I’ve read, and it gives me a weird feeling of amnesia.
I find that this helps remember books that I read years ago, and usually the single quote is enough to jolt a series of memories about the book.
That said, I also own physical books and they are in glass bookshelves around my office and living room. I do like the looks of them and they can be a conversation starter as well when friends come over.
I have a similar feeling when it comes to my music collection, some of which includes rare recordings. I ripped everything and have it at my fingertips on my phone, computer, etc, but I often find that I’ve forgotten when I have. When I was younger, I kept it all on a shelf. Browsing one’s music collection (or a friend’s) was always a pleasant way to spend an evening socializing. With apps, that is all gone. I have recurring fantasies about building some kind of physical music player, with cartridges that one could insert into a “player”. The actual music would be stored centrally, but this would be more like a mnemonic device to make browsing more enjoyable. I could imagine a similar thing for ebooks.
If I use the OPDS interface, that doesn't happen; I suppose it would be nice to push some reading information back. Sync between reading devices is handled by koreader-sync, so I can pick up any device running koreader and be on the page where I left off.
EDIT: books last longer (decades or centuries) than SSDs. But M-DISCs can allegedly last for millennia.
Books don't change. The online written word is subject to revision and change, as are ebooks. A physical volume which one owns and holds cannot be memory-holed.
There's studies on mammal populations, and as their preferred number of group sizes increases, the 'differentiable' traits also increased. So mammals that preferred to live in large groups had more visible differences in phenotypes than small groups.
If social systems are just an extension of phenotypes to some degree, then all that's really happening is people wanting to differentiate and they have a small differentiable desire in any given direction.
but you be you.
So the reading device can be put in unmaintained mode any time by the company who sells it. That sucks. Same goes for the corresponding software, although in this case I have more flexibility sometimes (i.e., I can install some open source software... but that's a hassle in itself). As per the actual digital book, don't get me started with DRM. One can pirate books, though, but then some people have ethical considerations.
I typically buy second-hand books. It's the best deal for me because I don't have the feeling to be super protective with them, and they are very cheap.
That said, there are clear advantages to books. You can't page through an ebook nearly as well as a physical reference book. That's admittedly somewhat balanced by the existence of search. Physical books can also pay much more attention to the aesthetics of print and layout. Eink readers and epub/mobi/az3 formats are atrocious for this, whereas iPads with PDFs are somewhat better. There's still works that can't be captured in those formats though, like pop-up books, raised/embossed/textured printing (which I've seen used in poetry), or illuminated works. And books don't need power.
Otherwise, I agree.
My server drives are not going to last forever...