Well said. Books engage more of our senses. Walk into an old bookstore and tell me those scents don’t bring you memories and emotions by the page. The smell of the paper, the sound of a turning page, the feel of the cover, even the weight of the book. I retain more from an actual book than I do from reading on a computer. I don’t my the E Readers so much as means of keeping your favorite books close to you as you travel or wait at the dmv but you better believe I’d still have the book copy if it’s a novel I love. And that would be the first way I read it. <3 There is something to be said for keeping printed books alive. Preserve their legacy. Remember Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury. Hell, watch Equilibrium (Kurt Wimmer 2002) with Christian Bale and Sean Bean if you prefer. It’s the Matrix version of Fahrenheit 451 really.

crush42:

This whole article upsets me. For now, it seems to be fine that the world is beginning to migrate away from paper books. So I’m sure that before too long the other Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, novels and operating manuals of the world will be available in cold and glorious digital form.  But what happens when, a century, 500 years down the road, there’s some sort of worldwide disaster? Massive volcanoes cover the sky in smoke, bringing on another Ice Age. Global warming finally does its thing and brings on another Ice age. A meteorite hits the earth, flinging a cloud into the sky that will last for centuries… bringing on another Ice Age. The polarity of the planet switches like its believed to do every 800,000 years or so, bringing on another… This seems to be the prevailing way to end the world. Okay, aliens. Death. Nuclear war. Death and… dammit, very probably an Ice Age. You get it. Whats left of humanity is scrabbling in the ruins of its cities. For a while, if enough skilled laborers and scientists survive, we could replace some of our technology and way of life. But you think the Internet would still be operational? I doubt it. So the survivors only have those who are already trained to do these tasks, and if they die off without training others or writing all of their knowledge down, we’re screwed. Because guess what? There won’t be any Encyclopedias, there won’t be any dictionaries, and there won’t be any manuals to tell our beleaguered descendants how to operate the machinery and work the land and heal the sick.

That’s the long view. The short view is that if I can’t go to a bookstore and buy an actual book that smells like crisp new paper, that I can pass on to my children when it smells like old memories, I might go on a killing spree.

I never know exactly how incensed I am about something until I rant about it.