[extropy-chat] Umberto Eco: In Defense of Vegetal Memory

[Nicholas Anthony MacDonald]

"It is true that today's e-books are not very convenient to
use compared to paper books, but this will change soon with better
technology. Today's scissors cut much better than last century's scissors. A
book remains a book regardless of the technology used to produce and use it.
See also this post of mine at Always On."

Convenience isn't the whole reason, though.  Sure, it makes sense to replace a collection of flimsy paperbacks with an e-book reader, but for those of us who like to pick up a nice, hefty, leatherbound tome from time to time, the book isn't going away.  There's something about holding a book in your hands, feeling the paper, and reading the printed word that even a good e-book reader can't quite make up for.  It's like the difference between having fast food and going to a five-star restaurant... sure, the former is *sufficient* nourishment, but if it's an experience you want, you're going to choose the latter.

Not only that, e-book readers and formats are going to have to advance considerably before they can reach the utility of a hardbound book.  For instance, I'm a so-called "pen and paper" roleplaying gamer.  While I have many game manuals in PDF format, and I use a laptop to run my games and write my notes, I'd much rather use a hardbound book than a PDF when preparing for the game, precisely because I can flip through the book to the pages I need and access the data much more quickly, ironically enough, than my computer can.  I'm sure that many engineers and technicians would say the same of their manuals- paper is still a convenience.  It's likely that this will change in time, but the first attempts at creating "paperless" offices and plants have largely been failures.

-Nicq MacDonald