Why I Like E-Books

by Oakcool

Dragorn had a very interesting "Transmissions" column in 27:1 about why he likes printed books.  That made me think a little bit.  In the article, six points are discussed regarding e-books:

1. The difficulty of loaning books to your friends.
2. No used bookstore.
3. No anonymity.
4. Hardware lock-in.
5. Format decay (meaning your collection will be left behind).
6. Remote and invisible censorship.

Now let's just say that I understand and even agree with what was said.  There are other points of view that are of some importance that could be argued with the same intensity, so here I will try.

The difficulty of loaning books to your friends.

This refers to the fact that because of the technology that applies to the e-books and devices, there is little or no possibility of loaning.

Well, if you take into consideration what my father told me more then once when I was little: "Son, you should never loan books, movies, or anything like that to anyone.  You will forget about it, or they will, and there are great chances that you will never see it again."  Wise words, since more than once it happened to me, and I really never saw those books again.  They're probably in some dump site somewhere and the only thing touching those cool pages are flies and worms.  Now, if we go with the flow, yes, it would be awesome to be able to loan e-books.  If you put enough pressure on them, companies might create ways of doing so, through digital libraries or something like that.

No used bookstore.

The issue here is the need for ownership and the ability to manipulate the media as you wish.  Now let's think about that a little.

You buy a book or any other media with the primary intent of getting the knowledge inside it or just to listen to it.  You can obviously say that there are exceptions to that, but the point is you will need a couple of days to acquire that knowledge and a few day to come back to it (if it's a technical book, for example).

Once you are done, you are done.

I doubt that you will ever come back to it and read it again if it is a technical book, as technology and information changes.  If that book get old, a brand new version would be better than the old dusty one.  The real question is why do we always want to keep old news, store old stories, and use bunches and bunches of boxes and space?  Just to say, "Oh yes, I have that book.  It's somewhere in a box, in my attic."

History.  Do we really need 1000 copies to keep history?  What if everyone took their books and donated them to local libraries, so every single one of them would have at least one copy of each book ever printed?  The rest of it would be reused for something else, and not to accumulate dust in your attic.

No anonymity.

If you are worried about people knowing what you are reading, maybe you should not be reading that.

What can they do if they know that you saw the latest Playboy magazine, or read about PHP?  Probably they could offer you a new Playboy or a new PHP book, which is not that bad because you actually read the first one, and there is a good chance that you will read the other ones if you knew about them without having to search.  But O.K., it's fine - this one I can't say much about since it's very true.

Hardware lock-in.

Again, why would you care if you have the device and you read the book?

Why would you like to keep it?  Do you keep every newspaper and magazine that gets delivered to your house?  I don't.  I read and, if necessary, reread.  Then I recycle.  So the hardware lock-in doesn't really bother me, because, well, I recycle the books, so I won't keep it around for long.

Format decay (meaning your collection will be left behind).

I gave up my VHS a very, very long time ago.

I don't regret it.  I also gave away my Atari, Master System, Mega Drive, Nintendo, N64, PC-XT, and a whole bunch of old stuff.  Now I have Blu-ray, Xbox 360, PS3, 50" HDTV, i7, and other cool things.  They are way better, cooler, and more fun.

So why would I want to keep around the old stuff?  There are museums to remind me of how much fun I had with those.

Remote and invisible censorship.

That will happen before the book is printed, so in many cases you don't even get to know about it.

With electronic media, at least you have a chance to see it before it gets censored, and if you are savvy enough, you might make a copy of the information before it degrades.

Advantages to E-books

• The fact that e-books are electronic, you can fit them in a small convenient device, and you can have hundreds of books without the weight, plus you can get whatever else that you don't have on demand is a big advantage.  Now try carrying 100 books in your backpack.
• Once you are done and have no further use for it, you can delete your e-book.  No extra effort is needed.  Your attic will be much more spacious and happy.
• For now you can't trade and loan, but maybe one day you will be able to.  What you can do is have a virtual library that every person in your company has access to for little cost.  You can always go back to it when you need to and you don't even have to carry it around.  You don't have to remember that you lent that book to Joe, and that you should get it back.  The loan time will expire and you will have it back.
• You buy e-books on your computer or device and you don't have to leave your house or workplace.  It's delivered right away so you don't have to wait for days and risk not ever getting it because someone, somewhere, messed up.
• Your cost is usually lower, so you spend less and can have more when you want it.
• If you need to make a reference to something on an e-book, you can copy-and-paste.  You don't have to rewrite.

There are other possibilities and positive points to e-books, but I will let you figure them out.

What really matters is that in the end the information you needed was acquired, and now you are free to learn more.  It really doesn't matter where and how you got it.