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.
This agrees with studies that show that memory retention is better among students when using physical books rather than ebooks. That's because we're embodied. The book is a physical object with physical features. These intelligible physical features create associations (spatial anchoring, sensory engagement) that reinforce memory. You also get a sense of progress as you read. For instance, when I read something, I better remember at what depth certain content is, and given the depth, I know more or less what is in that part of the book. You could think of it in terms of spatial indexing or in terms of data locality.
People think the medium doesn't matter. They think that it's just a matter of encoding. But the medium very much matters, because the senses are involved in memory formation in all sorts of ways. It's also why handwriting leads to better retention of information than typing.
Most of the same kids still scroll instagram, listen on spotify and etc. At least that’s what I’m seeing around me.
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.
My server drives are not going to last forever...
EDIT: books last longer (decades or centuries) than SSDs. But M-DISCs can allegedly last for millennia.
I can name two:
1) Chemical Engineering 2) Classics
In both cases the physical book may be the only place to find certain kinds of valuable info.
In the case of Chem E, I was told this by my father, also a Chem E, who said that some of these old books contained values and tests that were found nowhere else. And while a lot of that is available in modern form, not all of it is.
In the case of classics, I'm cribbing from David Butterfield here, who has a great book tour on YouTube where expands on this at length (4+ hours).
In the 18th and 19th century the level of education was higher and there were simply more people around who were working at the highest level in the field. Their speculations were written down in physical books and nowhere else. Many of these were valuable and showed new insights you won't find elsewhere else, especially for professionals in the field.
Here's an example. The copies that we have of, say, Homer, are copies of copies. Pretend for a moment that Homer actually wrote in English. We can imagine a line in the "original" (a copy of a copy), that says:
He of the stout quarrel chest said:
It kinda works - stout men quarrel, I guess. But you know what would work even better? He of the stout barrel chest. You can make a case that this was an instance of bad copying and should be corrected in editions going forward, especially if you can cite additional evidence.
Multiple this by the Greek & Roman corpus and all the possible permutations and you have a good reason to turn to those books that earlier writers thought very deeply about.
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.
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.