I might be some kind of Luddite but I love this. It's one of the reasons - the main one being cost - why I won't be getting an iPad anytime soon. Cool as they are. And I do acknowledge their coolness. And I wouldn't refuse one if you gave it to me. But all the same. Give me a book any day.Old books are like old friends. They love to be revisited. They stick around to give advice. They remind you of days gone by...And they prefer not to be invisible....If all my books disappeared on to a microchip I might have less to lug around and I might be able to search my notes more easily, but I’d lose memory; I’d lose history; I’d lose a little bit of myself.
The other problem with ebooks is their bland sameness. This is why I can’t make it much farther than two books on any electronic device. The books don’t feel like anything. The font is the same and the white space is the same. There is no variance in paper or size or weight. Each book, when read on an ereader, loses its personality...
In a virtual world, with all its ethereal convenience, there will be many...who long for what is real. Something solid. Something you can hold. Something that hangs around even when you are finished with it. Something like a book.
Kevin Deyoung - Why I hope real books never die
image is from Sapphireblue at flickr
2 comments:
Very interesting . . . I agree! I have a Kindle and never use it, and my husband has an iPad, but I never read books on it. I have to hold a real book in my hand at night, even though it means I need to use reading glasses!
The weird part is that I read my ESV study Bible on my laptop in the mornings and I love it! Oh well . . . a little technology isn't so bad!
I agree. There's just something about the feel of paper...
Having said that, I can see that ipads and their cousins would be very useful while travelling or instead of lugging heavy textbooks around a uni campus.
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