Physical vs. Digital Books

I remember back in February I made a post about the e-book revolution that is going on and I mentioned something to the nature of "I like to own my books". Well recently Sony came out with two new additions to the e-reader family: The Pocket edition, and the Touch edition. Both relatively cheap, I mean if $199 and $299 respectively is ever cheap and I am again examining my preferences. Certainly the e-readers are still too expensive, for me anyway, have too much other crap going on--I really don't want internet on my book, sorry guys--and the e-ink has this horribly obnoxious function where when you turn a page it flashes the entire screen black. Sure it's not very long, but on every e-reader I've tried I notice it. Now I've hear "oh you get used to it", but come on I can turn a page in a real book and not suffer any sort of annoying flash. We are at the point technologically that this should not be an issue. Old computers did this, but we can now sit at a computer for hours and not have any eye strain nor any flashes. When, and if, this ever gets fixed I might be more inclined to buy one, but until then it's just another thing that turns me off.

That was a bit of an aside, but back to what I was saying. I see these e-readers more and more and one of the big advertisements is that you can store XXX amount of books on the e-reader itself, and then store your other books right on your hard drive. Saves space, convenient, and takes the hassle out of moving books all around.. but I just don't like the idea. Technology is fallible and thus far I have over 300 books in my library, one lighting strike, one virus, one user error and all that would be gone.. Ouch.. I've heard that some places, Amazon?, let you redownload the book as many times as you'd like after you buy it, but I don't know how valid that is. It seems like a rather easy way to pirate books if that's the case, but I don't really know. But either way it's a scary thought. Whereas someone can break into my house, steal all sorts of stuff, but generally speaking they're not going to go for the books. The only thing I have to worry about when I'm not home is fire, water damage, and the occasional animal attack, and only fire will really kill off my collection. Sure you can back things up and copy things and save things, but really how secure are electronic things? For how much I love my books: Not enough. That's one reason I'd rather own a material copy. Another I think is perhaps how I grew up. Back when I was a kid we didn't have cell phones, computers, ipods, or much in the ways of electronics. Game Boys and walkmans were about all we had going on so, understandably, I never put much stock into electronics, but kids these days have cell phones, ipods, and complete internet access starting in elementary school or earlier at home! Maybe material objects aren't as important to younger generations as they are to me, I mean, I'm at the point where I think CDs are kinda a waste, I haven't bought one in years and years and years, so undoubtedly kids a mere 3 years younger might be okay with digital copies of things.

Two perfectly logical reasons right there, but those just don't seem to cut it either. I don't know why, but reading things on a computer screen just isn't satisfying, not to mention the pure raw sex appeal a loaded book case has. So honestly I don't know why I want books, they're expensive, they're heavy, they take up loads of space, but.. but.. I love them. I look over at my bookshelf and smile to myself thinking of all the adventures I've been on from the various spines, the color and the magic they add to my room, so I guess logically speaking it would be better not to own them. I'd save money, maybe--there's still the whole issue of just what you're paying for--save space, and it certainly is more environmentally friendly to not buy paper books, but.. I don't know.

I will say this though: I think e-readers do have a place in our society in the schools and in table top role playing. For schools, oh man, I wish upon every star that I could have a Kindle-DX loaded up with all my textbooks, and all my future textbooks! There would have to be some negotiation on price because while the content is obviously valuable, a large part of the cost of a text book comes from the actual publishing of the book, hard backs, full color, pictures, etc. etc. All books/textbooks start out in word (or some other program) and thus it's a few clicks of a button to put them up on the internet and seriously should not cost as much. What the value of someones book is, is much too hairy of a topic to cover. Some authors spend years and years perfecting their books, others spend a week writing it and then publishing it *cough Nora fucking Roberts cough*. Are those two books equal? Ehhhhh I don't even wanna touch that topic. The second thing was pointed out to me by my friend and coworker Diego, he's a classic gamer, not the type that uses consoles but the D&D table top gamer. Basically, if you've never looked into D&D or anything, you have to buy lots of heavy hardcover books filled with info about spells and stats and other intense things so putting something like that onto an e-reader would make sense. Instead of carting 20+ books over to play a game you can just have them all loaded onto your e-reader and even ctrl-f specifics. I'm sure there are other things that it would be useful for as a professional, the DMV-IV-TR, there's a book of building codes that's a beast, electrical codes that's also beastly, but for a casual non-traveling reader it doesn't fit.

*sigh* that was one of the most horribly rambling posts I've done in a while. But it kinda straightened things out in my mind, so thanks for bearing with me. If anyone owns an e-reader and wants to fill me in on some of the gaps in my knowledge feel free. Other uses and pros, cons, etc. Comments are appreciated!