The tragedy, for me, is that while I agree with most of what you've said and my transition to ebooks has been similar to yours, I've also begun realizing what we're losing by moving away from brick-and-mortar retail.

I look back on my childhood in the 80s and 90s and remember retail as not only fulfilling the need of acquiring stuff but also as a central meeting place. Going downtown to buy stuff was an activity as much as it was an errand. There were movie theaters, restaurants and all sorts of other business that existed in an symbiotic ecosystem with all the retail outlets. Over time, each of these business has been or is being replaced by a more-efficient, internet version of itself. We now order more and more food delivery rather than eating out. We now stream more of our entertainment in our homes and many people haven't been to a theater more than a couple of times per year. And while none of these shifts is bad in and of itself, the common theme is that we've replaced the social version of each of them with a version that we use alone, interacting only with a computer and not another human being.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we're having an epidemic of drug addiction and overdose considering how often drug addiction is a side effect of lack of human connection. We've taken all of these services and removed the human interaction and I think we're seeing that that human interaction was more than just fulfilling a transactional need. It was also keeping us sane in minuscule increments that, overall, added up to something tangible.

It's a tough duality for me to accept. I love my Kindle and I find the reading experience to be so much nicer than a physical book. On a recent year-long trip abroad, I was able to bring enough books for the entire trip and it weighed less than a single physical book. In one sense, it was great. Every book I read was something I wanted to read and I probably enjoyed them more because of it. On my first prolonged trip abroad back in the late 90s, I could only bring a couple of books with me. After I'd finished them, I had to find people to trade with to get new books. I probably didn't enjoy those books as much as ones I would've selected for myself, but I also ended up reading things I'd never have even considered reading before because I just didn't have any other options. There's a distinct part of me--the person that's able to look beyond the immediate fulfillment of my needs--that thinks that things were much better back in the days where stuff cost a bit more, it took more time to buy and I had to actually talk to a person to buy it.