Also I can shrink my FLACs into 256kbps OPUS and store ~9 hours of audio in 1GB. I cannot (easily) shrink my physical books into microfilm and read them.
The better comparison is PDF + OCR’d text VS Kindle.
The better comparison is PDF + OCR’d text VS Kindle.
But it is lossy, and thus not a good archival format.
At some point, there'll be better lossy formats than OPUS, and then we'll need the lossless source again.