Books were the notable exception in your essay. They're my exception too.
Since you wrote the essay, many have switched to e-books. Did you? If you did switch, why did you?
http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html
With that in mind the library of books I would even want to buy electronically is limited. A further limitation of e-books is that they often come with DRM. E-books that I've seen are sequential access, paper books are random access. Search helps bridge the gap here. (Paper books will never have search, and it's arguably a more useful feature than random access. Especially if your E-reader software supports bookmarks.) The major advantage of an E-book is that it takes up basically no space. Considering the flexible media potential of electronic computers, that's sort of disappointing.
There's nothing fundamental stopping e-books from being random access, type in the page number and there you are. Then again, e-books can sometimes lose page numbers altogether.
e-books don't come with DRM or a record of purchases if you torrent them or get them from Gutenberg, whereas you cannot conveniently steal a paper book.
Just some more pros and cons I thought of.
An E-book probably has the last two as well. These are almost ineffectual compared to direct word search.
>e-books don't come with DRM or a record of purchases if you torrent them or get them from Gutenberg, whereas you cannot conveniently steal a paper book.
Sure, but if you do buy a paper book at least you can sell it. You will never be able to recoup any of the money in your ebook library.
TL;DR Give me physical books or give me death.
E-books should be better than print. They should have at least scrolling code, syntax coloring, and and updates straight out of repos.
If my kids share my interests, they'll be happy I kept them (discovering my dad's stash of 1970s _Scientific American_ was a high point of my youth), and if not, they'll get rid of them when I'm gone. No worries.
Most of my books are non-fiction. I read a lot of fiction, but tend to use the library for that, except for a few authors I know I'll want to read more than once.
I've got nothing against ebooks (provided they have no DRM) but I guess I just don't need them.
I have maybe 20-25 books now. Nearly all of them are technical titles, because the typical reader device isn't large enough to display their diagrams/charts (Amazon doesn't sell the 10" Kindle any more, and iPad-like devices don't have the battery life for a reader)
I do miss the possibility of re-reading the titles that never made it to digital (muddy copyright ownership, lack of interest on the part of the publisher), but I'm happy that perhaps someone browsing through Goodwill might pick it up and enjoy it too.
Why not a local library? Same tax advantage, but a much higher chance that the books will get into the hands of readers at no cost.
I mean, assuming lending libraries even exist any more -- I haven't checked. :)
In tech towns like Raleigh, Austin, the Bay Area, I would think there'd be a market for a sci-fi/fantasy specific lending library, but I don't know if it'd pay to run it as a business.
That said, I have recently read several novels on my phone, and found that to be a surprisingly pleasant and effective way to read fiction.
Alas, the recent disclosures have fanned the flames of personal privacy and free software idealism in my thinking, reducing what little fondness I had grown for ebooks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230487030457749...
And more generally, moreso from the free software angle:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html
Of course, there are suppliers of ebooks besides Amazon, or besides Apple, who do not infringe upon at least most such concerns.
For fun reading the local library is a good source of pBooks (and movies on DVD, audio books, etc.)
My wife and I have been talking about living for months at a time in different areas of the world, for fun and eduction. That will require at least being able to live for several months at a time without a lot of stuff.
Between us I think we kept about a dozen books; autographed copies of things or gems that we can't get in digital, but that's it.
Programming books we long since switched to digital - those giant tomes were not only a huge waste of space but went out of date way too soon. Yay for O'Reilly.
As a consequence, my personal approach is to only keep up to 5 physical books at any given time. Basically I buy the book in eBook form and if I like it a lot - like really, really love it, I can order a physical copy. At that point, I should have already made the decision of which one of my 5 physical books is going to get donated to make space for this one.
I hate clutter and my best work is done in focused and clean environments, so that's why I do this.
If I were still in university I would maybe preferred those text books all be in digital form so I can carry less. However, that was long-ish ago.
still have all my old programming books and find it a lot easier to flip back to things.
30 yrs old; don't care for e-readers.