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Comment by Raphael | Hacker News Reader

A teenage perspective, where computer-based reading loses nothing and gains everything. I assume an open or hackable system, which any sensible user will take advantage of.

Readability: Change font, size, aliasing, and spacing to your liking.

Convenience: access millions of books using search

Annotation: Text editor or some kind of application.

Cost: free

Social flags: You can still tell people what you're reading. Bookshelves are nice decoration. But I bet OLED wallpaper or paint isn't too far off.

Aesthetic: A book is a brick of paper. At least CDs are shiny.

Sentimental value: Any object can have sentimental value: clothing, sports equipment, obsolete hardware.

Rarity: If text is not online, it doesn't exist.

Single Mindedness: Distraction is always a problem; learn discipline or face the consequences.

Religion: Torah didn't switch to the printing press.

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> Rarity: If text is not online, it doesn't exist.

Be careful with that line of thinking. Time and again throughout the history of the digital age, data has ceased to exist precisely because it was in a digital form. Consider this remark from the US National Archives: "By the mid 1970s, when computer tapes for the 1960 census came to the attention of archivists, there remained only two machines capable of reading them. One was already in the Smithsonian. The other was in Japan!" An entire task force now exists at the National Archives (http://www.archives.gov/era/papers/preservation.html) to address the problem of expiring data formats (old cassettes, magnetic tape, etc).

Take the following hypothetical: if Google goes under sometime in the next decade, and takes all of its data with it, the thousands of volumes that have been archived by the Google Books project will persevere only because university libraries around the world have copies of them on their shelves. Data continue to exist even when they're not immediately available to us at our terminals.

[And this is most certainly not the forum for this, but if I'm reading between the lines correctly you seem to be speciously implicating that Judaism was surpassed by Christianity as the predominant western religion because of its failure to embrace the printing press, but I would point out to you that a.) I own a lovely bound copy of the Tanakh, published by the JPS and available from Amazon for the low low price of $23.10, b.) the total number of adherents of Christianity had leapfrogged Judaism by at the latest the 4th century--a full millennium before Gutenberg--and would only continue to skyrocket seeing as it was the de facto faith of a sprawling political empire, and c.) Judaism is an inherently non-evangelical faith, so talk of such competitive tallying is really irrelevant anyway.]

Actually, the libraries in the google books project get digital copies, too.

It's also important to remember that university libraries very adamantly do not view themselves as archives at all and are constantly weeding out books that they view as no longer relevant to them. The only items that can be assumed to be retained by the library are those very few items that are in each library's special collections.

Another teenage perspective.

Readability: Read real round figures, not aliased fonts.

Convenience: Ebooks win, hands down. But going to a good bookstore is a nice experience.

Annotation: Nothing beats proper writing for notes (quick diagrams, drawings, underlining, switching position etc.) A pencil does just fine.

Cost: More than ebooks, which aren't all free.

Social flags: Bookshelves are something very physical, touchable, smellable. Also, printed book covers are great to look at.

Aesthetic: Books are beautiful. Dunno about what you read, but novels often have great packaging design.

Sentimental value: Compare a device, like Kindle, that had lots of books on (sort of like old hardware) vs. books, that each seperately hold a tale (sort of like old games). Old games definitely evoke more sentimentality, imho.

Rarity: Some texts do exist only offline. I assume it won't stay like this though. But rare physical copies make things valuable.

Single Mindedness: Books are for reading. This keeps things easy. Or would you read a book on teletext?

Religion: Not a factor for me.

I may live in the digital age and enjoy, but I just really couldn't let books go.

Readability: I've yet to see a computer device that allows to read in a bright sun/poor lighting and has comparable DPI to dead-tree books.

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