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> For me the real issue is the licensing. Sure. Wanting to own physical books to avoid issues of broken licensing model or issues of service centralization isn

> For me the real issue is the licensing. Sure. Wanting to own physical books to avoid issues of broken licensing model or issues of service centralization isn't the same thing as wanting physical books because dead-tree ones supposedly feel better than their electronic counterparts. The latter is simply untrue, only a means to hijack industry standards, sell propaganda, and profit from it. IMHO, electronic books can easily have a great reading experience (much, much better) if only books/manuscripts related software was let in the open for people to innovate upon. Or made a part of the web, a first class citizen, with decentralization, accessibility etc. I pretty much agree with you that existing options have a lot of deliberate problems but do not think that the solution to all of those is in physical books. I'd rather push for books and web being coalesced into a single unified resource that is both accessible and open. My friend & I even started a community/foundation that we plan to build on some of these ideas: https://bubbl.in/about https://bubbl.in/about > Amazon deleting copies of 1984 and other books from every kindle on the planet paints a precedent that should be taken very seriously. I hadn't heard about this before! And what's even worse is that Amazon was allowed to acquire the .book TLD and with that own a very very large piece of "public property" for peanuts. I guess there was very little reportage by media on this. But then such is life lately. > There are more trees _today_ than in the 1950s because of the paper industry… That's an interesting thread to go after. My tryst with physical books was almost a decade ago, and the industry I knew locally then was quite different from what you describe here. If the world gives up on ebooks like the talk of the town is lately, I'm pretty sure there will be an "impact" that would no longer hide under the design of industry.

cyphar 10y ago
> because dead-tree ones supposedly feel better than their electronic counterparts. I'll be honest, I prefer physical books. The smell, the feel of turning real pages, the fact that I can write all over them, the fact you don't need to charge them. These are things that you can't emulate with an ebook. Are they subjective? Yes. Are there things that are easier with ebooks? Hell yes. However, I feel that I learn things better when I read from a book than when I read from a screen. I'm not sure why (and I've heard there's been studies on this) but maybe it's got to do with how I grew up learning -- lots of book reading in weird positions on my couch (I like lying upside down with my head on the floor if I'm really into a book).

cyphar 10y ago

> because dead-tree ones supposedly feel better than their electronic counterparts. I'll be honest, I prefer physical books. The smell, the feel of turning real pages, the fact that I can write all over them, the fact you don't need to charge them. These are things that you can't emulate with an ebook. Are they subjective? Yes. Are there things that are easier with ebooks? Hell yes. However, I feel that I learn things better when I read from a book than when I read from a screen. I'm not sure why (and I've heard there's been studies on this) but maybe it's got to do with how I grew up learning -- lots of book reading in weird positions on my couch (I like lying upside down with my head on the floor if I'm really into a book).