3 ms·

Yeah, you're right, but that's what's difficult for me to accept. A traditional book is a piece of hardware. It's a bunch of paper pages tied together, with som

by bambax 5y ago

Yeah, you're right, but that's what's difficult for me to accept. A traditional book is a piece of hardware. It's a bunch of paper pages tied together, with some content printed on the pages. If you separate the content from the hardware, you hardly have a "book", e- or not. You have some content floating around, and big machines that are difficult to use and even more difficult to access (cost, scarcity, location) to read it. That's probably the genius of inventors: they see things that aren't there.

dredmorbius 5y ago
You've had the answer, several times. You don't like it. The problem doesn't lie with the answer.
- bambax 5y ago
  I'm not arguing. I'm just trying to explain my gut reaction. But it's really not important.
  - sleightofmind 5y ago
    I feel for your "gut". Often, if I'm learning a new math concept, my head says, "Yeah, I can do that manipulation just fine," but my gut says, "Something's not right here. Nope. Uh huh. Don't like it." And it's very hard to shake gut reactions be they true or false. Here's a rhetorical question: When I read a Kindle-format book from Amazon on the Kindle Cloud Reading app on my laptop, what did I just read? Was it an eBook or not? If not, was it a book in any sense? If someone asks, "Did you read the book, The Cuckoo's Egg?" I'd answer yes, even though I read it electronically -- which is, I presume what the e in eBook stands for. Or do I answer, "No," because it was just digital data on a computer -- absent a standalone eBook device? I have an eBook reader that came as part of the Calibre package, at least they call it an eBook reader -- it's just a program to read epubs. Is it is, or is it ain't an eBook reader?
mdp2021 5y ago
A "book" is a container for "text" - a support that can be made metaphorically akin to light (beech) bark (the "book") as a container for some weaving of expression of ideas (the "text"), is such. The container could be whatever. If there exists a text, there probably exists a book (the content, in fact, is not «floating around»). If that is magnetic tape, so be it. And if that is an abstraction for a physical container - a file, i.e. a labelled pointer to an array of data -, again, so be it. The file is the book; its physicality - irrelevant and interchangeable, but given - could be the magnetic tape, cards etc. that host it.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Etymological note: book itself seems to come from the beech tree, and referred originally to tablets inscribed on wood. https://www.etymonline.com/word/book https://www.etymonline.com/word/book It's also worth noting that what we now refer to as a "book" is more properly a codex, also ultimately from a reference to a tree trunk, but defined as a collection of leaves of paper or parchment (or folios or signatures) sewn into a binding with covers, as distinguished from a scroll. https://www.etymonline.com/word/codex https://www.etymonline.com/word/codex https://www.etymonline.com/word/code https://www.etymonline.com/word/code And of course, scrolls and tablets were the original forms of books. The notion that a book must be a specific physical representation of paper, binding, and covers, or even physical is ... at odds with origin and usage.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    > book itself seems to come from the beech tree I wrote that explicitly ;) Note also the other side: something is a "text" when it is textile in quality, in the context of elaborating the expression of ideas: you "weave" the expressions of your thoughts into a "text". Also note that "liber" means bark like 'book' does (though on the technical, craft side of "peeling"), and "paper" clearly refers to papyrus. You have terms for the container and terms for the content. The "book" is not a «specific physical representation», but is the side of the container.
    - 5y ago

by bambax 5y ago

dredmorbius 5y ago

You've had the answer, several times. You don't like it. The problem doesn't lie with the answer.

bambax 5y ago
I'm not arguing. I'm just trying to explain my gut reaction. But it's really not important.
- sleightofmind 5y ago
  I feel for your "gut". Often, if I'm learning a new math concept, my head says, "Yeah, I can do that manipulation just fine," but my gut says, "Something's not right here. Nope. Uh huh. Don't like it." And it's very hard to shake gut reactions be they true or false. Here's a rhetorical question: When I read a Kindle-format book from Amazon on the Kindle Cloud Reading app on my laptop, what did I just read? Was it an eBook or not? If not, was it a book in any sense? If someone asks, "Did you read the book, The Cuckoo's Egg?" I'd answer yes, even though I read it electronically -- which is, I presume what the e in eBook stands for. Or do I answer, "No," because it was just digital data on a computer -- absent a standalone eBook device? I have an eBook reader that came as part of the Calibre package, at least they call it an eBook reader -- it's just a program to read epubs. Is it is, or is it ain't an eBook reader?

mdp2021 5y ago

A "book" is a container for "text" - a support that can be made metaphorically akin to light (beech) bark (the "book") as a container for some weaving of expression of ideas (the "text"), is such. The container could be whatever. If there exists a text, there probably exists a book (the content, in fact, is not «floating around»). If that is magnetic tape, so be it. And if that is an abstraction for a physical container - a file, i.e. a labelled pointer to an array of data -, again, so be it. The file is the book; its physicality - irrelevant and interchangeable, but given - could be the magnetic tape, cards etc. that host it.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Etymological note: book itself seems to come from the beech tree, and referred originally to tablets inscribed on wood. https://www.etymonline.com/word/book https://www.etymonline.com/word/book It's also worth noting that what we now refer to as a "book" is more properly a codex, also ultimately from a reference to a tree trunk, but defined as a collection of leaves of paper or parchment (or folios or signatures) sewn into a binding with covers, as distinguished from a scroll. https://www.etymonline.com/word/codex https://www.etymonline.com/word/codex https://www.etymonline.com/word/code https://www.etymonline.com/word/code And of course, scrolls and tablets were the original forms of books. The notion that a book must be a specific physical representation of paper, binding, and covers, or even physical is ... at odds with origin and usage.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > book itself seems to come from the beech tree I wrote that explicitly ;) Note also the other side: something is a "text" when it is textile in quality, in the context of elaborating the expression of ideas: you "weave" the expressions of your thoughts into a "text". Also note that "liber" means bark like 'book' does (though on the technical, craft side of "peeling"), and "paper" clearly refers to papyrus. You have terms for the container and terms for the content. The "book" is not a «specific physical representation», but is the side of the container.
  - 5y ago