3 ms·

Physical books burn - just ask the Library of Alexandria. Ebooks have so many more ways to be preserved and replicated.

dinkumthinkum 6mo ago
The be fair the parent said "almost." I see this more as a backup of the physical book. Other than search, the experience of physical books is superior, I think, for most people for most uses. You can come up with counterexamples like certain aspects of studying textbooks, etc., but I think this is true in general.
- Cider9986 6mo ago
  Can most people get physical books? Ebooks are made freely accessible by projects like Anna's Archive. An ebook can be more easily used as a printing source, can be more easily cited in research, and can be better preserved. The one advantage of physical books is the reading experience itself, but even that is debatable. A Kindle lets you adjust brightness, change fonts—there are fonts that help dyslexic people, for example—and it's lighter than books. Did I mention dark mode?
- WolfeReader 6mo ago
  First, let me step on my own foot for the sake of accuracy: people retain information slightly better when they read paper than screens, so textbooks definitely aren't an example I'd go with. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8715975/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8715975/ That said, I can come up with far more than a few counterexamples for why ebooks are good, besides combustability: - Paper books are dense. This adds difficulty to moving and maintaining large collections. - Paper books take up space. Bookstores and libraries must necessarily remove books to make space for new ones. With ebooks, there's basically no need to remove old ones. - Paper books are dense and take up space, so when travelling, the reader must carefully select one or two to carry. With ebooks, I can carry my entire ebook library in my pocket. - Paper books require more effort to duplicate. My e-library is replicated across many devices, including two different offsites. If I spill sauce on a paper book, I need to buy another copy (assuming it's still available). - Paper books have accessibility issues. As I get older and my vision deteriorates, I will need specialized optical hardware to read small print. On my e-reader, I can just turn up the font size. In spite of all this, I would never say that ebooks are objectively superior; both are good. I just take issue with all of the people who assume that physical books are so obviously inherently superior, without ever saying why. (See your own post for example.)
hackable_sand 6mo ago
Random an combative
autoexec 6mo ago
ebooks already dont have a great track record when it comes to preservation. (https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/18csl9d/all_books_gone_after_i_turned_on_wifi_on_my_kindle/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/18csl9d/all_books_g...) At least Amazon can't break into my house to steal the copy of 1984 I paid for, when somehow they're allowed to remote into my device and delete my purchases whenever they feel like it. Bitrot is real too. Paper books can last a pretty long time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Cuthbert_Gospel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Cuthbert_Gospel) There are downsides to both formats, but with paper there's no company keeping track of the date/time I open the books on my selves, or how often I open them, or how long I spend on each page, or how long I take to read the whole thing. I also don't have to worry about the books on my shelves being remotely and silently censored or edited. I don't have to worry about ads being inserted into them and I can freely read them and sell/loan them to others long after they've been banned.
- WolfeReader 6mo ago
  Everything you said after "with paper" applies to ebooks, provided you get them without DRM. Your objections are to DRM, not to ebooks in general.

The be fair the parent said "almost." I see this more as a backup of the physical book. Other than search, the experience of physical books is superior, I think, for most people for most uses. You can come up with counterexamples like certain aspects of studying textbooks, etc., but I think this is true in general.

Cider9986 6mo ago
Can most people get physical books? Ebooks are made freely accessible by projects like Anna's Archive. An ebook can be more easily used as a printing source, can be more easily cited in research, and can be better preserved. The one advantage of physical books is the reading experience itself, but even that is debatable. A Kindle lets you adjust brightness, change fonts—there are fonts that help dyslexic people, for example—and it's lighter than books. Did I mention dark mode?
WolfeReader 6mo ago
First, let me step on my own foot for the sake of accuracy: people retain information slightly better when they read paper than screens, so textbooks definitely aren't an example I'd go with. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8715975/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8715975/ That said, I can come up with far more than a few counterexamples for why ebooks are good, besides combustability: - Paper books are dense. This adds difficulty to moving and maintaining large collections. - Paper books take up space. Bookstores and libraries must necessarily remove books to make space for new ones. With ebooks, there's basically no need to remove old ones. - Paper books are dense and take up space, so when travelling, the reader must carefully select one or two to carry. With ebooks, I can carry my entire ebook library in my pocket. - Paper books require more effort to duplicate. My e-library is replicated across many devices, including two different offsites. If I spill sauce on a paper book, I need to buy another copy (assuming it's still available). - Paper books have accessibility issues. As I get older and my vision deteriorates, I will need specialized optical hardware to read small print. On my e-reader, I can just turn up the font size. In spite of all this, I would never say that ebooks are objectively superior; both are good. I just take issue with all of the people who assume that physical books are so obviously inherently superior, without ever saying why. (See your own post for example.)

hackable_sand 6mo ago

Random an combative

autoexec 6mo ago

ebooks already dont have a great track record when it comes to preservation. (https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/18csl9d/all_books_gone_after_i_turned_on_wifi_on_my_kindle/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/18csl9d/all_books_g...) At least Amazon can't break into my house to steal the copy of 1984 I paid for, when somehow they're allowed to remote into my device and delete my purchases whenever they feel like it. Bitrot is real too. Paper books can last a pretty long time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Cuthbert_Gospel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Cuthbert_Gospel) There are downsides to both formats, but with paper there's no company keeping track of the date/time I open the books on my selves, or how often I open them, or how long I spend on each page, or how long I take to read the whole thing. I also don't have to worry about the books on my shelves being remotely and silently censored or edited. I don't have to worry about ads being inserted into them and I can freely read them and sell/loan them to others long after they've been banned.

WolfeReader 6mo ago
Everything you said after "with paper" applies to ebooks, provided you get them without DRM. Your objections are to DRM, not to ebooks in general.