General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Tampa Bay Times Bill Maxwell laments "slow death of bookstores." I'm with him on that. [View all]MadHound
(34,179 posts)Just as we did with music in the switch from album to CD, and now MP3.
There are simply large numbers of albums that were not digitalized, even after thirty years. Sure, most of them are older and a bit obscure, but that doesn't mean that they weren't good albums. But now, except for finding the vinyl in flea markets, they're gone.
The same is going to happen with books, reams and reams of them simply won't be transferred over to electronic form, and thus will be lost to posterity. For awhile, you might seem some of them pop up in used books stores, or flea markets, or library sales, but after awhile, they'll simply be gone, another piece of our culture lost.
This is also going to play hell with future historians. How will they be able to tell what we're reading four, five hundred years from now. CD's degrade, e-readers die, thus, there will be a large gap in our history, a black hole where there was no visible literature going on(of course given the rate at we're giving up reading, that may not be so far from the truth.
Finally, there is the issue of privacy. I can walk into a book store, pick up the most inflammatory, anti-American book, pay for it with cash, and nobody knows any better whether I've got it. You can't do that with ebooks. Everything you read is going to be added to your datamined file, duly passed on to the US security apparatus, and nothing that you read will be in private.
I've never given up my books. I have shelves and shelves, boxes and boxes. I think that I will find somebody, some young person who I think would appreciate them, and pass them on when I've died. Perhaps they will learn a few things that won't be available on an ereader.