Do we really need our libraries?

Too many dangerous
Too many dangerous assumptions in this current ebook craze.

Not everyone likes ebooks. Not everyone wants ebooks.

Ebooks are not ideal replacements for many kinds of books.

Ebook readers are not nearly as fast or adaptable as they need to be.

You cannot own or use an ebook as you do a regular book.

My regular book will work in fifty years or more, will never require an upgrade, will always look as intended, never be subject to arbitrary revisions or hacking or network outages or operating system or software errors, will never have to be downloaded or DRM’d or placed in a “cloud” with the hope my reading-device-of-the-moment can retrieve it the instant I need it.

Can ebook technology promise that kind of longevity and accessibility?

Ebooks have some advantages, but let us remember so do print materials.

The ebook is a medium. Paper is a medium.

There are numerous reasons on medium does not fit all.

There are excellent reasons information exists in a multiplicity of formats to serve different persons with different needs in different places and situations.

A future envisioned without book stores or libraries is indeed dark and dystopian: all the easier to censor, control, or rewrite information, for example.

Are people becoming so dumbed-down by technology and/or so misled by corporations interested in only one thing (profit) that they are prepared to willingly and eagerly give up such basic and essential things as book stores and libraries in favor of Amazon and Google?

I hope not. I hope more people take the time to realize what is at stake in the loss of these things.

Even from the standpoint of a consumer, you want options, do you know? You don’t like finding out that there is only one want to get something, do you? And yet we are not speaking just about losing some options here.

Ebooks could be “enough” for many readers out there, but for many it will never be, no matter how fancy gadgets become. So you can surf the Web while reading a book in an ereader: so what? Must we always allow ourselves to be so distracted?

Must reading become so impersonal and distant and susceptible to technical issues, wrapped in plastic and subject to interference, incompatibility, and battery failures?

Think of all the situations books work so well in, and not just the one-book-at-a-time scenario. Then consider how so much is lost in the electronic translation of a text.

It’s not only a transfer of words from one medium to another. The media in question are not insignificant considerations, swappable things that make no tangible differences. They directly determine how one receives and interacts with one or more texts.

Books are a proven and reliable format and far “greener” and sustainable than most electronic devices out there. Look up what goes into a tablet, an ereader, a computer, and see for yourself.

Traditional books are truly in it for the long-haul, unmatched in their endurance and dependability.

We should not abandon printed books unless we want to sacrifice a big part of ourselves, our history, our informational future, and our humanity in the process.

Books are more than books, while ebooks are, at their best, but semi-reasonable facsimiles, which will be probably good enough for some people, but never for me.

I know others feel the same and rightly prize their printed works.