To write in stone or sand

I know I know… I am breaking what I said about once a week. So what. I was reading some posts by people who ‘liked’ one of my post today and this one about physical books vs. e-books got me thinking.

I am a big fan of e-books. I even get upset when I find a book I want but can’t get it electronically. The reason why is simple. It is not that I am addicted to reading from a screen, on the contrary, I enjoy reading from a page. It is the convience of carrying. I have thousands of e-books and I can carry them all on my table (or heck, on my phone if I wanted to). So all those books can be right there with me.

Plus, when I am researching something I like having everything there and easily searchable. I can, from within Acrobat, search the contents of every pdf on my systems (with other software I can do the same with text and doc files as well). It is so much easier and less time consuming then finding “that book with that thing in it”. (Unfortunately, although I can remember theories and information and even entire passages well the sources are less memorable for me since the authors names are abstract facts, they themselves nor their names specifically relate to the enclosed ideas.)

Anyway, after reading John Guillen’s post entitled “Print vs. E-Book: Which side are you on?” I began to think about the difference between physical and electronic books – beyond the practical considerations.

E-books exist because the technology which maintains them and makes them accessible exists. Who reading this post has an 8-track machine, or a Beta machine… heck, a VCR any more. The existence of an e-book therefore, unlike print, is predicated upon the continued existence and compatible functioning of societies technologies. My PC or DVD player (sorry, my PS3) won’t play an 8-track, or an old Atari game cartridge. The flip side of this is print. A book in print relies on no other technologies after it is created for its continued use. You can read it today and need only it, some light, and maybe a pair of glasses depending on your eyesight and the print size and these are the only things you need to read it in the future. If I look through my files I can find many out dated file types. Microsoft’s .lit file type for the Microsoft Reader comes to mind – I have 930 of these files. Both the reader and file type were discontinued 6 years ago. Calibre supports converting it now, but what about 6 years from now. Will I be able to read it? Probably not, but there is no piece of software or hardware which can become outdated and stop me from reading the printed books on my shelf.

So, print books have a state of Existing because they exist on their own. They are an object with use and purpose not dependant on something else. E-books, while they may exist in that they have power and effect in the symbols they include (the words or pictures) it is the content which has being and not the book itself. They have no permanence granted by the existence of the object which contains them. Sorry to get so philosophical, the truth is, a print book has permanence, it exists. When it comes to the writer this should contain a very special meaning. To publish an e-book is to make known to the current viewing audience your ideas. To publish in print is to give life to something which may outlast you, a legacy more certain than anything published electronically.

One is written in stone while the other is written on the sand.