True confession: I’m a Luddite. Luddites are opposed to technical innovations. This is the fourth in a series of Luddite Chronicles. For earlier posts, check these out:
1) Luddite Part 1: The fascinating story of the Luddites…well, slightly fascinating.
2) Luddite Part 2: Newspapers vs. Internet news.
3) Luddite Part 3: Seven reasons smart phones are dumb.
3b) A follow-up to 3: The Curse of the Smart Phone.
Today’s topic e-books vs. real books. Just to start off, I need to acknowledge that e-books have some advantages:
1) Convenient searching and storage.
2) Instant downloads when purchasing.
3) Slightly cheaper. (God Behaving Badly is about 50 cents cheaper electronically).
But remember, I’m a Luddite. I’m opposed to innovations.
Here are 7 reasons why real books are better than e-books:
1) When I drop my copy of God Behaving Badly on the tile floor it still works. But maybe you never drop things?
2) Coffee stains on books are a slight nuisance, but they don’t short-circuit the book. But maybe you never spill things? I probably should have combined this point with the previous e-books-are-fragile point, but I needed 7 points.
3) I don’t want to own the beta-max e-book reader when everyone else has the Blue-ray e-book reader. The cover may look out of date, but you can still read the book. How many videos did you have to re-purchase when you got that DVD player? Perhaps the Kindle 47.0 that I purchase in 15 years will be able to read old electronic copies? I doubt it.
4) To loan someone a copy of God Behaving Badly, I hand it do them. I don’t need to make sure they have a compatible e-reader.
5) Waiting for my book in the mail teaches me patience. Anticipation can be a good thing.
6) To copy pages from a real book I just find a copier and make copies. (Now, I suspect someone going to tell me there’s an easy way to do this with e-books.)
7) My copy of God Behaving Badly never runs out of batteries. Like the Energizer bunny it just keeps going, and going, and going…