E-books

Amazon has the Kindle.
Barnes and Noble has the Nook.
Borders sells the Sony Reader.
Before that there were Palm Pilots, Blackberries, and just straight up e-book readers.

I'm not gonna be getting any of these.

I like the technology involved in the newer stuff. The Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader have those spiffy digital ink screens. Little spots that a short burst of power can toggle between black and white and then stay there. Unlike my Palm Pilot you can read them in bright daylight. Plus they only use power when turning the page.

I considered getting a Kindle just for the technology. I despise Amazon's habit of patenting stuff they have nothing to do with and then suing companies that have been using that technology or interface for years. Even the founder of Amazon, Steve Bezos, admits that it's a vile business practice and should be illegal. But, he'll keep doing it until it is illegal.
Anyway, I refuse to do business with Amazon unless absolutely necessary.

Besides, I like the Nook better. It has better features and external data ports. I'd be better able to add and remove data. As the technology develops I'd be better able to bring my old books with me. And you're supposed to be able to loan out books.

I like the idea of being able to have my whole library with me wherever I go.
I like the idea of being able to mark up the books so I can go back to certain points without actually marking up books or having to spend forever searching for said book.
I like the idea of being able to search the text of all my books easily.
I'm not worried about file obsolescence. Someone will write an app to convert formats.

So what's the problem? Why don't I have one already?

Used.
Book.
Stores.

I love used book stores. I love how they smell. I love the narrow aisles and rickety walkways. Most of all I love the old books. Books from last month. Books from 50 years ago. They might cost me a quarter or a couple bucks. Cheap, right? They have the same advantage that video stores have over NetFlix. They have the benefit of letting you browse. Just scan the shelf for stuff that might jump right out at you. That's how you find unfamiliar authors or titles that aren't making best seller lists but are still worth a look. And I can't just sell my old files to a used bookstore.

Same thing with a library. I can't check out electronic books from a library. I can't give old .doc files to a library.

I can still see getting a Nook for new books or a Kindle for an ad-hock Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (free internet access anywhere and Wikipedia browsing). Textbooks and programming manuals would be valuable, too. I'd load it up with stuff from Project Gutenberg [link], too.

I may have just talked myself in to a Nook.

Crap.

But I can't picture replacing my library. There's too many books that I've gotten from Dad's collection, Grandpa's collection, Great Grandmother's library, and the like. Stuff that no book store will ever have because it's so uniquely theirs. Similarly, my rather impressive book collection wouldn't get passed on and consumed by others after I no longer need it.

Basically, they've managed to compensate for the complaint that people can flop on the couch with newspapers and books but not computers. Now they have to compensate for the fact that new books are so much more expensive than used and electronic files are so much harder to scan for unfamiliar authors than bookshelves.


p.s. - I don't think that a digital library would be able to penetrate L-space. Or, at least, if it does you won't be able to walk it.

Even big collections of ordinary books distort space and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full sized human to enter.

The relevant equation is Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else.

All libraries are connected in L-space by the bookwormholes created by the strong space-time distortions found in any large collection of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact - because it amounts to time travel.

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: (1) Silence; (2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown, and (3) the nature of causality must not be interfered with.

— from the Discworld Companion