Those downsides only apply to the book or software itself. My point was about the stuff you need to have apart from the book/software in order to read it. You need a computer to run software; all you need to read a book is an understanding of the language. It does get harder and harder to understand books over time, but not at the same rate that computers are changing (and language tends to stay relatively simple, anyway, because people have to be able to learn it).