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Re:50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021 by mdp2021 on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:06PM (#29419912)
A "book" is a container for "text" - a support that can be made metaphorically akin to light (beech) bark (the "book") as a container for some weaving of expression of ideas (the "text"), is such.

The container could be whatever. If there exists a text, there probably exists a book (the content, in fact, is not «floating around»). If that is magnetic tape, so be it. And if that is an abstraction for a physical container - a file, i.e. a labelled pointer to an array of data -, again, so be it.

The file is the book; its physicality - irrelevant and interchangeable, but given - could be the magnetic tape, cards etc. that host it.

Re:50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021 by dredmorbius on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:28PM (#29420223)
Etymological note: book itself seems to come from the beech tree, and referred originally to tablets inscribed on wood.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/book

It's also worth noting that what we now refer to as a "book" is more properly a codex, also ultimately from a reference to a tree trunk, but defined as a collection of leaves of paper or parchment (or folios or signatures) sewn into a binding with covers, as distinguished from a scroll.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/codex

https://www.etymonline.com/word/code

And of course, scrolls and tablets were the original forms of books.

The notion that a book must be a specific physical representation of paper, binding, and covers, or even physical is ... at odds with origin and usage.

Re:50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021 by mdp2021 on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:47PM (#29420549)
> book itself seems to come from the beech tree

I wrote that explicitly ;)

Note also the other side: something is a "text" when it is textile in quality, in the context of elaborating the expression of ideas: you "weave" the expressions of your thoughts into a "text".

Also note that "liber" means bark like 'book' does (though on the technical, craft side of "peeling"), and "paper" clearly refers to papyrus.

You have terms for the container and terms for the content. The "book" is not a «specific physical representation», but is the side of the container.

Re:50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021 by dredmorbius on Thursday December 02, 2021 @01:51PM (#29420627)
Gah! I've reached the age when writing is easier than reading .... Sorry!

"Textile" (a woven fabric) is another great one, yes, thanks.

Diving into other etymologies and origins of other words based around information (literally, to form an impression), truth and trust, etc., is interesting. Many of the words for the most ephemeral concepts are deeply ... rooted ... in the profoundly physical, tactile, and material.

Re:50 years of eBooks: 1971-2021 by mdp2021 on Thursday December 02, 2021 @02:33PM (#29421267)
> interesting

To my "school", a necessary duty :)

> in the profoundly physical, tactile, and material

That depends. Some scholars identify a number of key concepts as construction blocks of their many derived terms. Not all of them are concrete - some are extremely subtle (also to be productive of so many different, yet related concepts).

For example, you write 'physical': some identify the root of that term in an immaterial concept of a dynamic principle, as if expressed by the explosive phoneme, that pertains immediately to "physical", "future", "foliage" in this construction assumed to express a "spawning". Similarly to 'material' ("measure", "mathematics"...), that some see as coming from the key root concept of limited extensions.

In the development of the terms and idea, concretion and abstraction may follow each other ("measure", "moon", "month"...).