"Romantic" and "useful" are your emotional response and opinion. Others have different values so they react differently. Since other people don't have all the same values as you, presenting your views as fact doesn't illuminate much.

You also compared your favorite parts of one medium with your least favorite parts of another. Why not ask yourself your favorite parts of ebooks and your worst parts of books also? You'll have a more valid comparison then.

I point this out because this pattern of comparing things is so common -- confusing opinion with objective truth and comparing the best of A with the worst of B -- and we benefit from avoiding the pattern. I didn't mean just to single javanix out and I hope this came out respectfully.

For me, the physicality of the book, the object itself, serves as a reminder of the knowledge gained from reading it.

When I can easily browse my bookshelf in actual physical three dimensional space, it's easier for me to move backwards and forwards through thoughts and ideas that I have acquired from those books, thoughts that otherwise would get easily buried in digital layers of organization.

Don't get me wrong--I am pro e-book. I have many in my collection. While technology allows me to simplify many things and aggregate diverse objects to a single place, it doesn't solve or simplify how I organize books (and to me books represent hundreds of hours of invested time and education). To say that with an e-book everything is at my fingertips is somewhat misleading. The organization of a physical library still beats the organization of my books in Kindle or iBooks or any of the number of programs I've tried. And for a lot of my comics and art books, the dimensions of the paper itself is part of the final product.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, or maybe when I have touchscreen wallpaper I'll consider switching over to completely digital.

I think the tablets and e-readers these days still suck. The interface is still rough around its virtual edges. I can't get into the "zone" if I'm reading a digital book - not yet. This may change in the future, as today is still the early childhood of this technology.

I'm also concerned about volatility. Paper books last for decades, or even more if properly cared for. I struggle to keep e-documents even a few years old. This is a fundamental problem and it needs a proper solution, quickly.

Finally, DRM gets in the way big time. Lending an e-book? Forget it. Finding one day that the content on your tablet was remotely deleted from the mothership? It's unlikely, but the reality is you're at the mercy of whoever made the tablet and they can certainly do so by invoking some obscure paragraph in the 200-page EULA that nobody ever reads. You're the "owner" of an e-book in name only; Amazon is the real big kahuna who calls all the shots.

We will inevitably move to electronic formats, no doubt. But this is the Stone Age of e-books - these are the stone tablets of e-content. We're still in a very very early stage.

Re: Zone - I'm not distracted by changing pages anymore. Just an unconscious muscle twitch and (with newer kindles, and all iPads), I'm onto the next page. I've had many a 12+ hour reading sessions, and several "Get sucked into a book" weekends with digital texts.

Volatility - My books are in the Amazon Cloud. All of my digital books are still available to me. 100%. I have access to about 5% of the paper books I've purchased in my life. The _worst_ case scenario, is that Digital Books become as Volatile as paper books, if Amazon.com goes out of business, and I'm stuck with (horrors) the physical representation of the book as present on my kindle/iPad (and Laptop backup, and back blaze backup of my Laptop).

The cloud changes everything for volatility.

DRM Sucks. Big Time. With that said, Amazon's implementation only impact is that I don't casually lend books to other - which I typically never have anyways, so no impact on me. I too like (and frequently take use) of the fact that 100% of my books are available on my Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Laptop, and CloudReader.

But - with that said - the DRM on physical books is pretty harsh too - You need to go to a photocopier to make a copy of the book. I just lend my mother my cloud reader account, and she can read any of my books on the web. Or lend a second friend my Kindle, and voila - he has all of my books. While I still have all of them on my iPad and iPhone. Or, if I don't have five lent out, I can pull them onto my old K2.

I don't think DRM on the kindle has ever stopped me from reading, or lending a book to someone I know. It _does_ prevent casual lending. Agreed there.

I haven't read a paper book in about 4 years. I find it bizarre to even consider moving back to them.

Lending/sharing, persistence (particularly against accidental or intentional deletion), device-independent access, resale, marginalia / underlining / dog-earing / highlighting, proven archival format, physical mnemonic value (there's something about the reading pile by the side of the bed or book left for a quick 1-2 page read in the bathroom), freedom from DRM.

Electronic media offer benefits as well: searchability, ease of duplication, amenability to quantitative/qualitative analysis (one example: http://www.ted.com/talks/what_we_learned_from_5_million_book...), extremely compact storage.

Both formats have their benefits. I'd greatly dislike having hardcopy disappear entirely. I appreciate the utility of online media.

The biggest concern I have with the Amazonization of the book industry is that we're moving from a highly concentrated publisher-dominated model to an absolute monopoly at the retail/distributor point. I'm very, very leery of concentrations of control and influence.

You are going to make me quote Giles (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer): "Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell... musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is... it has no texture, no context. It's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be, um... smelly." It is true though, things I read physically stick with me a lot easier and hold my attention better then digital reads. Unless of course my computer was to catch on fire. I am sure that experience would stay with me for a while.

This was probably true of parchment, too.

Doesn't anyone remember a decade ago when most people "couldn't read" things on screen, so they'd print out every doc? These days it's relatively rare. Humans usually adapt and move forward faster than we expect we will.

For reading a new book, the physical form can be replaced by e-reader without problem.

But just in case, if you reread a book 20 years later. You may found the margin notes you left 20 years ago "romantic". Of course probably most books don't deserve reread every 20 years.

I don't have any notes that I kept on computer 20 years ago, they are either lost in disk crash or server meltdown. I still have some note books from then.

With printed books:

1) You easily lend them out to anybody at all. 2) You can save a ton of money by purchasing used books. 3) Once you buy it, the store you bought it from can't just delete it from your bookshelf like Amazon has done in the past and I'm sure Apple will do in the future.

If you use DRM free, or pirated ebooks, these potential problems go away.

it's called creative destruction.