E-reading isn’t reading.......

[SheilaT]

16. Here's something else to consider.

Although maybe it belongs somewhere else, and not in a discussion about ereaders.

A while back I was lamenting not being able to find physical copies of old Life Magazines. And someone here helpfully gave me the URL where I could read them, since they've been digitized and can be read online.

WONDERFUL was my first thought. And then I went to the site.

Has anyone here ever actually held and read the old original Life Magazines? The were in a large format, greater than 11x14, I'm thinking. And a lot of their photographs covered two pages. Which means, in the digital format, you can look at one half, and then the other half of the photograph. Not the same impact. Plus, you cannot possibly look at the entire page of any page of Life Magazine all at once. You look at it in portions. It is so totally not the same experience as the original magazine as to reduce me to helpless weeping.

Digital formats are not the same as the original. Think about that for a bit. Go somewhere and find an old issue of Life Magazine, just in case you are so young you've never seen them before. I'll wait while you do that.


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Do you see now how very different that is from the ereader version?

While there is nothing inherently wrong with ebooks -- and I can certainly understand their appeal -- it is NOT the same as the original of all kinds of things, and you are being seriously delusional if you think that they can always substitute for the original.

If I were going off on a long space voyage, and therefore real books were not a very practical thing to pack, then I'd happily download all sorts of books to take with me. But it's important to understand that ebooks are not a straightforward substitute for regular books in all circumstances.

On a lighter note, I have long enjoyed this: