Chronicles of Lockdown: Volume 10 “eBooks and Print books”

What’s the difference between eBooks and Print books?

When reading a physical book there are indicators that your brain uses to categorize and absorb everything that you read. eBooks lack this sensorial feedback generated by a printed book. When reading a print book you begin to associate the passage of time with your own progress.

Your print book begins as a new object, virgin and untouched; but, by the end when you close it with intent, your print book smells of you, its pages are now shriveled by your hands and fingers. It has coffee stains and small writings on the edges and post-its of different colors and all sizes.

Re-reading a print book you love is a pleasure and a delight. The once heavy print book is now a light companion you carry with you. A beautiful trophy and a monument to your love of literature. And when enough time has passed it becomes another piece of furniture in your room. But when you pick it up once again, after years of collecting dust, your old print book recognizes your hands and your eyes.

The once strange and new object greets as an old friend would.

On the other hand, an eBook is bodiless. It exists outside of the world. It exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time. An eBook is just an abstraction of text made up of code. It is text upon text that creates an illusion. A new eBook will always be new. It can never be touched or scraped by the passage of time.

Your progress is saved second by second and sometimes it allows you to write on it. Unlike your old print book, your new eBook is temperamental. It changes by its own free will adapting to your touch instead of you adapting to the touch of the old print book.

Your new eBook is always ready for you. It reboots itself every-time. Refusing to change and to decay; Your new eBook will always be clean, it will never catch your scent or coffee stains. Unlike your old print book, in which you move yourself throughout the object, when reading your new eBook, you move the words and transform the object as you please. The font, its size and the background morph at your command.

Your new eBook always is.

And it greets you with strict sequential indifference, awaiting your command.

The difference between eBooks and print books is you. One will outlast you. The other will decay alongside you.