With the advent and proliferation of eBooks, it seems the printed book is a dying breed. Much like the printing press before it, digitally printed books will more than likely be phased out. Or will they? According to the Wall Street Journal, eBooks have not seen the continuing increase in popularity that most people would have predicted. Which begs the question, what is it about printed books that we seem unable to let go? Is it a human trait? Or is it a nostalgia?
I personally prefer to read printed books. Reading texts on a screen hurts my eyes after a while and for me, holding a book and physically flipping through the pages is part of the experience of reading. To answer your question, for me, it is both nostalgia and a human trait that keeps me reading printed books.
I agree that our attatchment to printed books is both due to human trait and nostalgia. If it were up to me, e-books would never exist. Reading from a computer screen is a completely different experience than reading from a printed book. So much is lost in the switch. There are no pages and there is a distant feel from the text. What makes me believe that our attatchment is more than just our nostalgia talking is the transition that the movie industry took from VHS to DVD. Although this is not exactly the same thing, it was still a big change for that industry. From time to time I wish that VHS’s were still made, but that is simply nostalgia. I know that DVD’s are much superior in every way to the VHS. Thus, that change made sense. In regard to the change from a book to an e-book, I do not see the e-book to be superior at all. If anything I think it is a step in the wrong direction.