📖 in defense of paper books 📖 the last place I lived, we bought a lot of paper books (curated library of over 5000) this has a different kind of value in such a context, because the books become like guests in the house
Paper books as guests in the house
8 tweets · August 2021 · 78 likes · 2 retweets · read on Twitter
some people talk about books as conversations with the authors having a book just on your device is like having a friend you only chat with, who never comes over and spontaneously bumps into your other housemates sure, you can make an introduction, but that's different
in addition to the simple value of someone who walks in the room being able to see who you're talking with from looking at the cover of the book you're reading they might also decide to strike up a conversation with them as well if you leave the book on the table
visitors to the house would often find themselves at the end of a 3h conversation with a pile of books sitting in front of them, for potential further exploration—or not; but it's a feeling of being introduced the physical books were atomic units in such a context, like QTs
none of these work in physical embodied space unless you have actual books, or maybe photocopies or similar distinct handleable objects we can do versions of this virtually—and we do! last night I tweeted about obviousness, and laid a breadcrumb to impro
there are of course advantages to virtual book-organizing, when it comes to precise references, remixing, tracing things back to sources, searching, and so on my defense of paper books is not an offense towards virtual books
but the virtual is not a replacement for the physical, if we're interacting in physical space! if you want to have a embodied & situated knowledge context, it needs paper books even if you end up reading epubs for better note-taking, the physical books still act as portals
oh, also, we could get way better at the digital version of the thing, both in terms of social technology and in terms of software