Ten Good Reasons the Book is Important

Here’s Timothy Young over at Design Observer:

1. It is a piece of technology that lasts.
2. It needs very little, if any, extra technology to be accessed.
3. The book retains evidence.
4. Books are true to form.
5. Each copy of a book is potentially unique…
6. Printed items are consumable goods…
7. A book is an object fixed in time.
8. A book can be an object of beauty and human craftsmanship.
9. When you are reading a book in a public place, other people can see what you are reading.
10. The Internet will never contain every book.

I made some of these same arguments five years ago on this blog. Alan Jacobs, on Twitter and elsewhere, has expressed his exasperation with pieces like this, arguing, essentially, that they do little to advance the whole “books vs. ebooks” debate because they’re just making the same points over and over again as if they were the first to ever make them. Jacobs has a point, but I’m inclined to give a list like this a pass because I feel like, in a technophilic culture besotted with the new, some points, like some books, are worth pressing on people.

(Via Austin Kleon.)