You also can't build redstone computers out of Lego bricks. Capability wasn't the author's point.

You can certainly build a computer out of legos. Or at least a Difference Engine, and what really is a better introduction to computability than making your own calculator? http://acarol.woz.org/difference_engine.html

But capability is the point of books. If you want a work of art buy a sculpture/etc.

There's a huge undercurrent of people who romanticize books, I was asking where/why they came from.

The author answers your question in the article:

"In the real world the physical book has a meaning of its own: it's the book your wife gave you as an anniversary present, it's the book your late father got part way through and you dare not remove the bookmark he left in place, it's the children's book read and read until the pages are torn and worn. These physical remnants augment the book with personal meaning."

Sure. You'd likely have as many sentimental books as you'd have sentimental tie-clips, rings, photos, favorite songs, etc. But why do some people romanticize nearly all books?

I have a couple of books I bought at library book sales years ago that are over 100 years old. I enjoy them more for their possible history than for the actual stories. The penciled-in notes, the owner's names before they were donated, the library stamps, etc. All these things give the books a sense of being "things" in their own right, with their own history, and that gives me pleasure.

Make sense?

Quite. I always wonder at the history behind left-over bookmarks, marginal notes, etc.

I'd be happy seeing a scan though. Happier actually because I could flip through other scans of other marginal notes in other copies of the same book, comparing handwriting by decade, seeing if the same things confuse or inspire multiple people, or whatever. Stuck on a dead tree it's going to get lost, scanned in and indexed it's data.