I totally disagree. The immediate "specialness" of the hot coffeeshop barista is not her "spiritual manifestation". Part of the uniqueness is presentation. Size, shape, weight, age, smell...I'm talking about books... the roughness of the pages etc. Bookreaders reduce this to a lowest common denominator that limits sensory bandwidth and cheapens the experience.
Can a person have the same religious fervor with an ephemeral Bible/Koran etc on a Kindle, as they would for a leather bound, gold-edged King James Version with the red tassel bookmark? And the cutout pages that let you thumb to the right chapter?
These things should only be tools because in the end we're all animals. And, trying to virtualize everything limits us to half of our birthright.
I don't disagree that a physical experience is nice, and I'm not even going to touch the "hot girl" point, since sex is one of the few things that is almost entirely physical.
But the physical experience of a book is completely orthogonal to the true nature of the book: that is, its content. I actually prefer physical books to e-texts, I like the experience better. But I don't delude myself that that's somehow more "true." I also like reading outdoors on a cool autumn day with the scent of woodsmoke in the air, but that's no more essential to a book than its physical medium.
The essence of a book is the thoughts contained therein, everything else is peripheral.
Can a person have the same religious fervor with an ephemeral Bible/Koran etc on a Kindle, as they would for a leather bound, gold-edged King James Version with the red tassel bookmark? And the cutout pages that let you thumb to the right chapter? These things should only be tools because in the end we're all animals. And, trying to virtualize everything limits us to half of our birthright.