Search, reference, and storage
Paper book technology for searching text is almost entirely spatial. You find a passage by looking for a physical bookmark or simply remembering the approximate place in the book where it was located. If you're lucky, your book will include an index to key passages within it, but really it's a primitive system. With e-readers, though we have yet to arrive at a standard interface, you can usually perform a text search, look at a hyperlinked list of bookmarks, and if there's a touchscreen you can user a slider to arrive at a random page.
On the whole, paper books are not as accessible as ebooks when it comes to navigation. I generally prefer the spatial navigation a paper book affords, but I can't say it's inherently superior — just different.
As for referencing particular passages within a book, currently paper technology is just a little better than ebooks if only because the standards are more widely understood and accepted. With paper books, you cite a page number after you've specified the edition of the book you're referencing. There are standards for referencing the virtual "page number" for ebooks that are somewhat similar, but given the multiplicity of ebook formats and editions it can be a bit more complicated. I believe this should be solved over time as ebooks become more common and their formats more standardized. It's a hassle, but by no means an insurmountable one.
Storage and transport makes for an easy comparison. I can carry thousands of ebooks on an e-reader. I can carry no more than, say, three or four textbooks in a backpack. Sorry paper, but you're really heavy and I only have so much shelf space.
DRM, formats, and resale
With a paper book, if I want to lend it to you I simply give it to you. I won't have access to it while you have it, but the physical act of handing you a book is a "technology" that usually doesn't afford intervention by higher powers. The same applies if I want to sell you a book I've read: I give you the book, you give me money, and we're done.
An ebook, on the other hand, is more virtual and less portable in this regard. The core issue is that we have to replace physical actions with digital equivalents — and the companies doing the replacing aren't worried about the future of human knowledge. Systems for lending and reselling necessarily involve intervention from the distributor, the company that makes the e-reader software, and other interested parties. I could lend or sell you the entire e-reader, but in practice that's not really a viable option (for obvious reasons).
All of which leads us into the horrifically complicated area of DRM and formats. The analogy for formats is relatively simple when comparing ebooks and paper books. Though there are things like folios, quartos, scrolls, and whatnot in paper book technology, there is really no confusion with paper books. The form/format is literally physical and the only incompatibilities, such as they are, come into play when you're trying to fit them all on a shelf.
It's not fair to say that paper book technology is a completely free and open paradise of availability and access. There are competing distributors, selections limited by your local bookstore or library, and out-of-print editions. Yet these issues have had many hundreds of years to sort themselves out and the systems for managing them are established.
Ebooks, by contrast, come in an array of digital formats that are beset by issues of device compatibility, DRM, money, and corporate interests. It is a wild west of competing and frustratingly incompatible formats laden with DRM, all controlled by companies vying to provide the dominant standard.
I find the situation nearly intolerable. It's not just that I want to be able to choose my e-reader device and then have free and easy access to any book, it's that what we're discussing here are books, the very things that have created and sustained our culture over generations. To allow them to be encrypted and inaccessible without specific software is to limit the dissemination of human knowledge. Imagine if you couldn't read Aristotle or Confucius because the DRM format their publishers chose wasn't compatible with your iPad. It's insanity
I understand that free and open access to paper books isn't available everywhere, that various hegemonies have stifled and do stifle dissent. Books can be burned, banned, and censored. But if we are going to be putting our collective knowledge into digital formats with DRM, we are adding another layer of possible censorship on top of the layers of control we already contend with. This isn't (entirely) paranoia that Apple or Amazon will control access to human knowledge, it's also a practical concern founded in the experience of being blocked by poorly designed DRM.
As just one example of the problematic issues of DRM and corporate control of ebook formats, look no further than iBooks Author, the software used to create iBooks under Apple's new system. This software requires that anything created and sold via the software can only be distributed by Apple:
IMPORTANT NOTE:If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a "Work"), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.
iBooks sold for money can only be distributed by one company, in a format that will only work on its products, under a rubric that legally prohibits the author from selling printed copies of the book (or perhaps even filing them in the Library of Congress!). If I wanted to ensure that my book would have a shot at mattering, I wouldn't risk distributing it on such a limited and controlled system.
Paper book technology works whether or not the company that sold it to you wants it to. Paper books can't be remotely changed via a cloud update and can't be whooshed into a memory hole because of a DMCA complaint (Amazon, I'm looking at you). Paper books aren't rendered inaccessible if this or that corporation didn't hit its quarterly numbers and went out of business.
It's important that we find ways to prevent piracy and ensure that authors receive proper payment for their work, but those issues pale in comparison to the importance of ensuring access to our collective writings. I hope that it won't be too long before the competition between iBooks and Kindle and Nook and [insert DRM book format here] resolves into a single standard. That standard, however, should not include DRM if it is to be the basic format for academic knowledge.
The thousand year view
I've slowly been raising the stakes over the course of this article and now we come to what I consider to be the highest stakes of all: ensuring the longevity and persistence of knowledge. If DRM and ebook formats are about access, the thousand year view is about existence.
When it comes to the longevity of paper book technology and virtually any digital technology, there is simply no comparison. Assuming that the paper a book is printed on isn't too acidic and it's well-kept, it will last for literally thousands of years.
Digital formats have evolved quickly and it's likely they will continue to evolve for the foreseeable future. Even if we assume that digital storage formats won't ever change again and we'll always have access to computers than can read them, the physical media itself simply breaks down in a matter of years. There are some solutions (like Millenniata), but few if any that are widespread, well-known, and standardized.
If you're not convinced yet, I can make this point very quickly. I'd like you to read an ebook stored on a 5.25-inch floppy disk. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Solutions to this problem from Apple, Amazon, and others seem to be based on their cloud services. That is a lot of trust to place in these corporations and their costly servers. I'm not saying that preserving paper books is free, that the work of that preservation hasn't been manipulated by powerful interests over the centuries, or even that they're immune to catastrophes (pour one out for the Library of Alexandria). What I am saying is that we've developed a system of libraries and universities that work to ensure that books are preserved for the long haul. Those same institutions and many more are trying to do the same for digital media today — but they need help and I don't see evidence that the ebook industry is collaborating with them in any meaningful way.
Before I am willing to say that ebook technology can measure up to paper book technology, I need to see the companies developing ebooks lay out a clear plan to ensure that their books and any notes we take on them have a legitimate shot of still being around and readable in a thousand years.
The thousand year view is simple: if you're going to commit knowledge to writing in some form, you need to ensure that it will exist and be readable in a thousand years. I can tell you that I've personally gained insight and understanding about our world by reading a lightly-distributed instruction manual for rural, parish priests in England — written in the fourteenth century. Will an independently-created iBook 2 textbook be around in the thirty first century?
Ebooks are inevitable
Is paper book technology superior to ebook technology? Yes, when you take the long view. Paper books can last a thousand years, aren't encrypted with DRM, and don't depend on the largess of corporations which are more focused on short term profits than long-term archives.
When you take the short view, though, e-readers are clearly better. Lugging books is a chore, searching through them is tedious and manual, and as much as I enjoy the old ways of active reading, I know that technological solutions will mature into usable replacements soon enough. Yet despite all their advantages — which are rightly pushing broad adoption — ebooks don't measure up to the specs of a paper book.
With ebooks, we're still looking at the equivalent of the day after Gutenberg printed his first Bible. We need to decide which paper book "specs" are important and ensure that they get recreated in our new digital world. We also need to ensure that these digital equivalents are at least as free and unfettered as paper books are now. We've already surpassed paper technology in a number of areas. However we are not giving nearly enough attention to the very things that made paper books flourish in the first place. The most important specs are the ones you take for granted.
