|
You are not going to find the handwritten notes of your deceased father in an ebook, neither will you have entrance tickets to the performance of the Paris Opera you visited with your then girl friend twenty years ago tumbling out of an ebook. Therefore there is less emotional attachment to an ebook than to a "real" physical book.
However, provided that it has been widely distributed the chance of survival is most likely better for an ebook than for a paper book, unless human civilization is hit by something of apocalyptic dimensions. These books will also be much more accessible. I don't buy into that argument that they will be inaccessible because of an obsolete file format. Just because we can't read the files of some unique program running on a mainframe from 1970 any more doesn't mean that we won't be able to read hugely popular and widely distributed files like jpeg, pdf or epub in a hundred years time.
Moreover, with ebooks you do not have to abandon your books just because your personal circumstances change drastically (being drafted into the army, long treatment in hospital, old peoples' home etc.).
|