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Hmm.... p-books have utilized tech improvements along the way to enhance the reading experience - from adding chapter and verse numbers to the Bible to adding full-colour photographs to books.
As to the professor's wish: If you buy a book on an impressionist painter, you normally expect it to be illustrated with his paintings, with discussion of the works in the text. Why should not a book on a musician contain examples of his/her work when this is technologically possible?
How many of the conventions about what constitutes a book is a result of the physical limitations of paper? Foot- and endnotes an obvious example, also a maximum and minimum number of pages (The latter convention challenged directly by Amazon singles).
Textbooks tend towards the maximum possible carryable physical weight; even so my math books are full of the dreaded "and thus it is easily seen". How wonderful would it not have been to petulantly tap that sentence and see a detailed explanation of just why it is easily seen!
In short, there are plenty of p-book shortcomings annoyances that an e-book can alleviate - beginning with anything that involves flipping pages back and forth - without departing essentially from the traditional book paradigm.
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