Quote:
Originally Posted by fduniho
An ebook still works if the Internet is down. While the Internet makes it easier to buy ebooks, it has no more to do with ebooks than roads have to do with physical books. In the first science fiction novel to describe ebooks, Return From the Stars by Stanislaw Lem, the main character bought them as crystals in a walk-in bookstore that also sold the reading device. And if we didn't have the Internet, we could buy ebooks on physical media like we have long done with movies, music, and software. With ebooks, you have physical possession of them just as much as you have physical possession of the music on CDs or the movies on DVDs.
If you get a solar-power USB charger, the sun can also power an ereader.
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And some (many or even all?) physical bookshops can only order if the Internet is working. Applies now to many businesses. Also many businesses in the West can't do sales, especially cashless, without working Internet.