Think about that last point for a moment. Our “rights to read” are diminished significantly with digital works as compared to printed works. Right of resale. Right to lend.
In the end, digital publishing just isn’t right and will lead to massive gap in our historical records. They require active curation and cannot be preserved simply by resting on a dusty shelf.
> Our “rights to read” are diminished significantly with digital works as compared to printed works.
I see it as opposite. I can hand someone the complete contents of a public library on a thumb drive. Delivering that to their door is going to be much trickier.
Reading and distribution (pirate like) has been made MUCH easier, with non-physical distribution. I'm always carrying a 1" thick book in my pocket, that I can read wherever I am. I was ecstatic when I switched over to digital. I could read anywhere!!!
That’s fine as long as you acknowledge that you are breaking the law and infringing the rights of all of the authors of said works who do not want their works disseminated in that way.
If you are willing to give a middle finger to the law, sure, the world is your oyster.
I was speaking to access and ease of sharing, enabling our ability to read, that digital has allowed, not my personal habits. Piracy was not the point of my comment. There are tools to remove DRM from digital purchases, and there are legit stores with DRM free files. And, there's always the option of buying a hard copy then downloading a scanned version (or doing it yourself).
I'm gonna sound argumentative, but what happen if you lose access to computers in general? The thumb drive or hard disk or whatever will just become a magical rock you cannot communicate with.
Honestly, given... recent world developments, I'm starting to doubt the robustness of digital media.
Archive.org has already been under constant assault by copyright holders. Who's to say there won't be something much more authoritarian coming over dealing the final blow?
Bittorrent-like distributed content sharing all have publicly traceable traffic afaik (only exception I'm aware of is torrenting over I2P). Therefore, again, something authoritarian can just walk in and ruin the party.
As for thumbdrives sharing, what if government signed and approved OSes start doing content scanning and DRM enforcement (or whatever excuses) on the OS level? We might be able to just install Linux or whatever now, but what if PCs in the future start doing bootloader locking like smartphones do nowadays? Given the recent age verification political theatre around the world, and whatever super duper secure guard Google is pulling right now on Android, this seems like a much more likely direction the world is heading than I would like to admit. Oh, and AI driving consumer hardware prices way up doesn't help.
Total war nuking us back to pre-computer age... yeah I don't wanna get into this one.
Books don't have this accessibility problem. Granted, preservation and sharing wise, they have their own very real challenges. But as long as you have one on your hand, you can just read it.
Every innovation since the microprocessor isn't worth saving in the grand scheme of things.
When today's algae evolve enough into tomorrow's sentient creatures, they're really only going to need up to the industrial revolution and should probably stop right before that.
the mass-market-ification of: clothing(world clothelessness used to be a severe problem, paper clothes existed for a reason), AC, light vehicles, solar: all things after the 20th (and even 21st century) that are worth saving. Even with the seeming doom, things do get better.
In the end, digital publishing just isn’t right and will lead to massive gap in our historical records. They require active curation and cannot be preserved simply by resting on a dusty shelf.