Let’s start with the reasons I don’t like the idea of e-books. My number one reason is that of ascetics. There is nothing like wandering into Powell’s late on a Saturday night. It brings me great joy to sift through a mound of books in the coffee room and figure out what book(s) I want to buy. It is almost ritualistic; I’ve been doing this for most of my adult life. But asides from this ritual, there’s the pleasure of finding bookmarks, receipts, and who knows what else in the binds of an old book. There’s the fact that I like to underline and write in and highlight and even look at what others have written and underlined and highlighted in books. There is also the feeling of holding a book in your hands, just flipping through it, page after page. There’s the smell of a book. I could go on and on with the different aesthetic qualities paper books have. These things are things we would loose if we all read e-books exclusively. I find the idea almost heartbreaking.

Asides from aesthetics, one reason I do not like e-books is they are, in many cases, simply impractical and limited. If one drops their e-book reader and breaks said e-book reader, one cannot read their books. If the batteries go out on one’s e-book reader, one cannot read their books. If one is in a dusty and/or damp place one cannot read their books. The E in e-book stands for electronics – which tend to be very fragile. And let’s not forget: e-book readers usually cost a couple hundred dollars. If you leave your e-book reader on the bus, you are out that much…whereas if you leave your paperback book on the bus, it might cost 20 bucks at the most to replace (and usually one can find a used copy for significantly lower costs). The very thing innovation in e-book readers, their “electronic” nature, is also their fatal flaw.

I mentioned briefly the cost involved with e-book readers, and how this contributes to their impracticality. The cost also contributes to another reason why I do not like e-book readers: the idea of e-book readers contributes to a social injustice in our society. In a truly paperless book society, the poorest people will not have access to books because they cannot afford e-book readers. This is setting up a scary precedent – a divide between those that can afford to read, and those that cannot. There is already the digital divide between those who are and are not online. A paperless book society will in fact strengthen this divide. Information in any form will not be available to those who cannot afford an e-book reader. There is also the college student to think about. It is a probability that some of the first publishers to go fully paperless will be the textbook publishers. Textbook publishers HATE the used book industry, and make great strives to put out new editions as often as they possibly can, so as to increase their profits. If these publishers can sell e-books instead of paper books (coupled with DRM), the average student will HAVE to buy a new book, thus upping the cost of books by hundreds of dollars. And again, if said student is studying on the bus or in the park or wherever and they forget their e-book reader, they are out a couple hundred dollars. Most college students live on student loans and part time jobs, and really don’t have that much cash to spend every-time they forget their book. I know when I was in college, I freaked out about loosing a 45-dollar book! I can’t even imagine what it might be like to loose a two hundred dollar book!

Don’t get me wrong – e-books have their place; there are pros to e-books and e-book readers. Most of the pros, from my viewpoint, have to do with reducing bulk. If you’re like me, you have dozens of magazines which you do not want to get rid of, yet do not quite know what to do with! If one could obtain digitized copies of said magazines, as well as future issues, one could eliminate the piles of said magazines. Another bulk reducing pro: I really do not care to own all the books I read. A great deal of my books end up proudly displayed on my bookshelf awaiting for the next time I want to read said book (or at the very least, loan it out). However, a lot of the books I have are destined to be sold back to Powell’s or given to a thrift store (quite possibly in the middle of the night – dumped on their front door so they can’t say “sorry, we don’t want these”). E-book readers could very well eliminate the bulk of these books. E-book readers could especially be useful for those who buy airport novels (though why anyone would read such trash is beyond me!). And of course, bulk reduction means less trees killed to produce books; e-books are made of pixels, so e-books are better for the environment.

Many advocates of e-books believe it is inevitable for books to go fully electronic in the near future. These people point to the digitizing of music and movies over the last decade – thus books are logically the next thing to digitize. These advocates forget something: The dominant medium for music and movies changes every ten years or so. In music alone, the dominant format has changed from records to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs, and now to digital formats such as mp3s and mp4s. Books, on the other hand, have not had such an evolution. Books have been around thousands of years, and about the biggest format change is that of handwritten scrolls to printed books. Books are probably the most stable information medium the world has ever known. So are we going to just burn our libraries and go to an all digital format? Only time will tell, but given the history, it is not very likely – and I’m just fine with that. All things considered, e-books have their place, but e-books have their boundaries as well.

I remember in 2001, as a third year student at PSU, I discovered MP3.com. With a few searches, I was able to find so many artists. These artists did not necessarily have a label, or in some cases, even an album, but they had mp3s up for grabs.  I still listen to many of these mp3s today, though I’ve lost a few in the inevitable switching from one computer to another. Adding to the online accessibility equation, there was (and is), of course, the wave of P2P applications that have made it easier to find music; Napster, Kazaa, Soulseek, and Bit torrent clients have all found their ways onto my hard drive over the last ten years. And of course payed services such as Itunes and Emusic have played a part in my musical consumption. Its so much easier to read an album review at midnight in my pajamas, listen to a thirty second snippet of a song, and then download said song – perhaps even the entire album, than it is to read said review and wait till the next day to go to the record store. That is assuming that one remembers to do so.

But websites, P2Ps, and online music stores are not the only thing that’s made music more accessible in the last ten years; podcasts and Internet radio have played a vital role in finding new music as well. No longer are we a slave to whatever crap our local stations insist on playing. If we don’t like what the Portland stations are playing, we can check out what Seattle or New York or Los Angeles or Denver or London or Singapore and etcetera is playing. We can listen to almost any radio station in the world now. And of course, there are podcasts from both professional DJs, and amateur DJs from all over the world.  Its fairly common for me to listen to a podcast and end up downloading a quarter of the songs played on said podcast.

While accessibility has played a major part in the music of the last decade, there are simply more bands producing music right now. Any garage band can record their music and upload it to the Internet without having to have a record company. And sure, record companies help, but they’re not necessary. Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah produced and distributed their first album without the help of a record company. This could not have happened before this decade. Sure, the early 90s saw a surge of garage bands make it big, and everyone started wondering how to find these garage bands – but that was the problem, no one knew where to look because these garage bands, if they were able to afford to make a recording, could only afford to make a limited number of CDs. Its just easier to market yourself online, then it is to play a dozen or so shows around the city and hope that you develop a following.

It truly has been a noteworthy decade as far as music is concerned. It makes me wonder what the next ten years will bring. Some of my favorite artists did not exist until this decade. Other bands that I’ve loved all through the 90s, and even into the 80s, decided to call it quits in the zeros. What bands will emerge in the teens, and what bands will call it quits? What technologies will emerge? What technologies will become obsolete? In ten years will we mock the Ipod like we mock the cassette tape now? And will my musical tastes be different in 2019? They certainly are not the same as they were in 1999. Only time will tell on any of these questions, but I suspect the teens will show us all a lot of music. Look out for my top albums of the zeros in a week or so, as well as one or two other best of the decade lists.