What is a Book?

 

A book is a memory. Not in the sense that books are an archaic medium that should be forgotten along with telegraphy or smoke signals, it's that they are more capable of holding memories than digital media. Take, for example, the game program. You know, those magazine-like books that you get at football games, baseball games, what have you. They contain information, stories, and interviews unique to that game. Personally, I love to collect those because it gives an opportunity to reminisce about your experience with the game, it causes you to feel a great sense of uniqueness, because you were at that game. You had a personal experience.

 

At this point, you may be thinking that I'm going to use this to trash digital media for the remainder of this post. That couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, I think that books like game programs should be available digitally, since they seldom are these days. Not without good reason, as well. Because the main value of the programs come from the personal experience of the game, most would buy them at the stadium, in print form. But, what if a disaster strikes? Say your house burns down, and your program collection, which quite possibly could be vast, is completely ruined. Now, programs are extremely rare after the event has passed, which is why it's so important to buy one at the game. Sometimes, you can find them available on the team/track's website, but most of the time, probably not. So, there you are, a lifetime collection completely evaporated, with no way to completely restock your collection. Even if you get your collection insured, the most I've seen a program go for was five dollars, and many times they're free, so a collection of, say, 25, would only be worth about 60 dollars.

If the programs were available through digital media, this conundrum wouldn't happen. You could still get the unique feel of the program because, like I said, you were at that game, and you had a personal experience. You wouldn't have to worry about losing a collection in a fire or flood, because the copies would always be there. This is why books are memories, no matter what form they come in.