I had a great conversation this weekend about eBooks. My friend, Sal, proudly told me that she had seen an eBook recently. I assumed she meant a piece of software. I wanted to know what it was called. When I realised that that she was talking about hardware, I couldn’t get the name of the machine from her because she didn’t actually care what it was called or which model it was.

She didn’t like the idea of an eBook reader and couldn’t see anyone ever wanting to use one. This is the standard argument I get from my generation. We have been brought up to revere books and cannot imagine why you would want to read from a small screen that requires batteries, that doesn’t have a tactile finish or the smell of paper. She could see that it would be better to carry a Kindle in your bag rather than half a hundredweight of school books, but you’d never want to curl up with one in bed.

The younger generation get it. Tactility and smell can be engineered in. In ten year’s time we will have an eBook reader that will be soft, tactile and friendly. It will read to you, if you are doing something else. But it will do more.

It will take photos and video – connect you to all your friends and family with video and sound – it will alert you to all the updates from faceBook etc. that it has learned that you are interested in – it will be your tv and online movie download box – don’t like the screen size? It will have a projector in the back so just find a wall (It will adjust size, brightness and focus for you). It will keep your calendar, to-do list and just about everything else up to date, as it will talk to your friend’s machines to adjust meetings and deadlines for you. It will be your secretary and friend when you need someone to talk to. It will be like…

Actually the nearest thing I can think of what it will be like is the Daemons in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials / Northern Lights” trilogy. Daemons are human souls that live on the outside of the body and take the shape of animals. There’s no reason, eBook readers, or whatever these converged gadgets will be called, can’t become self-propelled and animal shaped! In fact, why not call them Daemons?

A year ago, I would not have seen the point of watching TV on a 3 inch screen. But TED or YouTube on my iPhone is brilliant. I don’t want to watch long movies. I want to watch snippets of information. Things move on, but our understanding and expectations don’t. We assume that what we have now is the right thing and that it should always stay that way. It’s what the Candle manufacturers thought, as well as the wheelwrights and the slide rule designers. Things move on.

As my friend Sal says. Assume makes an “Ass” out of “u” and “me”!

So why should we imagine that it’s better to cut down trees, make books and transport them to bookshops or libraries when it is so much easier to download them to a kindle? I’m sure the Monks thought the same about hand written texts on parchment when the book was invented. Things move on.

Except… I read an article yesterday at businessinsider.com that showed it was cheaper for The New York Times to give all its readers a Kindle for free, rather than print paper copies.

Read down to the comments, and there is an argument I’ve never heard before made by someone called IntellectGetOne. This is what he says:

The electronic only-idea completely misses the “badge” marketing value of the NY Times being physically seen in airports, hotels, convenience stores, offices, trains, driveways, etc.

Remember this simple motto: Out of sight, out of mind.

With no physical paper on the shelves or driveways or offices, The Times will easily need to spend $300 mill. in marketing to keep it’s name front and center and relative in this day and age.

Of course! Why did I never think about taht before. The book is not only the product, it is it’s own marketing device. Lying around on coffee tables, being read by someone on the bus or train, sitting on the bookshelf at home or in the library, the book is it’s own advertising billboard.

When you choose a book online, you have probably seen it already in a shop or you’ve seen the author holding a copy on the TV.

You may choose to buy information online, but as an eBook? Would it not be much better to subscribe to an authoritative online resource that keeps being updated? With full-time, mega-speed, always on wireless internet, information is just there, available 24/7. Who would need to download a block of information that soon goes out of date?

But those who wish to read novels, (they are called novels because they too were a novel idea once), will be able to carry on buying them as wood pulp. Books are a brilliant technology. But they are more than just a content delivery mechanism. When it comes to fiction, the shape, the smell, the weight, the quality of paper and print, the binding, the art and typography all go to make the experience different and memorable.

And the book stands as its own advertising billboard. How much would you have to pay to promote an eBook that sits waiting in the endless ether, with all it’s competitors alongside. How would you differentiate yours from the rest and get anyone to pay attention. What would the author hold up in front of the cameras. How could they say, “I wrote this,” without something physical to show for it? It’s the reason the paperless office never happened – why people print out emails and PDFs. When you’ve worked hard on a piece of writing, you want to hold it in your hands – to feel the weight of the words.