With all the problems in the world today, the type of books we read is just a blip on the radar, but it's still there. For a while now, book publishers have wondered whether eBooks would take over the market or if they would coexist with physical books like stairs and escalators. So far they have coexisted, and people have had the choice between going digital or doing what their ancestors did and reading right from paper. Here are the words of a 16-year-old about why digital books shouldn't replace physical books. This debate is an old one, so let me know your thoughts on the matter.

The Renaissance--from the French meaning "rebirth"--marked a great cultural rebirth that started in Northern Italy and was a great shift/turning point. It was a time when people took the time to look back at their past and see what great things had happened, and the people realized how truly beautiful the art of the past was. This time yielded one of the greatest inventions in the history of the world, the Gutenberg Press, created by German inventor Johannes Gutenberg in the year 1440. This invention forever changed the way that books were written, the process books had to go through, the prospective clients, the time it took to write these books and the people who made them. Simply put, the Renaissance was a rebirth of creativity; it was a time when the people began experimenting with new ideas and found that they liked some of them.

Prior to this Renaissance, the book or “manuscript” was a very simple thing. As a result of the fact that the process of copying books was long and arduous work, books/manuscripts were either very simple or unadorned, for the most part. Poggio Bracciolini is an example of a scholar who copied the works of great writers (“particularly Cicero”) and the beauty of his books “depended on the whiteness of the parchment, the spacing of the lines and words, and the elegant simplicity of the roman capitals and lower-case script.” This is proof of how simple some works were.

The book, as it exists, is a work of art and has come a long way from the parchment that scribes used to copy books on. Although books today and the paper they are made of are not exactly direct replicas to those that were used in 1400s Italy, in a way they provide a connection between people today and those people of the past. The book, as it stands, allows for people to think that their ancestors thought up this great thing, and it makes them feel that they have a piece of the past. Real, physical, bend-the-pages books are objects that induce sentimentality and allow people to reminisce and look back at the past to see the changes that have been made in themselves and their surroundings. It is a piece of art that ages along with the people who own it and according to how they take care of it. Books in the past were only attainable by the privileged or by the clergy, and today, owning a book should feel like a privilege despite the fact that anyone can own one and the fact that they are very affordable. A real book is a piece of art because it gives the reader a sense of who the author is; the way the cover is designed, the style of writing that is used, the thickness of the paper and the size of the words is a story in itself. An actual book appeals to the reader’s emotions, it appeals to the ability to feel and, in the right circumstances, it completely captures the reader’s attention. The readers are fascinated by the book itself and not just the story in it, and although people always say, “Don’t judge a book by its covers,” the person getting that advice always does anyway. Therefore, writers go out of their way to make their books as appealing and pleasing to the eyes as they can; they make it so that when people walk into a bookstore they look at the book and say, “I want that one,” as if the book is a piece of candy in a candy store. An actual book is a work of art because it makes the readers feel, because it's a connection between the present and the past, and because some books look as if they should be in a museum somewhere hanging beside Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It is the simple things that make a book beautiful: how bendable the pages are, the fact that people can find comfort in a book and the feeling that the books were made just for them, despite the fact that it is mass-produced and their neighbor probably owns the same one.

However, a digital book is something that people cannot “snuggle” with or get comfort from. Like an actual book, the cover of a digital book can also be decorated, but the feeling that it evokes is just not the same. A digital book is far removed from what the Florentines thought of when they thought of a cultural rebirth and it is nowhere close to the parchment and vellum of the past. Although the digital book may be the result of a looming modern Renaissance, and although it may seem like a work of art and a technological breakthrough to some people, it is nothing but a cold metallic device that evokes no feelings or sense of nostalgia in its reader, one that may bruise the people who attempt to comfort themselves on a cold winter night or a rainy day by trying to “snuggle” with it. A digital book is no more a work of art than a slab of concrete or a pile of dirt on the ground.

A world with just digital books/media is indeed a very scary one. If or when the world ever becomes a place where there are no actual books, the world would have lost something very valuable. With only digital books, books will once again become an item owned by the privileged or the elite. Not everyone can afford Nooks and I-Pads/I-Pods and therefore the likelihood of someone picking up a book to read for the heck of it would decrease dramatically. Although people may argue that digital books take up less space and that some books are free, there are more negative aspects of owning a digital book than there are positive. The device that holds said digital book will need charging after a certain time because the device (a Nook, for example) may have other functions, it provides a great temptation to engage in other activities and what does one do when their Nook crashes? After devices crash, the owner of said device may have to repurchase books, and because of this they may get frustrated, and instead of reading may just surf the web. A digital world will tempt people into plagiarizing books since it can be done so easily and their work may not have to go through a publisher before it is published. A world with only digital books will change many things and among them the closeness of story time. When a parent reads his or her child to bed with a digital media device, the child will not be thinking of the story or of going to bed but will instead be thinking of playing on that device.

Despite the fact that another Renaissance seems likely to happen at any minute now, one where books will be replaced by cold, square, and metallic devices, hopefully, it is far, far in the future. A future without actual books is a dull one, one that is not at all appealing. Just as how “books were ordered by the Pope to be burned” in the 15th century, the idea of making books only digital should be burned and discarded. Making the world solely digital is not an appealing idea, and although some people think that books should change with the time, some things are better left the way they are.

Let me know what you think! Leave a comment with your opinion: should print books fade away and be replaced by all things digital?