Reply to John Lanchester " Who ever curled up with a good MacBook?"

The Daily Telegraph 6th March 2008

Why are we reading this online if paper is so great?

I'm sitting in my study - which has more books than my local public library - but if I want to look at a paper I'd take a glance online (giving me the chance to decide that the main broadsheets are not worth buying this thursday) - if I want to search for facts I can research dozens of sources in seconds.

Books have the great advantage that no-one can revise the facts post-hoc to fit with their (compare with Wikipedia) and the very obvious but normally overlooked fact that information that someone has been paid to write and has been professionally edited and reviewed has many  avantages over free or promotional information that currently dominates the Internet. So the Internet is too small and too narrow at present - partly due to the current business model that only allows one company to make money from Internet content - the search company - rather than those who have worked to provide the content.

On the other hand electronic formats have the advantage of searchability and depth - which means that a ten minute search over coffee in many cases can reveal about the same as a couple of days search through the Bodlein. It typically ends up that in every day life one does several of these a day so if you actually want to learn electronic sources move you to a level that was basically impossible previously.

My children know this and wisely use both sources (including curling up with a Mac) - maybe the older non-technological generation will simply have to die off so that new habits can replace old.