Books or the internet?

[ladyofastolat]

skordh's heroic endeavours have reminded me of a recent semi-drunken debate Pellinor and I had - viz. what would we rather give up for life: books or the internet.


1. In both cases, books/internet access essential to work or study are allowed, up to a reasonable limit. You are not allowed to cheat by opting to give up books, then getting a job as an editor at a publisher that specialises in your favourite genre. (As a librarian, I would probably have to give up my job if I opted for the book ban.) You are also not allowed to embark on a constant stream of voluntary study merely in order to circumvent the ban.

2. "The Internet" includes email. You will not be allowed do anything at all that involves your computer - or any computer that you are using - connecting to the outside world. This also includes online gaming. I'll allow you LAN gaming, though. See how kind I am!

3. "Books" include physical, printed books. I will be harsh and also make you give up newspapers and magazines - pretty much any example of the printed, written word that runs to more than a few pages. (I wouldn't want to deprive you of the pleasure of reading junk mail, you see.) However, you are allowed to read newspapers online, or read the full text of any novel that happens to have found its way online, whether legally or illegally.

EDIT: Okay, if it makes it easier, what about limiting the question to a choice between giving up books for six months, or giving up the internet for six months. That might make it less traumatic.

[Poll #863274]

Feel free to add your reasonings in comments.

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

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No way.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's cheating... ;-)

What about if the question was changed to giving up either books or the internet for six months? ;-)

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

That would depend on whether I could afford a PDA, preferably with internet access. I could probably keep myself going on digitized books for six months (that's how I discovered Georgette Heyer after all, and I gather Baen have a selection of free e-books), but I have to be able to read them on trains.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I would *love* to give up the internet. I have a hate-love-hate relationship with the damn thing, and also I am sort of addicted to it. I waste sooooo much time on it, and in my heart of hearts, I don't really believe it's real. It's a horrible addictive time-eating chimera.

Sometimes I dream of going offline forever and living in a large bookshop. It's not realistic, but oh, it is a lovely dream.

[gervase-fen.livejournal.com]

I work in a large bookshop. Indeed, add up the waking hours I've been there over the last seven days, I more or less live in it...

Books, definitely, over the internet. Without the internet I...

...would have been astonished by the cliffhanger ending to "Army of Ghosts";

...would not waste time reading the comments on the "Comment is Free" blogs at the Guardian website;

...would phone people in the evening for pleasant and enlightening conversation;

...would start reading some of the books I bought for £1 at the Gallway & Porter Warehouse sale during the 2004 Cambridge Folk Festival.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Argh yes about the wasting time reading moronic comments on the Guardian website. My daily dose of hypertension. Any day now I'll start reading the Torygraph instead...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I cannot imagine how I ever lived without the internet. I waste quite a bit of time on it, yes, but I also use it for so many useful things - choosing hotels, checking train times... and socialising. I couldn't live without fiction, but I think that the internet could satisfy a lot of the needs currently satisfied by printed books, but the printed books couldn't satisfy a lot of the needs currently satisfied by the Internet.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Well, OK, in purely realistic terms, it would have to be books because otherwise I'd be unemployed and have a hell of a time finding a new job, quite apart from the convenience factor about things like trains and hotels and stuff.

But I would rather give up internet, if it was a genuinely free choice (ie, not one where one choice involved becoming unemployable!)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Well, internet use (or book use) that is essential for your job is excluded from the ban, so you'd be okay.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you did say that a librarian would not be able to keep working with the book ban - that was what I was going on.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I think that most librarians could probably keep on working. But in my case I happen to really like a lot of children's and young adult books. I can argue that I need to read them for work, since I need to know my stock in order to promote it to children, but I would also choose to read those books for pleasure, even if I wasn't a librarian. So, in my case, reading those books would count as cheating.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It just occured to me that I may possibly be the only person for whom this quiz could be paraphrased as 'would you rather give up your job or your hobby'... Which does make it a bit of a no-brainer, unless you are really, really in love with your job...

I know you can get e-books. But not enough of them, and not of sufficient quality, in my view, to replace real books. I don't care about the actual physical object at all, but there aren't enough long, engaging, really well-written stories. Also a book is just a book. It has a purity of purpose.

There is no temptation to just pop away into another tab and start leaving annoyingly long and badly thought out comments on other people's journals...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm going now. Honest...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

There is no temptation to just pop away into another tab and start leaving annoyingly long and badly thought out comments on other people's journals...

Well, I don't find them annoying. ;-) Tabbed browsing, though... That has a lot to answer for. It just makes it so easy to wander around the Net harvesting links, so you end up reading twenty times as many time-wasting pages than you would do without it. Well, I do, anyway. (Though I still curse my stupid stupid work browser constantly, for not allowed tabbed browsing - because then I waste endless minutes sitting staring at load screens.)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

It's a totally impossible choice and I would rather not make it, but I voted for books (to give up) simply because I do really love the internet, and it seemed like a good compromise, because more and more books will be ON the internet and in my day to day life I probably use it more than I do books. But giving up books is like giving up my dogs or my friends... Urgh. But I wouldn't want to give up the internet either. Double urgh.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

That was broadly my reasoning, too. Every year, more and more books are online, so I reckoned that by choosing the internet, I could have my cake and eat it.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Give up the internet. No contest whatsoever.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that is an illegal question and this journal will now be shut down

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Drat! I forgot the ;-)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Aha! So you do have that Doomsday Device after all! ;-)

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I'm saying nothing ...

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

The Doomsday Device is no use without the key. And I just ate it... You will have to wait for 24 hours.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Well your Doomsday Device may need a key but mine isn't clockwork ...

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

That's a key to unlock it, not wind it up. :-)

Didn't you notice that I stole the key to yours when we were there last?

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Ohh that's where my old bike lock key went ... No my Doomsday Device is much subtler than that :D

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I took the old bike lock key as well! ;-)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

It seems I have to vote in my own poll before I can see the answers... I wouldn't want to give up books, but more and more books are online every year. In my X-Files years, 80% of my leisure reading was fanfic, so I'm used to curling up and relaxing with a story on screen. I think the clincher comes with the socialising power of the Internet. Without the internet, I wouldn't be in contact with a lot of people I am now in contact with.

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely prefer to give up the internet rather than books. I do enjoy the net, but compared to never holding a book in my hands again?

No contest.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Agonising choice. I've benefited so much from the internet. I don't think I'd have much more of a social life if it wasn't around; and LiveJournal, with its temptation of an audience, has been a great incentive to finally keep a diary.

However, thinking of all the books I could be reading; of the chances I might have to get out of the house and take more exercise; of the phone calls I might make; and even the books I could be writing; then the internet it is that goes.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I guess some of it comes down to how much you love books as objects and not just reading. Because you can do the reading on the internet, but you'd miss holding a lovely book in your hands, and the smell. They all smell different, too - and some of my old children's books are incredibly evocative when I just take a long sniff.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more.

[skordh.livejournal.com]

If I could get at all my books in electronic format on a hand-held reader (waterproof, for using in the bath) then I would give up printed books. Otherwise - no way! A week is enough (& judging by progress so far, could be way too much!)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine any hand-held reader that I'd prefer to a book.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I gave up books; I kept the internet.

You can get books on the internet. So it is no contest really, as you can can get lots of other things on the internet as well.

I have previously said that I would rather give up my rubbish collection than give up my always-on broadband connection. I can always take my small amount of rubbish to the tip.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I can always take my small amount of rubbish to the tip.

Much harder when you live in a village and don't have a car, though.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I don't live in a village and I do have a car.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

*hugs her computer with all her strength*

Take my books, please!

Okay, serious reasons.

First, as much as I love reading a book, if forced to choose, I can always read them online. So I wouldn't be deprived of the material. I would just have to adjust how I approached the material.

Second, my writing. I need feedback on it. I couldn't write something on the computer and then not be able to share it, even if that sharing is only done with one or two friends. I would go crazy. And yes, I know I could print it out and mail it snail mail...but that would take days or weeks and I couldn't wait that long for a response. I'm a product of the instant gratification generation, after all.

Third, my e-mail. I'm pretty sad and pathetic in that I don't really have any friends here in town. They're all online. So if I were to lose those friends I would be heartbroken.

So yeah. Take my books, please!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I used similar reasoning. Much as I love my books, the Internet can give me most of the things I get from books - not as well or as satisfyingly, but it can still give me them. I would still be able to read fiction, and I would still be able to find out about non-fiction subjects. However, if I lost the Internet, books would never be able to replace the people aspect of the Internet - feedback on writing, email, LJ etc. I feel completely cut off from the world if I lose Internet access for a day, but I don't think I'd feel the same stress if I lost access to all my books for a day.

[chainmailmaiden]

Those are very similar to my thoughts about the two, working and commuting such long hours, most of my life is planned via the internet. If I had to buy train tickets, or shop for things in person, I'd have even less free time. I simply couldn't imagine my life without them now.

The thing I'd miss the most about never having books again would be looking at my recipe books. Novels I could get on the internet and while I know you can get recipes on the internet too, it just isn't the same. I love to curl up on the sofa and flick through the pages drooling over the glossy pictures. It's one of my favorite things to do to relax. I suppose if I had enough money to retire to a cottage, where I could live as a hermit, didn't have to work for someone else and be could be self sufficient, I would probably give up the internet instead. However that's not likely to happen and I would really miss email, as I hate phones, they're far more intrusive.

[windrunner1981.livejournal.com]

Sorry, catching up on reading/commenting again.

Checked out the results before voting and saw they were tied at 9-9, so I thought long and hard about my decision and voted...

For giving up books.

For many of the same reasons listed above: can get many texts online, and I simply couldn't make it through a day of work without email and the internet to distract me. And I like communicating with people around the world and getting news from everywhere.

Honestly, could we add tv as an option? I would give up tv easily - especially if DVDs were still permitted!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

You can view the results in a poll before voting? I never knew that.

After I did that poll, wellinghall did a similar one (http://wellinghall.livejournal.com/91117.html), adding TV/video/DVD, and radio/CD/tapes to the mix. I voted to give up recorded music, partly on the (cheating) grounds that you can get all radio programmes online now anyway, but also because I'm happy singing my own music. Giving up the TV and DVDs was the most popular choice in the poll, though.