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

[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.)