I saw this on Mark Shea’s blog and I couldn’t help but re-post it here:

A well-known rule for using the Internet is that “you shouldn’t post anything on the Internet that you wouldn’t say in person.” I would actually go further. I would say that sometimes you shouldn’t post something on the Internet even if you would say it in person. Over the years I have countless times seen innocent emails or Internet posts lead to stupid arguments due to simple misunderstandings. When you write something, there is no way for the person reading it to see your body language or hear the inflection of your words or recognize your sarcasm. And because most Internet writing is done quickly without a lot of forethought, the words used might not convey exactly what the writer intended.

When it comes to Internet communications, both the writer and the reader have responsibilities:

Writer: Read and re-read your writing before you post it. Try to read it objectively, without the inflections that are in your head. Try to find ways in which it can be misunderstood before you post it.

Reader: Read the writing in the best possible light. Assume the best of the writer. Don’t add your own inflections to the writing, but try to look at it as objectively as possible. Even if you think you know that the writer intended to slam you or your beliefs, first confirm with the writer what he meant before you respond.

For more advice on safely navigating the Internet without losing your soul, see my Rules of Engagement for Catholics on the Internet.

Now this is a great use of the Internet: the Vatican has made all official records from 1865 to 2007 available for free in PDF format.

I can remember just 15 years ago doing research for a paper on Catholic ecumenism from the early 1900′s and spending hours and hours at the library trying to dig up anything I could find. Now it would take me a few minutes and I’d have more than I could ever use!

I have always been a great lover of books. I can remember reading Lord of the Rings in 6th grade and just being enchanted. Most of my leisure time these days is spent reading some book or another. I also have my first book being published later this year. So, needless to say, I am very interested in the publishing industry.

Technology has had two major impacts on publishing in the past 20 years. First, the rise of the Internet has led to the dominance of Amazon in the book-selling world. The days of going to your local mom-and-pop book shop for your latest read is becoming a thing of the past. Instead, books are bought online. Second, e-books have recently started making inroads in the bibliophile world (again, led by Amazon and their Kindle device), which has changed the book-reading experience itself.

But another technology, called the Espresso Book Machine, has the potential to reverse both of those recent trends. Take a look:

So with the EBM, anyone who can afford this machine (which is quite pricey right now), can have an almost unlimited inventory of paper-bound books. Imagine going to your local bookstore and having any book available to buy! Furthermore, this machine doesn’t create e-books, it creates traditional paper-bound books.

It will be interesting to see if this technology takes off in the market and what kind of impact it has on Amazon and other modern booksellers.

First Avatar, now CatholicTV:

CatholicTV rolls out shows in 3-D to attract youth

Check it out here.

Longtime readers of this blog know about my quixotic campaign against Twitter (see examples here and here). Although I am a technology professional, and I have a blog and Facebook account, I have never liked the whole Twitter vibe. But I believe my campaign has come to a crashing end:

Vatican Launches Twitter Feed

Roma locuta est, causa finita est

Group urges unplugging to take back Sabbath

As the story goes, God spent six days creating the world and then rested on the seventh day. He told the Jewish people to always rest on the seventh day of each week, which was to become known as the Sabbath for them for eternity.

This was before Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerries and iPhones, of course. Adam and Eve didn’t have friends who would get upset if texts weren’t returned promptly, parents who wanted to know where their children were all the time or bosses who had complete access to their employees via work-issued devices. There is no excuse good enough to ignore the boss, even on a weekend.

But one group is trying to take back the Sabbath: Reboot — a nonprofit organization aimed at reinventing the traditions and rituals of Judaism for today’s secular Jews.

Composed of Internet entrepreneurs, creators of award-winning television shows, community organizers and nonprofit leaders, these “Rebooters” are people who typically have their cell phones glued to their palms. Several of them go so far as to say they have an addiction to their devices.

But this weekend they will be observing 24 hours of freedom from their devices: a National Day of Unplugging lasting from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

I think this is a great idea, and it is one that I try to follow every Sunday. One of the great ironies of the more “connected” world we live in is how disconnected technology can actually make us. The constant stream of information we get via email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, TV, etc. makes it more and more difficult to connect person-to-person with those around us – our families, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors. But direct, face-to-face contact is still the highest, most “real” form of human contact possible (why do you think you can’t go to confession via the phone or email?).

Modern technology is not evil, but as fallen human beings we can easily distort technology and become controlled by it. Taking one day off from technology – like the members of the “Reboot” organization – is a wonderful way to ensure that we control technology, not the other way around.

A few years ago, The Atlantic ran a controversial article entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr, the author of the article, argued that the type of reading and thinking used on the Internet actually harms our ability to do deep, meditative reading and thinking. Personally, I think Carr makes a persuasive point: I have found in my own life that the more I surf the Internet, the less able I am to concentrate on deeper reading/thinking. I was able to write my own book by giving myself disciplined times in which I avoided the Internet; it was the only way I could focus and concentrate on the subject at hand. I have written here about my fears of (especially Internet-enabled) e-books harming our ability to understand the Bible (and I was also interviewed on Son Rise Morning Show about this topic).

But I recently saw a headline entitled “Google Probably Not Making Us Stupid, Pew Study Says” and I was very interested to see what the study results were. In fact, I was prepared to admit that perhaps my (and Carr’s) anecdotal evidence would prove to be wrong in light of the cold, hard facts. However, after reading the article, I’ll stick to my original agreement with Carr that Google IS making us stupid. Basically, here are the results of the study:

The organization interviewed 895 technology stakeholders and critics via online survey about their expectations of social, political, and economic change by 2020, and one of those questions dealt with the effect of search engines like Google.

About 76 percent of respondents said that Google will not make us stupid.

In other words, they asked a bunch of experts their opinion and most of them disagreed with Carr. But there was absolutely no actual study done on the effects on the brain by these new ways to access information. It ended up just being their opinion based on their own anecdotal evidence. If anyone thinks that this “study” actually proves anything, I’d say they have been on Google too long.

Recently, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference issued some protocols (PDF) for bishops, members of religious communities and all Church officials for the proper use of social networking sites. They contain good advice, which basically boils down to one maxim:

Don’t do anything online you wouldn’t do in person.

Really, it is that simple, although putting it into practice seems to be difficult for many people.

They also remind Catholics that real, live communication has priority over Internet communication, and if we overemphasis the latter at the expense of the former, we will be forgetting some very important people:

Great care must be taken by all Church entities, particularly those engaged in Youth Ministry, not to rely exclusively on social networking as a means of communication. To do this could be to exclude the poor – those who cannot afford a computer, who live in remote localities with poor internet connectivity, who struggle with illiteracy or who face other challenges which place them outside of the online world. Going to Church and hearing others talk about their social networking experiences can be profoundly isolating for those unable to take part. Social networking should only ever be one of a range of communication methods that we use to invite people into closer relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is a good reminder to those of us for whom modern technology has become second-nature. Not everyone can access the Internet with the ease in which most of us can, and we cannot forget that the Good News must be preached to them just as much as everyone with a Twitter account.

For my own Rules for using the Internet, click here.

Most practicing Catholics recognize the dangers of pornography on the spiritual life. Perhaps nothing in our society is better able to lead one away from God than this terrible evil. And, sadly, viewing pornography has become socially acceptable, thus leading many people astray.

Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has written often about the plague of pornography, and he recently put up a very good post that shows that pornography’s destructiveness is not only spiritual, but it actually messes with your brain. He writes:

We have known for years that porn is destructive to marriages, families, individuals, and society.  We also know that is is addictive - more so than crack or heroin.  Science is just now finding out just how destructive it is to the brain.  Using pornography radically changes the neuro-pathways in the brain by causing the body to inject strong neuro-stimulants directly into the pleasure center of the brain.  Repeatedly doing this means the structure of the brain itself is altered and the effects are devastating.  As one psychologist puts it, “pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their (men in particular) brains.”

Go read Marcel’s whole article, and then redouble your prayers for all people who are ensnared by the evil of pornography.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

Some regular readers of my blog might wonder why I often write negatively about technology. After all, this is a blog, right? Isn’t that the epitome of modern technology? And don’t we regularly hear about the Pope encouraging both the clergy and the laity to embrace technology to further the Gospel?

Yes, all this is true. And I’m not anti-technology. I use the Internet for an average of 8 hours each weekday (for both work and leisure), I have worked in the technology field for over 15 years, I have six computers in my house, I own an iPhone, I am on Facebook, and I maintain a blog (I draw the line at Twitter). Clearly I’m not a Luddite. Yet I am also not a technology evangelist. Why? I have seen first-hand the dangers too much dependence on technology can have on the spiritual life.

One thing I often notice is whenever the Pope or other church official makes a “pro-technology” comment, it makes headlines on Catholic blogs and tweets, yet the warnings that usually follow the comment are left out. A case in point is the pope’s recent comments encouraging involvement on the Internet. Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, followed those comments with some words of caution:

“The believer who ventures with enthusiasm and with courage into the world of social communications — boiling over every day with extraordinary technological novelties, from the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad — must know well the goal that guides him so that he is not taken captive by fascination for the means and thus loses his way.”

“And the goal,” the spokesman recalled, “is encountering God, who is the ultimate meaning of the relationships of dialogue, friendship and sharing that the Web makes possible today.”

“The traps that fill the pathways of cyberspace are countless,” Father Lombardi acknowledged, “from superficiality to falsehood to perversion. But there are also many users who seek friendship, truth and goodness.”

“Taken captive”: strong words which, I believe, accurately describe the pull of modern technology on many people. Technology has changed from a means to an end, and we can see an example of this in the fascination with Apple’s new iPad. For months people waited with bated breath for its release and rumors flew as to what capabilities it would have. Most of the discussion did not center as much around how it would help one to do certain tasks better, but instead on how cool it would be to have a device that can do [fill in the blank]. And in the end, the primary focus of the iPad was not productivity, but passive leisure. Now you can surf the web from your couch!

Note that I am not saying that the iPad, or owing an iPad, is immoral. But the inordinate fascination with it and all new technology is spiritually unhealthy. One of the things an over-emphasis on technology does is that it dehumanizes us. When our primary contact with the outside world is through a screen, we begin to lose a certain sense of the sacredness of each human person. Consuming a steady diet of violence, sex, and disasters via TV, video games or the Internet desensitizes us to the human reality behind it. We can see the extreme form of this desensitization in this news story:

Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot

This technological marvel is considered a breakthrough because it can “interact”, through artificial intelligence, with its owner. We see this and are rightly disgusted, but how far away is it from someone who spends every waking hour interacting with Facebook “friends”? Is it not in both cases someone who is filling the need for human interaction with technology instead of real, physical human interaction?

Simply calling modern technology a “tool” whose morality is wholly dependent on its use (or abuse) is not the answer, either. We need to recognize that many modern technologies are more ripe for abuse than older ones. Yes, a knife can be used to cut carrots or cut a child’s neck, but nothing in the knife itself gears you to one action over the other. Many of the technologies today, however, actually lead one to spiritually unhealthy lifestyles by their very nature. Thus, we must be on guard at all times that, as Fr. Lombardi stated, “the goal is encountering God, who is the ultimate meaning of the relationships of dialogue, friendship and sharing that the Web makes possible today.”

St. Isadore, pray for us!

It seems that every Catholic blog and news outlet is reporting that Pope Benedict recently encouraged priests to be involved with online media in order to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I’ve seen headlines to the effect “Pope to priests: get a blog!” and “Pope urges priests to go online”. It is true that the Pope made such remarks, but I think we would do well to also see in what context the Pope made this recommendation (emphasis added):

The Pope added, however, that “priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ.”

“Thanks to the new communications media,” he said, “the Lord can walk the streets of our cities and, stopping before the threshold of our homes and our hearts.”

“With the Gospels in our hands and in our hearts,” the Pontiff noted, “we must reaffirm the need to continue preparing ways that lead to the Word of God, while being at the same time constantly attentive to those who continue to seek.”

“Indeed,” he added, “we should encourage their seeking as a first step of evangelization.”

The Holy Father affirmed that “no door can or should be closed to those who, in the name of the risen Christ, are committed to drawing near to others.”

He pointed out that “the ultimate fruitfulness” of ministry “comes from Christ himself, encountered and listened to in prayer; proclaimed in preaching and lived witness; and known, loved and celebrated in the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist and Reconciliation.“

The online world is a wonderful way for priests and all Catholics to preach the good news. But we must always remember that it is but the first step in evangelization. No one can become Catholic or follow the Catholic Faith entirely online: he must directly interact with priests and other Catholics in order to grow in his faith and live it in the way Jesus commanded.

It is vitally important that priests are involved in online work, but I’d rather have a technologically-clueless holy priest than a web-saavy but spiritually immature priest any day. Let us pray that our priests are first holy and only then adept in the online world.

The rise of the Internet over the past two decades has challenged one of the sacred cows of modern American life: the “right” to privacy. This “right”, which was unheard of in previous generations and cultures, is one of the fundamental presuppositions of our society; we all just blithely assume that we are allowed to dictate what information about us is revealed to the public. This “right” received legal backing in our country with the famous “Griswold v. Connecticut” Supreme Court decision which declared that a “right” to privacy was a constitutional right.

However, another, more recent, desire of Americans is conflicting with this desire for privacy: the desire to be famous. It seems that many Americans today crave fame, and technology is making it possible to become well-known – at least in a small circle – much easier than in previous times. With a blog, a Facebook page or a YouTube video, you can let the world know about yourself, your views, even your shoe size (mine is 9 1/2, by the way). Yet everyone also wants to strictly control what information is available to what people; they want to maintain their “privacy”.

The latest battleground in this conflict between fame and privacy has been Facebook. The social networking giant has been repeatedly changing their privacy settings for users, and recently the head of Facebook admitted that he would like to see less privacy, not more, on the web. This has caused no end of protests from people declaring that they should have strict control over the information they put on their Facebook page.

I can’t help but chuckle, however, at these complaints. These are people who are putting their most intimate life details on a distant computer server they neither own nor operate and which is run by a company whose sole purpose is to display that information to others. Yet they somehow expect it to remain “private”.

As an Internet professional, let me tell you a secret: nothing on the Internet is private. If you want something about yourself to remain private, then don’t tell anyone about it, and for God’s sake don’t put it on a computer. I worked in the web hosting industry for over 10 years, and I know first-hand that nothing that is stored on an Internet server is truly private. Data put on the Internet is transmitted through various computers before reaching its true destination, is stored on a computer which many people have access to, and is tracked to the minutest detail (what time it was entered, where it came from, etc.). Furthermore, all data is copied to multiple machines (for backup purposes), so even if you delete something after you enter it, most likely it will remain on a backup device somewhere, possibly indefinitely. By putting anything in an email, a blog, a Facebook page, or a YouTube video you have made it public and available to anyone who really wants to discover it, no matter what “privacy” settings you might apply. To think such information can somehow remain private is simply delusional.

So if you really want to keep something private, be quiet.

Recently, Pope Benedict in his World Day of Peace message stated the following: “Technologically advanced societies must be prepared to encourage more sober lifestyles, while reducing their energy consumption and improving its efficiency” (emphasis added). Instead of actually contemplating the Pope’s words, many Americans immediately tried to push the Pope into our political categories, with the following results:

- Those who are politically conservative either ignored the Pope’s words completely or wrote it off as an European eccentricity of Pope Benedict, despite the fact that Pope Benedict has clearly shown he is not beholden to any European “conventional wisdom”.

- Those who are politically liberal hailed this prophetic statement of the Pope as a defense of any and every government response intended to protect the environment.

However, both responses are faulty, as it tries to put the Pope into categories which he resolutely refuses to fall into. B16′s advice is not primarily political, but instead spiritual, as he understands that every political problem has underlying spiritual roots. The pope desires true solutions; in other words, he desires to see everyone strive to live as saints. Living a “more sober lifestyle” is another way of saying that our modern consumerist lifestyle, which is lived equally by both conservatives or liberals, is antithetical to Gospel living.

What people often don’t realize is that striving to live as a saint will actually make you more environmentally-friendly as well. Just look at the three traditional practices of piety and their impact on the environment:

Prayer: Do you pray more than you watch TV every day? How about more than you play video games or mindlessly surf the Internet? Those other activities all require electrical power, whereas prayer’s power source is the Holy Spirit, which is an infinite, renewable source of (spiritual) energy. And you don’t even need electrical lights when you pray – candles are much more conducive to a contemplative mood.

Fasting: We Americans are anything but sober when it comes to eating. To put it simply, we are McFlabby. And all that food – most of it processed and shipped in from far-off lands – not only harms our waistline, but its production doesn’t do the planet much good either. Adding regular fasting to our spiritual lives will do wonders for our spiritual life, but it will also help the environment.

Almsgiving: How many of us have perfectly good clothes in our closets and dressers we never wear? Why not give them away to those less fortunate? Or how about not buying any new clothes this year and making do with the ones we have? Either way we reduce consumption. We could also look to cut deeper: by giving away more money to help the poor, we have less to spend (frivolously) on ourselves which will help our souls and our planet.

Our primary concern in life should be to be holy, but it is nice to know that by doing so, we also become better stewards of creation.

Over the past dozen years I have logged countless hours on the Internet. I have written Internet software, been involved in numerous online forums and blogs and now get almost all my news from the web. During that time I have developed a love/hate relationship with the Technology That Al Gore Invented (I am such a geek I already knew how it was really invented when he made that claim). In many ways, I consider myself a “technological Luddite”. Anyway, here are five things I love about the Internet, followed by five things I hate about it.

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE INTERNET

1) Its egalitarian nature.
I love the fact that a guy with a lame website like drudgereport.com can become one of the most influential media outlets in the world. The barrier to entry is now so low that literally anyone can start a website, and if they have something valuable to say, it will eventually get heard. This has many implications for evangelization.

2) The accountability it fosters in public life.
I love that public figures are held so accountable. When Dan Rather tried to make up stories about President Bush, he was called on it and the scandal reached the public almost immediately. (Obviously, this can get out of hand – do I really need to know how exactly many women Tiger Woods had an affair with?)

3) Its communications power.
The Internet was originally created to allow for communications between government organizations in the event of a war, and communications is still what the Internet does best. We no longer have to depend on Tom, Dan or Peter to tell us what the Pope said – we can just find out ourselves at the Vatican website.

4) Its power to unify.
This year we saw the power of the Internet in the Iranian elections. People who were oppressed by the government were able to let their voices be heard, and the whole world listened. I can’t imagine something like that happening before the advent of the Internet.

5) Its research capabilities.
I honestly don’t know how people used to research before the Internet was created. I don’t know how I did any research during my high school and college days in the late 80′s/early 90′s without Google. Every topic imaginable is available on the Internet, and the vast majority of it is free. Yes, you have to be careful about your sources, but in general, it is not too hard to find solid reliable information regarding just about anything in just a few minutes.

THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE INTERNET

1) Porn.
It is unbelievably ubiquitous. I did a Google image search recently for an ancient icon and one of the first images shown was a picture of a topless actress (I won’t explain the dubious connection between them). I have safe search on, but it must have gotten through the filter. The damage this easy access to porn does on our society in incalculable, and because of the Internet I started praying for the purity of my son on the day he was born.

2) Its addictive nature.
The interactivity of the Internet makes it much more addictive than TV. I have to work just to not be addictive to checking my email and other sites I frequently visit. Would Blackberries be called “Crackberries” if they didn’t have access to the Internet? This is why I take one day off a week from accessing the Internet.

3) Its deceptively impersonal nature.
There is no question that the Internet allows more ‘human’ contact than previous technologies such as the radio and TV. However, it is still impersonal. Right now I am sitting alone in my office staring at a computer screen. No matter how many people read this post, this is still an impersonal act. It can foster a false sense of community. I think the Internet is a powerful tool for evangelization (which is one of the most important personal acts we engage in), but it is foolish to think it is superior to old-fashioned offline friendships and communications. The Internet should be a tool which leads to real relationships, not a replacement of those relationships.

4) Its power to divide.
Yes, I realize this is the opposite of #4 under “Things I Love”, but that is the paradox of the Internet, isn’t it? Because of the Internet, one can live completely isolated from contrary views. And when this happens, we have a tendency to demonize those who disagree with us, instead of attempting to understand their presuppositions and worldview.

5) The death of the long form.
I realize that the Internet isn’t the origin of this (I would blame the television for that), but it surely accelerated its death. The very technology of the Internet works against the idea of long, in-depth writing. And it seems to get worse with each passing year: from web sites to blogs to twitter, it seems that no one can read anything of any length anymore. When I first started this blog, I read that you should keep your posts under 400 words or no one would read them. 400 words! Ents can’t even introduce themselves in under 400 words! (Imagine that for a minute: an Ent with a blog or, even better, a Twitter account). In fact, there is probably no one reading this sentence because it is well past the 400-word mark in this post. There is a time and place for short articles, but it seems like the Internet has eliminated lengthy works from our literary diet.

I’m sure I could think of more, but I’ll leave it to five each. Feel free to add your own likes/dislikes about the Internet in the comments.

The “must-have” gadget this Christmas season is clearly the e-reader. The Amazon Kindle appears to be flying off the shelves, and the Barnes and Noble Nook is back-ordered due to high demand. As a self-professed bibliophile, I have followed the development of e-books with great interest, and even with some concern. At first, my Luddite tendencies prevailed and I thought e-readers were a silly fad, but then for a while my geek side won out and I embraced the concept wholeheartedly. But then I began to question some of the outlandish statements made on their behalf, especially the belief that they will completely replace paper-bound books in the near future. This is not going to happen.

The reason I don’t think e-readers will replace paper-bound books isn’t simply nostalgia; it is an opinion based on technology. And simply put, the paper-bound book is a vastly superior technology compared to the current e-readers. The e-reader is better at some specific tasks, but in most ways, the paper-bound book still offers the best way to read books.

Here are a few ways in which the paper-bound book is superior to the e-reader:

1) A common, lasting format. Currently, the e-reader market is in the classic “Beta vs. VHS” stage. Getting a book on a Kindle doesn’t mean that you could read it on a Nook. There is no clear-cut winner yet in the format wars, so the reader you get now may not be able to read any e-books in five or ten years. Even if the manufacturers of e-readers would agree on a common format, you still must possess an e-reader of some kind to read an e-book. Anyone can read a paper-bound book, however.

2) Easier to share. The Nook has a unique feature that allows you to “lend” your e-books to another e-reader for 14 days (and then, for some inexplicable reason, you can’t re-loan it to them). This is considered advanced in the e-reader field, but it is clearly far inferior to the paper-bound book world, where you can lend your books to anyone you want (they don’t need a compatible e-reader or any device, for that matter) and for as long as you want.

3) More resistance to damage. Ever thought about reading a book in the bath? Good luck if you have an e-reader. Also, if you run over a Kindle with your car, you have to purchase a whole new Kindle and re-download all your books. Running over a book with your car usually just puts a tire-mark on it, especially if it is a hard-back.

4) Longer-lasting. A paper-bound book can outlast the lifespan of a human being. The typical lifespan of a high-tech device is about 2-5 years. Once you are on the e-book track, you will need to constantly keep upgrading over the course of your life to maintain that lifestyle.

5) True ownership. If you buy a book, you own it. Forever. When you buy an e-book, you are just licensing the text from Amazon or the publisher or whoever truly owns the book. If they want, they can take away your e-book for any reason or no reason (which has already happened once with the Kindle).

6) Superior reading experience. This is not as subjective as it sounds. When you read a paper-bound book, you are using more than your sense of sight. You are also using your sense of touch. You know just by holding the book how far along you are – there is no need to check the page indicator at the bottom of a screen. Furthermore, if you need to go back a few pages to remember who a character is or review an important point made by the author, flipping back a few pages while skimming the text is quite easy – at least in comparison to doing the same on an e-reader. Studies have shown that paper allows people to process text better than text on a screen.

7) More focused reading. When you are reading a paper-bound book, there is nothing else you can do with that book. Your entire attention is focused on the text and on nothing else. With an e-reader, you can quickly change to another book or even on some readers decide to browse the web. (Some have noticed that this lack of focus with screen reading is changing how we think). The single-mindedness of the paper-bound book has been called a disadvantage by some, but it is clearly an advantage if you really want to engage the text of the book. Both this point and #6 above leads to a “deeper” reading experience: you can engage the text more closely and in a more focused manner than you can in an e-reader.

This is not to say that the e-reader is worthless; on the contrary, it has many positive features that make it useful for certain types of reading. For example, I often will print out long PDF’s I find online so that I can read them away from my computer. This has lead to piles of paper crammed throughout my office. I can see the benefit of just loading these on an e-reader. The same thing could be said for magazines – do we really need a bunch of paper magazines sitting around the house? Also, I can see much benefit to an e-reader for college students. Instead of lugging around 50 lbs of books that cost north of $500 – books that will probably never been read again by that student – just putting it all on an e-reader can be quite helpful.

But these are specific cases and don’t encompass the whole reading experience. At least for a while, the most “high-tech” way to read a book is the old-fashioned way: paper-bound books.