The Thingy-ness of Books

“Seriously, much is to be gained by ebooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness, a little bit of humanity. Do you know what John Updike used to do the first thing he would get a copy of one of his new books with Alfred A Knopf? He would smell it. Then he’d run his hands over the ragged paper, and the pungent ink, and the daggled edges of the pages. All those years all those books he never got tired of it. Now, I am all for the iPad, but trust me, smelling it will get you nowhere.” –Chip Kidd: Designing Books is No Laughing Matter. Ok, it is. On TED: http://bit.ly/HiUyyB