Last night, I went through all the books on my various shelves and sorted them into two categories: read and unread.
The ‘unread’ shelf totalled over 60 books.
I felt a mild sense of guilt about these titles, just as I felt a sense of achievement when I looked at the ‘read’ shelf. I also noticed that these two emotions were far stronger with physical books than with those I have sat on my Kindle.
Craig Mod puts this feeling down to a lack of edges. In the physical world, we can see the distance we’ve traveled through the data we accumulate. 1,000 pages of print weigh more than 10 pages. Digitally, though, there’s no such comparison. Without a visual document of what we’ve done, is there less of a sense of achievement?
More and more, we’re seeing niche businesses thrive by putting the edges back in and making the digital physical. Look at Offscreen Magazine. Or the Kinfolk gatherings.
Online business is wonderful, not least in terms of freedom.
But in the rush to digitise the physical world, it’s worth noting that there’s sometimes value to be found in going the other way, too.