I have a confession: I’m one of those people who resist embracing new technologies as long as possible. In fact, to the dismay of this magazine’s publisher, I can’t connect to Twitter, and Facebook gives me the creeps – I just don’t want people prying into my affairs! And while I spend several hours a day on the Web, surfing for news on a variety of topics as well as tutorials for everything from engine overhauls to 3d modeling, I’ve always cherished books, and I have kept every book I ever bought, and in pristine condition.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not averse to technology in itself. In fact I make as much use of it as the next guy – heck, I have two laptops, three desktops, more external hard drives than a Mac store, a dozen flash drives, a Playstation 2, a Playstation 3, a blue ray player, and more software and games than I know what to do with. Of course in the end, I always give in and accept new devices just so I don’t become obsolete along with my VHS player and my Atari, but always under protest.

My beef is that if something works just fine, why replace it with something that may be problematic? For example, take books. There’s something to be said about them: Between those covers lie whole other worlds and lives which make us forget our own concerns – albeit for a brief period. Seeing them lined up on a shelf is like looking at private doorways to the worlds of Azimov, the thoughts of Nietzsche, and tragedies of Shakespeare. Day or night, they are at arm’s reach. I treasure my books, and have kept every book I ever bought, including my school and university books, all in pristine condition, and all ready to divulge their wealth of knowledge whenever needed.

Then came along devices such as the iPad, which do for books what the iPod did for CDs – they can literally become entire self-contained libraries. Every book you ever owned can now become digitized and readily accessible at the touch of a key.

So what’s the problem with that? Simple: You can still read Shakespeare if you accidentally drop the book, but I wonder if the same can be said for the much-trumpeted digital reader. Better yet, at least you can read a book during the day amid a power outage – a regular occurrence in our corner of the world – and by candlelight at night. But iPad runs on batteries you say? How are you going to charge your “book” if there’s no power? And how often will you need to replace the batteries when there is power? I own laptops, and I know those batteries don’t last very long.

I can already envision students panicking because they can’t review their lessons due to a power cut, or because their hi-tech self-contained library with cutting edge processing power won’t work because they dropped it. And when they lose a book, they lose just one book. With iPad, they lose the whole enchilada: Math, Physics, Chemistry, English Arabic, French, and maybe even the agenda.

Of course they can always claim a virus ate their book…

By Ave Tavoukjian