I’ve been thinking about this for a while.

I walked into my friend’s apartment the other day. He wasn’t quite ready to go out just yet, so I sat in the lounger to wait. I looked over to my left and saw the bookshelf, which contained, of course, many, many books.

I immediately got up to see what he and his roommate were reading, had read, referenced, or had referenced. In other words, I got up to see what things they were interested in.

I got up to find out more about them.

Think about this. If books go completely digital (which I doubt), what will we, as guests, look at? Pictures, wall-hung art, perhaps. All fine and dandy. But looking at one’s bookshelf to see what kinds of subjects someone is interested in learning about, seeing what kinds of fiction one likes to entertain themselves with, is fascinating. It would be a shame to walk into someone’s home, look over, and see a shelf of… nothing. It would be sad to not walk over to a bookshelf and pick up one of the books, start flipping through it, and perhaps become interested in something I’ve not read before. If I see a digital reader on a shelf, am I going to be inclined to pick it up, turn it on, and look through it? Probably not. It’d be too much like going to use someone else’s computer without asking. I wouldn’t do it.

You could apply this same train of thought to music and movies, too.

Digital media isn’t a bad thing. I know they’re useful and convenient. I don’t think real books will go away, and I think hard-copy music and movies will always be around. I won’t get into why just now, and perhaps my thoughts on their staying power is optimism. But it occurred to me that there’s a nice little bonus to owning tangible media: sharing yourselves with others; learning about the people you know.