a minor thought thereon…

I’ve mentioned before that Esperanza has a large library, between 12-16,000 volumes.  Many of those books have inscriptions in them, as it might be: ‘To Carlotta, Christmas 1889’ or ‘with love, WWE’, or simply a name or date.  When I look through my own books there is a combination of visual and tactile memory at play. I remember that this or that book was given to me by a certain person at a certain time.  The connection, the memory of the relationship, continues to be recollected.  It is not simply a book, it is that Particular copy of that book.

Now, I don’t have any e-books so I am not truly qualified to say.  But it does seem to me that, because the e-books lack a physical presence, the memory of a relationship is less likely to last.  We can’t relate to a file on a computer in the same way that we can an actual object.  It is, in my view, part of the tangle between the virtual and the real.  The virtual reality can slide away without leaving a palimpset, no traces which will modify either the present or the future.  It is substantially harder to do that in the real world.

Or am I wrong?