Remembering to Remember in an E-Book World

Over at Wired Magazine, John Abell has an article offering five reasons why E-books aren't there yet. The "there" he is referring to is being a replacement for the printed book. Of his reasons, I found his first the most interesting:

"An unfinished e-book is not a constant reminder to finish it."

Unlike a printed book that sits on your nightstand or on a desk, e-books lurk in the ether of the digital world pressed between computer circuits obscured by the shell of an e-book reader. As a result, it is often easier to forget about a half-read e-book compared to a half-read printed book.

What I find interesting about this insight is the way in which the physical presence of the book- its weight, its length and width, the colors on its cover, the texture of its binding, the shade of white of its pages- is often vital to the act of remembering.

Certainly, we can take deliberate steps to remember unfinished e-books (perhaps an electronic alert system when we first turn on the e-book reader), but such effort is of a decidedly different kind than the several books that I keep at the edge of my vision on my desk.

An astute reader at this point will ask, though, but how is it different and why is that significant?

Efficiency is perhaps the most obvious answer, the energy required to set a book on the edge of my desk as a reminder is decidedly less than setting up an alert system on an electronic device and then also remembering to occasionally turn on the device. In the world of electronic reminders we need reminders to check our reminders. And therein perhaps we begin to grasp at something significant.

A physical book establishes a presence in my environment, my home, my workspace. I might be able to hide that book away, but somewhere in the course of my day or weeks, or year, I am likely to stumble upon its rude physicality, as it dimensions and quality exact a certain amount of attention and response from me.

Alternatively, an e-book always threatens to disappear into the digital void that I do not inhabit, nor ever will. I will not stumble upon an e-book in the midst of moving or sorting through old books, rather, with the ease with which an e-book comes into my world, so it also disappears.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, half-read books or e-books are not so alarming as to favor one style of remembering over the other. But I wonder, what about people? As we carry out more of our interactions with other people online, how does our remembering change? What kind of presence does an embodied person occupy in my life versus the electronic profile of some individual on Facebook or the name of some person on an email in by digital inbox? Are electronic relationships more ephemeral than the relationship with a flesh and blood person that has decided to stop by for a cup of coffee? If so, to what effect? Put dramatically, do we leave the acknowledged existence of other persons in our lives up to the chance circumstances of whether the power is on and the internet working?