R.I.P.
It doesn’t break down. Baring catastrophes (a house fire, your brother overturning your inner tube in the pool while you’re reading Atlas Shrugged), a book will last as long as you need or want it to. It can be collected or traded. It can be used as both gift and door stop. (But not at the same time, one hopes.)
From a researcher’s point of view, there is no delivery system yet available that is as convenient. You can flip back and forth with abandon. You can dog-ear pages for future reference. Underline or highlight the good parts. Write notes in the margin. You can do this anywhere – in a tent by the river, on a lounge chair in your backyard – without electricity, without special equipment, hard- or software, or any device other than the lowly and dependable pencil.
But the key to my defense of the book is that the book is not just an idea delivery system, it is a significant cultural artifact and a free-standing work of art. I am talking about the book itself, the object, apart from what exists as text. Book cover design is an art; interior page design is an art; typography is an art. I admit it. I am one of those typography-geeks who read the colophon in the back of the book. (For the non-geeks among you, that’s the final-page statement that tells you about what type was used and who invented it.) One of my books, for example, was set in Sabon (designed by a 20th century German typographer who named it for a famous 16th century typefounder); another was set in Ehrhardt (based on the design of a 17th century Hungarian type designer).