[kazinator]

... with all books that were ever written.

All that and an electronic girlfriend application to replace the real one you could have picked up at the library.

[bitL]

Come on, book is just a medium, now we have a different form already, why put money into old-school stuff? For nostalgia reasons?

[MrZongle2]

A book certainly is just a medium, but it's a particularly accessible and durable medium.

If you place a 50-year-old book written in English in front of me, I can immediately pick it up and begin reading. Books far older than that are equally as legible and, with care, accessible.

What are the chances that in 50 years that even half of the current ebook formats will be viewable by contemporary technology?

This isn't to say that other formats shouldn't be used or improved, but we have yet to see a medium that is as unfettered and easily used. It's hardly about nostalgia.

[kazinator]

Probably for the same reason we didn't replace books with microfilm, which began to be used commercially in the 1920's. And microfilm can be "decoded" using simple magnification. No issues of software compatibility with document formats and whatnot.