[raddan]

> I don’t have the same thing for the ebooks I’ve read, and it gives me a weird feeling of amnesia.

I have a similar feeling when it comes to my music collection, some of which includes rare recordings. I ripped everything and have it at my fingertips on my phone, computer, etc, but I often find that I’ve forgotten when I have. When I was younger, I kept it all on a shelf. Browsing one’s music collection (or a friend’s) was always a pleasant way to spend an evening socializing. With apps, that is all gone. I have recurring fantasies about building some kind of physical music player, with cartridges that one could insert into a “player”. The actual music would be stored centrally, but this would be more like a mnemonic device to make browsing more enjoyable. I could imagine a similar thing for ebooks.

[Carrok]

Maybe the cartridges could even contain the actual music. On an engraving that stores the audio information perhaps. This engraving could be played back and reproduce the audio. It probably would never work though.

[cadamsdotcom]

“The actual music” is just so hard to contain. A recording of a performance - is that the actual music? Or is the actual music the playing back of the recording with speakers and audio? Will all that be in the box? Or is it the entire band in your proposed box, ready to play whenever you pull it from the shelf? Or is it what you hear in your head in the shower?

Sounds like it’ll be quite the innovation.

[dhosek]

Hmm, I’m thinking that for this to work best, it really should be some sort of round medium, a disk or a cylinder of some sort. I think disks might be best because then you could engrave the music on both sides of the disk and more easily store them in protective containers on shelving units.