With books, magazines, and newspapers flocking to iPad with hopes of a new working model, and the calls for the death of print that feel like echoes of the 90s, I present a quick, non-exhaustive, biased, romanticized list…

iPad newspapers, magazines, and books can’t

1. swat flies
2. be stored for 20 years for the next generation to uncover in the attic
3. be stored for 100 years for the next 5 generations to uncover in the attic
4. be left at the cottage to separate ‘real books’ from ‘vacation books’
5. be left on an airplane to dispose evidence of having ever read ‘US Weekly’
6. be thrown by menacing delivery boys
7. be fetched by good dogs in the morning
8. have the comics reproduced onto silly putty
9. be used for paper mâché
10. be clipped into pieces for science projects
    
11. be framed on the day of birth for a baby
12. be put into a time-capsule for posterity (and still work when opened)
13. cumulate on coffee tables to alert their ‘unread’ status
14. impress visitors and advertise how well read one is
15. invoke discussion when seen at a dinner party on the shelf
16. be loaned to a friend who loans it to a friend who loans it to a friend…
17. have inscriptions that will someday mean nothing—or everything
18. get dog-eared from ritualistic readings
19. be highlighted, underlined, and annotated in the margins
20. be resold to used bookshops
21. lay dormant in a used bookshop awaiting rediscovery
22. store brilliant, orange fall leaves in-between the pages
23. yellow with age
24. be laid out as an all-purpose disposable table cloth (ie for carving pumpkins on)
25. serve as an improvised umbrella
26. be crumpled up and used as a basketball
27. be crumpled up and used as packing filler
28. be clipped and hung in a shop window as validation
29. flaunt religions and political leanings to other straphangers
30. be conspicuously wrapped for easy guessing under the Christmas tree
31. have the letters used in ransom letters
32. be referred to as ‘in the stacks’
33. hang on those fun kendo-esque newspaper holders at libraries
34. be framed to celebrate elections & interstellar travels
35. hold fries or fish & chips
36. catch errant spray mount and paint
37. show off ‘New Yorker’ status on crowded subway cars via mad folding skills
38. display images bigger than your head
39. be read by flashlight under the covers (backlights are no fun)
40. wrap fresh fish
41. help start a campfire
42. signal the ‘other’ in a blind date at a public space
43. smell of ink and promise when first cracked open
44. be cracked open (and still work)
45. get that musty old paper smell
46. be used for collages
47. be pinned on a bulletin board
48. have pull-out posters tipped-in
49. be stacked atop a new poster to flatten it
50. become a loudspeaker