Losing Signal

How efficient a signal do physical books send anyway? If the point is to let people know what you read or that you know about a concept, does possessing lots of books do that all that well?

I argued that once people know that you are only keeping physical books as a signal of how interesting a person you are, the signal will change to one that you are pretentious. Since, if you were genuinely interested in books, ebooks are more efficient.

Stuart says we read Harry Potter in public because we want people to see that, and so start a conversation. Books do have a habit of starting conversation. Last year, when I was reading 'The History of Western Philosophy' by Bertrand Russel, I definitely got a few looks and a number of people sitting next to on the plane used to comment. Admittedly, it travelled with me on a number of occasions because it is not the shortest book in the world. I would argue strongly that I wasn't reading it as a signal, but some people might.

Thing is, ebooks provide a more efficient way to read, but there are also more efficient ways to signal. If signalling is about finding people with similar interests, then there are lots of ways to do that with social media and the internet.

You can set up a virtual library to share what you are reading, what you want to read, and what you thought of the things you did read. You can write a blog. You can (though I know nothing about it) tweet what you are reading.

Admittedly, that doesn't work at a coffee shop when you are hoping the attractive girl across from you shares and interest in random books like 'The Red Queen', '1984' or 'The Power of One', and you sit in such a way that curious girl that she is... she can't help but notice, one thing leads to another and after furious online chatting you fall in love.

So yes, maybe ebooks will have to have covers that change depending on what you are reading? Why not?

But if the signal you want to send out is not about what you are reading, but how big your library is. Sorry, your time is up when everyone's library includes every books ever written.