I was a philosophy major in college, and one of my most memorable debates with a classmate had to do with the relationship between information and the form in which it is presented. He argued, rather absurdly I thought, that a computerised version of a book bore no relationship whatsoever to the original book itself. To him, the form was entirely integral to the essence of the thing, and to change its form was to create something entirely different.

After many years observing the evolution of various media, I've come to agree with this point, or at least a key part of it. Different types of media function differently, and even if the content is similar the form matters quite a lot. People ask me all the time if we're going to do a print magazine at New West (yes), and whether the print publication will be a paper version of what we do online (no). They also ask me whether I think newspapers are dead (no), and whether e-books and ubiquitous internet access will ultimately make paper obsolete (no).

I was prompted to think about these questions once again by Jeff Jarvis, who writes a very provocative blog called Buzzmachine and is usually very insightful, but in the case of his recent post entitled The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book I think he totally misses the point. The book, he starts out, is "an outmoded means of communicating information," and then notes that it's not alone among media that are faced with "better means of doing what they do." But to even frame the question in this way is a remarkably one-dimensional way of thinking about it for a savvy media guy like Jeff.

Books, for starters, are about a lot more than "communicating information." I like having books around because I find them pretty, for example. Their somewhat random presence is a reminder of things past, almost always in a nice way. A well-made book has a very pleasant feel, a tactile sensation that makes you want to hold it. The words themselves are only a part of it.

And when we think about the words, the "information", it's hard to separate them from the way in which they are being read. Books are usually read in a different physical context, and in a different mental space, than other types of reading material. They are, at their best, things that transport you, take you to another world, probably one far, far away from the frenetic information exchange that is the internet.

Mr Jarvis gripes that books represent "lecture media" – the bad old kind of media in which the professionals tell it to the laymen, as opposed to the good new kind of media that is a conversation among peers. Now Mr Jarvis is an evangelist of conversation media, but still: lectures have their place. I'm not looking to have a conversation with Dostoevsky, or Don DeLillo, or even a great non-fiction writer like Robert Caro. I'm looking to be carried off by their words, enchanted by their artistry, and the fewer digital distractions and yammering commenters, the better.

Now there are undoubtedly profound issues facing the publishing industry, and how it will survive and transform its antiquated self, and whether Google Print is a good thing, and how and when effective electronic tablets will emerge, and all that. I have no objection to the idea of a digital library that contains all books ever written, and makes books part of the internet search. If Google, or anyone else, can succeed in its mission of organising all of the world's information and making it accessible, great.

But the great narrative will always have its place, or at least I hope it will. If technology can make it cheaper, that's nice, though cheaper isn't always the ultimate virtue (people do still buy hardbacks even though paperbacks are less expensive). And one of the bigger mistakes one can make in considering the transformation of the media world is to assume that new things – participatory media, search-based information retrieval, instant access to information – will replace all that came before. Old media never die, they just become less important relative to other things. The book is not dead. Long live the book.

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