Came right about the same time as birth of the eBook. I still think the idea will fly, eventually — we just have to wait until us old fogies are bred out of the system and those smaller humanoids with the unusually dextrous opposing digits finally rule a world full of tiny, glowing screens and flickering interest.

There are many subtle, minor disadvantages to e-books. For example, they’re expensive. The hardware costs hundreds of dollars. Worse, books tend not to be hugely discounted in electronic form. The paperback version of “The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time,” by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, costs $11.20 on Amazon.com. The same book in electronic format on eBooks.com costs $9.95. You save $1.25. The reason is that the value of a book lies mostly in the intellectual property, not the wood pulp that constitutes the physical book. So e-books aren’t cheaper.

Another huge barrier to the growth of the e-book market is that everyone already has alternatives. You can read written content on your PC — in fact, you’re doing it right now — on tablet PCs, laptops, cell phones and PDAs.

These are all real, but minor, hurdles e-book makers would have to clear in order to make e-books a major gadget category. But none of them really matter, because there is one unavoidable and fatal fact that will kill the nascent e-book market in its cradle: People love paper books.

In other words, e-books are not, and cannot be, superior to what they are designed to replace. …And that’s the simple reason why e-books will never even come close to replacing paper books.

Whoa, Tex. “Never”’s a long time, there. EBooks can indeed be superior, especially for non-fiction and information. They just need to be easily annotatable. And fully searchable and cross-referenced. And ownable. And secure. And cheap. And fast. And clear. And and and. But it will happen.