Where this idea comes up in the material {#usage} The Lindy effect appears as part of a case for physical books. Alex Wieckowski, creator of Alex & Books, explains why he still favors physical books over Kindle — and one of his reasons is that he expects books to stick around for a long time. He invokes the Lindy argument directly: anything that has survived thousands of years will likely survive thousands more [^31831469-905f-5b87-a856-bb53d4eabafe@0]. The reasoning pairs with his other arguments for physical books — spatial memory (you remember where a passage sat on the page), the distinct feel and cover of each book versus Kindle's uniform experience — and with one caveat: the prediction holds until something like brain-computer interfaces changes what reading even means. ### How to use this idea When you're weighing formats or tools in your reading workflow, the Lindy effect is a heuristic for trusting longevity: a format that has persisted for centuries (the printed book) is a safer bet than a newer one whose staying power is unproven. It's used here as an argument about the future of reading, not as a claim about which tool to use today — the material still happily combines physical books, Kindle, audio, and AI companions [^31831469-905f-5b87-a856-bb53d4eabafe@0]. - The Lindy effect: things that have already survived a very long time are likely to keep surviving. - In this material it's Alex Wieckowski's argument for the longevity of physical books alongside his spatial-memory and reading-experience reasons. - It comes with a caveat: the prediction holds until a technology like Neuralink changes what reading means.