This chapter examines e-book realness in terms of identity and love: e-books shared or not shared, displayed or not displayed, and made a cherished part of the reader’s personal history or barred from such status. It examines aspects of display and cultural capital in forms specific to digital and forms specific to print. It investigates how stereotypes (of some readers as unqualified and some reading practices as inferior) and assumptions (including tropes of furtive reading) interact with existing narratives of literary decline, technology as a threat to culture, and women as incompetent readers. It explores love for reading devices as well as love for print, and how identity as a bibliophile proves compatible with e-reading. E-books are only sometimes real, but it is their very flexibility that makes them so valuable to book lovers. They can be public or private, permanent or ephemeral, valuable or valueless, intimate or distant, depending on one’s usage and settings but also on one’s idea of what an e-book is; and, as demonstrated, that idea is highly adaptable and at least sometimes under one’s conscious control.

Progress to date has varied between different sub-disciplines and this final chapter will touch on common themes throughout. Psychology as a discipline has much to gain from the digital age, especially following the mass adoption of smartphohes. Software development is an entire discipline within itself, but even comparatively simple smartphone apps that collect minimal data can be highly revealing of everyday behaviour. However, we face numerous challenges that go beyond technological development. Some of these issues pretain to theorising and replication, while others concern the scientific climate in which we operate. Most of these issues are not unique to research involving new technology, but they become more apparent as the speed of innovation accelerates. As a result, we appear to carry very little understanding forward to the next mass-adopted innovation.

By reflecting on past successes and failures, this chapter provides guidance on how psychological research can become more productive and break free from tired cycles of research. More importantly, if psychological science can re-align existing priorities and embrace the digital age, it has nothing to lose and everything to gain.