I agree. It's silly to compare the two forms just because they both are a container for content. We should be asking about the differences and the benefits in an honest way so we can better understand how we can fully explore and experiment with both forms. Don't forget that books at one point were considered a "new medium" and it has been a dynamic form that has evolved ever since the first books- new papers, new bindings, new tabs, etc.

I personally think that e-books will expand the way we look at books. Whenever a new tool or new technology allows us to put content into a new form or medium it frees the established form from the banal practical uses of the form.

Whenever I hear some of the emotional arguments in support of "saving" the printed book, it draws attention to the fact that these folks are actually limiting the scope and diversity of the book as an art form. If you only see a book as a container of words to be read you will never expand the form or give yourself the chance as an artist to explore and experiment with the form and the medium.

Thanks in large part to photography painters were able to push their medium into new directions:
"...photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of artistic expression, and rather than competing with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph... "Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked; "the Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph."
- Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism#cite_note-impressionism757-13