A few shows back, the Twit crew—Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, and some other guests—praised the Amazon Kindle ebook while simultaneously predicting ebooks would never take off. The gist of their thinking: We never see any Kindles anywhere.

On the other side of the equation is Steve Rubel, who believes we are but six short years away from seeing the death of most tangible media and the serious decline of any that haven’t perished. This would, of course, include books.

The reality is somewhere in between.

It’s absurd to believe that Borders and Barnes & Noble stores will all be shuttered by 2014 and that Amazon’s book business will have gone 95-100% digital. On the other hand, I was surprised at the number of Kindles I spied while vacationing in Honolulu last week. At the Hilton Hawaiian Village pools and the beaches at Waikiki I counted at least a dozen Kindles (not counting my own) in the hands of sunbathers and vacationers.

Of course, that’s twelve Kindles compared to probably a couple thousand paperbacks and print magazines (along with the occasional hardcover) people were reading on their towels and beach chairs .

I admit to a love-hate relationship with my Kindle. It’s a wonderful device, as was the Sony Reader that I’m embarrassed to admit I left on a plane a few months back. But that’s part of the problem. It’s no big deal if I leave a paperback on the plane; I just plunk down another $6 or $7 and replace it. Replacing the Kindle or Sony is a $350 investment.

Then there’s the moment of hesitation in taking the Kindle to the beach. What if I doze off and drop it in the sand? With a paperback, again, no worries, but it could be spell disaster for the Kindle.

My paperback never runs out of power. I can make a note in the margin of a page of a paperback. Then there was the section of a book I’d finished on my Kindle that I wanted to reference in a talk. With a paperback, I could flip to the part of the book where it appeared and flip through pages until I find it. There’s no search function on ebooks and turning pages is a slower, more laborious process. Finally, as an author, I wonder how I’ll autograph a digital book.

On the love side, digital books are cheaper, I get instant gratification (read about the book, buy it, and be reading it all within about 60 seconds), it’s greener and it takes up far less room in my briefcase (a vital consideration for us road warriors).

It’s this balance of issues that convinces me that the digital-versus-paper argument is specious. Well beyond 2012, book shops in airports and beach resort hotels will continue to stock James Patterson and John Kellerman and Patricia Cornwall for travelers who need to something to read while the uptake of the Kindle will continue to climb (there is, after all, a 4-6-week backorder for the device at Amazon). It’s all about coexistence, not replacement. Each format will find its place.