Oh, how I’ll miss horses, buggies and piles of dung in the streets. Driving a Tin Lizzie is nothing like holding the reins in your hand or hearing the clop-clop of the horseshoes striking the pavement. Model Ts and brethern will never take over the world’s roads unless they are more like buggies.
Scarcasm alert! I’m thinking the above in reading about physical books vs. the e variety. Here’s a snippet from Observer writer Robert McCrum via the Guardian Unlimited in the U.K.:
There is every reason to want to see the printed word enhanced by something more in tune with current information technology, but until the geeky entrepreneurs of MIT, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the rest can come up with something that looks like a book, feels like a book and behaves like a book, those who handle such items every day, and marvel over the magical integration of print, paper and binding, will probably continue to read and enjoy books much as Caxton and Gutenberg did.
Robert McCrum is far from a complete Luddite–he does acknowledge advances such as E Ink, and gives the format-confined Sony Reader far much more credit than it deserves. In fact, his article is mostly upbeat about e-books’ prospects.
But I’d hope that he wouldn’t get too caught up in “feel” of issues. If so–I’m not sure–he might be a little premature in anticipating the preferences of others. How the devil could he read the minds of young people growing up without p-books, alas, being that important in their lives? The typical U.S. teenager is not marvelling so much about the ink-paper-cardboard trinity. At least Robert McCrum was careful enough to use a restrictive clause to modify “those,” so maybe he’s not off target anyway.
Even among the upper classes, p-books and printed text in general may not matter as much as they used to be. Just the other day, as noted on an education-related list, a writer in the New York Times was talking about forsaking reading material for his video iPod.
Am I happy about this trend? No. What’s more, I myself hope that p-books will be around a long time. But I also remember all the schoolchildren with backs injured from heavy book bags, and the paucity of good libraries and bookstores in remote parts of Appalachia. Those negative are like the stench of the dung from the horses. Good riddance! Paul Jones at the University of North Carolina has even noted that the odor of old books is really one of rot.
I myself like the feel of books and, in moderation, even the smell–forever linked in my mind with the glories of reading. But I’ll also welcome the greater variety of titles that e-books will allow; and if exposed to decent reading hardware and e-formats better than the miserable PDF variety so common at the University of Chicago, young people may no longer care quite so much about paper books. E-books are like solid-state radios and cellphones. The sound may not be optimal, but the convenience factor wins out over the better sound of the older technology–well, “better” if you do believe the vacuum-tube snobs.
Just as some people fondly collect old vacuum-tube audio gear, maybe the same will apply to p-books. Although his observations are hardly original, I love the assessment of Jacob Weisberg, a Slate editor–as summed up by Robert McCrumb:
He told The Observer that what the market needs is ‘a reading device the size of a paperback with a good screen and long battery life that can download book, newspaper and magazine pages’. He adds that: ‘It should also have a wireless web connection and software that allows you to listen to an audio version and readily switch back and forth between reading and being read to. As with the iPod, most of the technology to do this already exists and is waiting for someone to market it brilliantly.’ Weisberg, a passionate bibliophile who delights in trawling secondhand bookshops for modern first editions, concedes that a book is a lovely thing and believes that hardback books will become more like illuminated manuscripts after Gutenberg. ‘You will keep in your home only ones you find attractive, or have a sentimental connection to. Owning printed books will eventually become synonymous with collecting them.’
And here’s yet another comparision–between future p-book use and today’s buggy rides in Central Park.
While I want paper books to hang around a long time, I doubt they will be the predominant medium for reading book-length text in the far future, no more than horses are today the prevailing mode of transportation. As imperfect as the iLiad, the Sony Reader, the Jinke machines and the other e-readers are–well, here’s a belated New Year’s toast to the new Tin Lizzies!
(Thanks to Murray Altheim for spotting the clip on the Guardian site.)
