“Books are being replaced by reading,“ to borrow a phrase from Jack Shafer. Digital technology “distances us from the old magic conjured by books” by giving us better ways to get what’s inside them.
Of course the tactile experience is lost, but that’s only a sentimental attachment — not without genuine value, but not without considerable influence from purely subjective historical and sensory biases either.
We seem to be at the same stage of this discussion that we were at about music when the iPod really took off: we’re finally certain that the new hardware will be with us for a while, but not quite ready to let go of the old, and not sure what implications the change in distribution and storage will have on the content itself. I was still buying lots of CDs in 2005 — I “liked the experience” of looking for them in music stores and displaying them at home — but that ended abruptly.
I’m still buying a lot of books (almost all used, for a few bucks each) because I’m poor and haven’t invested in a digital reader yet, but based on my shift in music consumption I have to assume that my book habits might change pretty suddenly, pretty soon — which isn’t to say I’ll completely stop buying them. There are books that are about more than just reading.
For example, a few months ago I stumbled on a used, two volume edition of Plato’s complete works — in inferior translations I struggle with, and with expired copyrights that enable them to be available freely online. But that big old block of atoms pays me back in the form of inspiration, decoration, and meditation, even if it’s an inefficient way to store and find information.
Pertaining to the points of inspiration and meditation, I often find myself pacing around, trying to generate words and ideas; picking up books, physically looking for pieces of information and insight, turning and scanning pages can occupy the conscious mind just long enough to clear the head of whatever’s blocking the way. The manner of interaction in those instances is more important than the content, so I expect I’ll always have books — but then again, I can get rid of 99% of my current library and still enjoy the same tactile benefits with a few essential, personal selections.
Now I don’t want to float too many predictions but it’s worth reading Kevin Kelly’s description of the sensory experience of his own fresh physical book — exhibiting his proposal that embodiment is a quality that’s “better than free.” I wouldn’t be surprised to see a rise in “collectible” publishing, like the increase in vinyl record sales. Not an original suggestion but there it is anyway.
More interesting to me than buying and reading is the way books will be written.
Kelly developed What Technology Wants over the course of years putting ideas together on his not-quite-a-blog. I’ve noticed Eliezer Yudkowsky deliberately taking the same approach (to very difficult, complex subject matter); I did the same to develop my own book; Seth Godin’s Linchpin was largely composed of advice that first appeared on his blog. David Weinberger is currently taking a slightly different but related approach: not developing the content of his book on a blog, but thinking out loud about the process of writing it.
And it isn’t just the books themselves that are being developed in public, but their readerships — in some cases (e.g. Godin’s) consisting of a core group of fans who buy multiple gift or loaner copies, and are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to hear the author speak in person.
I’m not that kind of fan — at least not of Godin’s — but after following Kevin Kelly’s progress for years I’m intellectually and emotionally invested in his book. It’s as if I watched it grow up: I want to see it do well — and I’d love to own a physical embodiment to display and thumb through from time to time.
I’m not suggesting this is an original line of thought. I’m just trying to probing and re-synthesizing, hoping to turn over an insight…
There’s a lot of brain power going towards figuring this stuff out. Godin notably announced he’d published his last traditional book and would move on to explore new formats. I’m also thinking about bookfuturism, recently described by Tim Carmody as “not just about books as such, but a kind of aesthetic and culture of reading, literacy, history, in connection with (only rarely in opposition to) other kinds of media culture.”
Note that we’re not just developing more formats and distribution channels for books as we know them; we’re reconceiving what we mean when we say “book” — perhaps from something completely static to something more dynamic, or at least from something anticipated and aimed for to something that’s gathered up and left behind as a landmark, like an Inukshuk…
I don’t know.
Unlike a lot of what I write, there’s almost nothing abstract about this for me, or you. We’re both engaged in an experiment by writing and reading this.
We’re into a phase in which every act of writing and reading is affected by uncertainty and speculation.
The sooner we discover opportunities and make all the necessary mistakes, the sooner we can get back to stable traditions — albeit different traditions than we have now.
