This Op-Ed piece by James Gleick from last Sunday's New York Times provided a nice counterpoint to the article on screen-based literacy that I blogged about last week. Acknowledging that the role of the book as "the world’s pre-eminent device for the storage and retrieval of knowledge" may be ending in this increasingly digital world, Gleick posits a new role for the book "as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms."
He talks about the unique immersion in a narrative that is the essence of reading a book, the feeling of possessing and being possessed by a book that a reader like me finds impossible to replicate when getting information via a screen.
Gleick says this not out of sentimentality, but because of his view that the book will continue to have utility even when all information is digitized because as he puts it "it is a technology that works." He writes
"As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars....It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover"
Thank you Mr. Gleick for helping me see why my inchoate feeling that digital technology does not mean the end of the book is not just wishful thinking!
This was really interesting, so I link to your entry and the NYT today.
Posted by: Redondowriter | December 04, 2008 at 09:53 PM