Over the past few weeks I've come across several though-provoking blog posts about ebooks and how they relate to, or maybe even change, our concept of what a book really is. I put them aside for a rainy day, and since it is pouring outside it seemed like the right day to re-read and share them.
"Will Books Survive - A Scorecard" by Everything Is Miscellaneous author David Weinberger, asks whether there is anything about the value that paper books (which he calls pbooks) provide that cannot be replaced by ebooks when (according to his hypothesis) -
"...at some point we will have ebooks (which may be distinct hardware or be software running in something other device we carry around), with paper-quality displays that are full-color and multimedia, that are fully on the Net, with software that lets us interact with the book and with other readers, that are a part of the standard outfitting of citizens, and within a physical environment that provides ubiquitous Net connectivity."
Weinberger lists about a dozen attributes of books, and gives his views as to which of these will be better served by ebooks and which by pbooks. His conclusion? Pbooks will continue to provide greater value than ebooks as aesthetic, sentimental, and historic objects; as source of specialized content (Weinberger implies this is particularly true for older books that are unlikely to be digitized); as religious artifacts; and as a reading vehicle that promotes singlemindedness and focus where ebooks lend themselves to distractions.
He gives the edge to pbooks in the areas of readability (noting the ability to customize font and typesize for example), convenience, annotatability (particularly given the ability to share annotations and commentary), and affordability (given the tiny marginal cost of replicating and distributing ebooks) but notes that as what he calls a "social flag" and I would call a status symbol the two formats have different but equal value with ebooks lending themselves to being an indicator of intellectualism, taste, etc. in the world of online social networks, but not replacing the ability of a physical book on a shelf in your living room or on your lap to convey these same messages in the physical world.
The point that I found most interesting, however, relates to the value of books as posessions. Weinberg refers to a very interesting and compelling argument made by Cory Doctorow that I also came across in a link on The Travelin' Librarian blog. The link was to a transcript of a speech titled An Elegy for the Book given by Doctorow at the National Reading Summit and reprinted on theVarsity.ca. You really should read the whole speech, but I'll try to summarize it here.
He starts by giving an incredibly evocative description of "the people of the book"...
"We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today." [It sure describes me and many of my family members, friends and colleagues!]
...and goes on to talk about the profound differences between truly owning a book and having a "license" to use it as is the model for many e-books. Interestingly, Doctorow's argument is not about the differences between paper and digital media but about the different ownership models pertaining to each. As he notes, one can own a book on CD as surely as one printed on paper...but that when one "purchases" the use of an e-book one is merely getting the ability to use the book in accordance with the terms of a license agreement that can run to tens of thousands of words, usually on a device that offers its own technical limitations. Very different from a physical book that can be passed from person to person at will and is open to use by anyone who is literate in the language in which it was written!
Doctorow talks about his realization that -
"...the most important part of the experience of a book is knowing that it can be owned. That it can be inherited by your children, that it can come from your parents. That libraries can archive it, they can lend it, that patrons can borrow it. That the magazines that you subscribe to can remain in a mouldering pile of National Geographics in someone’s attic so you can discover it on a rainy day—and that they don’t disappear the minute you stop subscribing to it. It’s a very odd kind of subscription that takes your magazines away when you’re done [as is the case with most institutional subscriptions with Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of medical and scientific journals]."
His conclusion -
"Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself. We must stop them from being allowed to do it. The library of tomorrow should be better than the library of today. The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug. We all know this. It’s time we stop pretending that the pirates of copyright are right. These people were readers before they were publishers before they were writers before they worked in the legal department before they were agents before they were salespeople and marketers. We are the people of the book, and we need to start acting like it."
Amen!
Why I Hate E-readers from the Fast Company blog reaches a similar conclusion by focusingon e-reader technology rather than the ownership question. The post raises concerns about the perpetual changes in technology that make an e-book distributed for one device useless when that technology is superceded and highlights all the reasons that a paperback book is superior to one on an e-reade (you can lend it to a friend, you can read it in the bathtub...) Like Doctorow the author isn't as concerned about the innate qualities of digital vs. physical media as about the means of distribution, and in fact come down in support of e-booksprovided they can be read on multipurpose devices like tablet PCs and provided the cost of ownership is favorable.
The bottom line for all of the writers referenced above is that e-books are here to stay, even if the ways in which the are "sold" and distributed needs to change, which is why I found this last post so interesting.
In Forget E-Books: The Future is Much More Interesting Adam Penenberg argues that e-books are just a step on a path to an entirely new format where
"Instead of stagnant words on a page we will layer video throughout the text, add photos, hyperlink material, engage social networks of readers who will add their own videos, photos, and wikified information so that these multimedia books become living, breathing, works of art. They will exist on the Web and be ported over to any and all mobil devices that can handle multimedia, laptops, netbooks, and beyond"
He goes on to say that he is not predicting the end of immersive reading, but rather that the experience of reading text will co-exist with "other literary, visual and auditory modes of expression" and that "Suddenly mere words on a page may feel a bit lifeless."
I have to admit I felt a shiver of self-recognition when I read his penultimate paragraph -
"Now, I realize that many can't imagine life without a good book to curl up with, but these may be the same people who might have thought they'd never forgo the pop and hiss of vinyl records, jettison the typewriter for a laptop, spring for high speed Internet access, or buy a BlackBerry or iPhone. In an earlier age they might have even resisted adopting the Qwerty keyboard (what's wrong with ink and feathered quill anyway?) And sure, there will be some books around. After all, even today there exist vinyl records--just not a lot of them."
While I am a great consumer of blogs and other digital media, one of my greatest pleasures is losing myself in the pages of a good old-fashioned paper book or magazine and I haven't even made the leap to audio books so Penenberg's prediction that books as we know them will be the equivalent of parchment scrolls or vinyl records sends chills down my spine.
And yet...part of me knows that he is probably right. Now I just need to find a way to get as enthusiastic as he is in his conclusion -
"As the author of three books, I'm excited by the possibilities. Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding newspapers, magazines, and books, I think all writers should be optimistic. Because where there's chaos, there's opportunity."
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