Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

In an article with Reuters, Steven Spielberg discusses a number of things, including the rise of watching movies on handheld devices such as an iPod video. He’s fairly dismissive of this, and defends the traditional practice of going to the movies. Spielberg is quoted in the article as saying, “I don’t think movie theaters will ever go away,” and on this I completely agree. However, in a world of on-demand everything, the need for people to go to movie theaters will decrease significantly because it’s very expensive, quite often is not an enjoyable experience, and people have shown they don’t mind waiting three months for the DVD. Looked at through the “Print is Dead” prism, I see this as being analogous to books and bookstores. Books and bookstores will never completely go away, either, but their significance will certainly diminish — with the rise of digital reading and delivery — as will their popularity, and large numbers of consumers reading books and going to bookstores will be the exception rather than the rule. In fact, it reminds me of a line in a very early Hitchcock film (Rich and Strange, from 1931), where a bored married couple are looking for a way to spend their evening. The wife says to the husband, “Do you want to go to the pictures or listen to the wireless?” The way she says this makes it sound as if those are the only two choices for entertainment that exist. Well, that may have been true seventy-five years ago, but for a couple today, with Tivo, Netflix, satellite radio and the Internet which acts as a portal to just about any form of entertainment that exists (music, film, literature, television, not to mention the ability to Skype anybody on the planet), and which makes this material available immediately, the opportunities for entertainment have exploded. The days of having only one or two choices are long gone.

Spielberg calls for responsible TV