Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

The Guardian book blog today had a funny post about a writer whose new laptop locked up, trapping her book inside the computer. True, for modern writers who write on laptops and computers, there is much ease is editing and composing, but there is of course a very large downside: one computer crash, and — unless you back-up your work relentlessly — your book may be gone. It reminds me of an episode of “Mad About You” from years ago, where Paul Reiser was screwing around on the roof of his Manhattan apartment building, and he knocked out the power. When he went back to his apartment, he was greeted by a gathering of angry tenants, including one who was writer. Apparently the writer had been working on his book, only to lose it during the blackout. He handed Reiser a floppy disc. “What’s this?” Reiser asked. “It used to be my novel,” the writer answered, “now it’s a coaster.” None of which means, of course, writers — or anyone, really — is going to go back to typewriters or pencil, but it does show that these technological marvels we deal with everyday are indeed just machines.

From the Guardian: “Your new Mac has died, you can’t access your hard drive, and the parts will take at least 10 days. Welcome to the modern novelist’s nightmare.”
The chime of death