Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

When I was in high school, twenty years ago, I put together a literary magazine that featured poetry, stories and artwork from my friends and other people at the school. One of the poems was my own, but I signed it using just my initials. It was a love poem titled “To L.B.” This caused a minor scandal for about ten minutes as people tried to figure out who the writer was and who the subject was (it wasn’t too hard). This and the stories I wrote for the school newspaper were the extent of my media exposure in high school. At the time, though, it felt like a lot. But in terms of today’s generation of Digital Natives, I would have been considered a hermit. New York Magazine’s cover story this week, entitled “Say Everything,” takes a long look at this new computer-powered generation who began living their lives online at an early age — usually pre-teen — and who have only shared more and more from there. And this goes well beyond the occasional Myspace page; these are lives documented on a daily basis almost from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed, digitally preserved in the amber of pixels and mouseclicks. Remember that high school yearbook photo that you hate? Well, these kids will remember a lot more than that.

In New York Magazine’s listing of the various changes between this generation and previous ones, the first one is “THEY THINK OF THEMSELVES AS HAVING AN AUDIENCE.” This is pretty different than previous generations who considered themselves an audience. In terms of publishing and the “print is dead” debate, today’s kids are not going to want to pick up a big book and spend hours in a corner silently, passively reading. Why in the world would they do that? It’s not interactive. They can’t share the experience with their friends. There’s no way to change the book to suit their own tastes. Instead, they’re going to ditch the hardback and head over to Facebook. The publishing industry needs to realize this, and it needs to also find a way to get to these kids by making content available in a way that will first reach them (i.e. digitally) and then will give them the tools to interact with it and share it (post excerpts on their Myspace pages, e-mail chapters to friends, IM paragraphs across class, etc.). If not, there are dozens of ways this generation will choose to spend their time, and none of them will involve books.

From the story: “Right now the big question for anyone of my generation seems to be, endlessly, ‘Why would anyone do that?’ This is not a meaningful question for a 16-year-old. The benefits are obvious: The public life is fun. It’s creative. It’s where their friends are. It’s theater, but it’s also community: In this linked, logged world, you have a place to think out loud and be listened to, to meet strangers and go deeper with friends. And, yes, there are all sorts of crappy side effects: the passive-aggressive drama (’you know who you are!’), the shaming outbursts, the chill a person can feel in cyberspace on a particularly bad day. There are lousy side effects of most social changes (see feminism, democracy, the creation of the interstate highway system). But the real question is, as with any revolution, which side are you on?”

New York Magazine: Say Everything