Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

SF writer and tech-guru Cory Doctorow has a really interesting essay in Locus Magazine’s March issue entitled “You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen,” which talks about how, even though the future will bring the adoption of “super-portable screens” which will be heavily used, “most of us won’t spend most of our time reading anything recognizable as a book on them.” Doctorow admits that this is obviously contradictory (after all, if everyone starts using Tablet PC-like devices to keep in touch, read websites and compose blogs, why wouldn’t they also use them to read narrative fiction?), he explains this away by defining the novel as something which is — by its very nature — digitally undigestible. “The novel is an invention, one that was engendered by technological changes in information display, reproduction, and distribution,” writes Doctorow. “The cognitive style of the novel is different from the cognitive style of the legend. The cognitive style of the computer is different from the cognitive style of the novel.”

I can see Doctorow’s overall point, but the problem with his argument is that he’s referring to the Novel like it’s a static, regulated thing; as if each novel were the same in content, tone and construction. And if he’s talking about thick classics like Tom Jones or Vanity Fair, then I can of course see his point that a computer device is not contemplative enough for a meandering, slowly unfolding bildungsroman. But what about shorter, experimental novels? Or else books that just beg to be jumped in and out of at different points, like Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet? This classic book (it’s not really a novel) is constructed in short, pithy bursts; there’s not much of a narrative, and each of its sections is self-contained; reading it is not unlike reading a blog. And there are thousands of similar works that would hardly suffer from being read on a screen. Indeed, quite the opposite: they’re actually perfect for electronic reading.

Not to mention, of course, the fact that none of this takes into account the new kinds of fiction and literature that has yet to be written. Throughout his commentary Doctorow keeps a running list of all of the other things he has been doing while writing (“In the ten minutes since I typed the first word in the paragraph above, I’ve checked my mail, deleted two spams, checked an image-sharing community I like,” etc.). His attention, like the attention of anyone who lives a wired, online life, has been shattered and now exists in a dozen places at once, most of which are represented by the digital boxes on his computer screen (and the white earbud headphones in his ears). Gone are the days when a writer like Proust worked in a cork-lined room in order to keep the sound of the world away from his ears (and his concentration). The kids now reading Doctorow, and who will become the next generation of writers, will have been raised on computers, blogs, MP3s, RSS, iPods, Myspace and YouTube, and the works they create will have this electronic DNA woven throughout them. Because of this, these new works of fiction will most likely be perfectly suited to an electronic screen. The same way that all authors must be men of their time, in our rapidly approaching digital future a new generation of writers will create computer-influenced works whose words will belong on a screen the same way that the words of Thackery and Fielding once belonged on the page.

Cory Doctorow: You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen