Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

As part of this year’s London Book Fair, taking place this week, there was a panel entitled “Digitise or Die: What is the Future of the Author?” Among the panelists was noted writer Margaret Atwood. The session has been written up by Tania Kindersley on the Guardian book blog as a entry entitled “The Death of the Book, Again.” Here’s a description of the seminar, taken from the London Book Fair’s website: “New technology is finally outstripping the revolution caused by the printing press. What is the future of the book? How do publishers take advantage of the new technology and protect the author’s interests at the same time? Are publishers dragging their heels in the face of the inevitable? How should writers respond to it? What are the new opportunities for writers in the electronic revolution? And how does all this affect the reader?”

During the seminar, it seems that Atwood made the usual points, such as eBooks will be good for reference material but not much else. She also criticizes the utility of eBooks, saying that they can’t be read in the bathtub. (Actually, I’d say that printed books — unless you want them ruined — are also pretty difficult to read in a bathtub). Of course, the dozens of things that eBooks can do, which print books cannot, doesn’t seem to get mentioned. Instead, the argument boiled down to the usual emotional tug of the object itself, with panelist Philip Zimbardo declaring about a book: “It’s something you hold, near to your heart.”

Actually, you hold a book near to your eyes, so it can be read. If you hold it near to your heart what you’re then doing is giving it a hug (which technically doesn’t count as reading). And when you give a book a hug, or show it love, you’re no more showing love to that physical thing than you are a photograph when you kiss a picture of a sweetheart. What you’re reacting to, when gazing a snapshot, is the subject of the picture and not the photograph itself. The same goes for books; it’s Fitzgerald’s words that touch us, and not necessarily the paper those words were printed on.

Kindersly, following up on Zimbardo’s comment, writes: “Books hold our personal histories; our bookshelves are the record of our lives. Our childish loves, our adolescent passions, our sudden crazy obsessions, are all up there in our room, to remind us.” Well, of course, some books perform that function. But so do CDs, TV shows and films, not to mention the memories of the adolescent passions and crazy obsessions themselves. Books are just one patch in the quilt of our personalities, but they’re not the entire blanket. Even Morrissey, a romantic bibliophile if there ever was one, said that there was more to life than books (although he was quick to add, “but not much more”). So the idea that any change in books will somehow leave a hole in ourselves is ridiculous. In fact, these changes have already occurred. Websites now hold our personal histories, and blogs are the record of our lives. Besides, more people take showers these days than baths.

The Guardian: The Death of the Book, Again