Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

John Lanchester had a very interesting essay on the Guardian website recently entitled “It’s a Steal,” which talked about the problem of establishing a worth for literary content on the Web. Setting the stage, Lanchester writes: “The revolutionary impact of the internet on the music and film business is plain to see. Now it’s the turn of the printed word. The question is simple, and far-reaching: what’s going to happen to books and to the people who write them?” The essay is long, and makes many good points, encompassing everything from the origin of copyright law to the recent efforts by Google to digitize books. Basically, though, Lanchester hopes that this new era of digital delivery will lead to a re-opening of the question of copyright in general, with the Web and the battles now being fought finally righting the wrongs which occurred in previous years. However, in the end, Lanchester relies on the usual pro-book arguments, and here’s where he — for me — strikes the wrong chord: “Personally, I think that books are going to be OK, for one main reason: books are not only, or not primarily, the information they contain. A book is also an object, and a piece of technology; in fact, a book is an extraordinarily effective piece of technology, portable, durable, expensive to pirate but easy to use, not prone to losing all its data in crashes, and capable of taking an amazing variety of beautiful forms.” I think what Lanchester cites as positives are in fact negatives. As a thing of beauty, in the opinion of most people, a Modern Library edition of The Razor’s Edge will win over an electronic reading device loaded with an eBook of The Razor’s Edge. But when looked at in terms of technology, there’s no comparison; even the most rudimentary electronic reading experience offers dozens more features and overall utility than a print book does. So to make the argument that books are great technology (and don’t crash and don’t lose data, etc.) is the supreme kind of silliness, not to mention it becomes ultimately defensive in nature (because instead of saying what books will do, you end up trumpeting all the things they won’t do). And I also think that, in the scope of the discussion now occuring in the “print is dead” debate, books are indeed primarily the information they contain. After all, isn’t that what makes us choose one over the other?

The Guardian: It’s a Steal