Analog Versus Digital: You can take it with you (much easier)
Over the weekend The New York Times had two stories about books, one that talked abut them in analog form and another that discussed their more recent digital transformation. Analog showed up in the form of a small piece on playwright Tom Stoppard, who lugs with him wherever he goes a box filled with books (pictured above). The article is drenched in nostalgia, describing a world of porters and ocean-liners. And maybe this is indeed Stoppard’s world (I can see him being like Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited, traveling with a myriad of monogrammed trunks). But for most us having a forty or fifty pound “portable bookshelf†isn’t an option (or even something we’d consider). Which is where electronic books come in very handy.
Which leads to the piece on digital books. Entitled “Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless,†the article is mostly a review of Amazon’s eBook device, the Kindle. But the writer also gets at the heart of the future of the book debate, and how our definition of exactly what a book is is beginning to change:
The object we are accustomed to calling a book is undergoing a profound modification as it is stripped of its physical shell. Kindle’s long-term success is still unknown, but Amazon should be credited with imaginatively redefining its original product line, replacing the book business with the reading business.
It’s not hard to connect the dots between Stoppard’s “portable bookshelf†and the Kindle’s ability to hold dozens of books at a time. And while Stoppard will probably never embrace an eBook device, there are thousands of other readers out there — drawn by the ability to carry one small device instead of all those books — who will.
I’ve had my Sony Reader for about a fortnight now. Without spending a penny I already have about 30 out-of-copyright books on it. The idea of going out with just one book seems crazy to me now. I was reading The Time Machine when I went to bed last night but when I got on the bus this morning I decided to read a Sherlock Holmes story. Once Stoppard has tried a decent ebook reader I’m sure that he’ll never go back to lugging all that paper around.
The first book I read as an e-book was the Da Vinci Code, and it was literally a page-turner. Even faster pages since I read it on a Palm Treo and the pages measured about 2.5 x 3.5!
I enjoyed it so much that I carried that little thing around in my pocket and every time I had a free moment, I read a few more pages.
It was the perfect medium for that book; and I think it is the right way to read any “throw away” book.
Now - before you get huffy - I NEVER throw a book away, but there are many I only read once (and give away), and to have an electronic copy is entirely appropriate.
I do feel however, that a book of poetry that I want to savor or something full of beautiful photographs just doesn’t fit the “venue,” if you know what I mean.
I’m just waiting now to find out when I will be able to read on my iPhone - however, Steve Job’s crack about no one readying anymore anyway irritated me! So time will tell!
Gail NK
http://www.business-strategies-etc.com
Dude I’m poor and travel / digital reading is expensive as well as a pure luxury. This is an upper-class movement, solely. That’s not how the world chages, its how the world gets divided.