Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

One of the most common themes that runs through the future of the book debate is, well, the idea of the book itself. Or rather, what a book is or should be. Most people consider a work like The Great Gatsby to be a book. After all, when someone says they love The Great Gatsby, chances are they’re talking about the book (I doubt they mean the film or the opera; I’ve seen both, and didn’t love either). And yet, what they’re really reacting to are Fitzgerald’s words and story, not the paper and glue of Scribner’s. Because of this, the real heart of Gatsby is in its amazing language and timeless theme, not the page. The spirit and magic of The Great Gatsby isn’t the book itself; the book is just a prop. Indeed, the page was just the first place we experienced Gatsby, so it has now become a physical beacon or marker for us to stare at and appreciate (not unlike the green light at the end of Daisy’s pier in the novel itself). And yet, when we talk, in the future of the book debate, about physical books going away people tend to think that, along with the paper and glue, we’re going to remove the stories and ideas as well. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. To compare this to music, it reminds of a syndrome I call “banditis.”

I would define “banditis” as being when all members of a band feel the need to all play on or contribute to a song (as if every song needs guitar, bass and drums). This tends to make all songs sound predictable; you end up waiting for the chorus and the guitar solo. The truth is, not all songs need a chorus — or even lyrics — not to mention guitar in the first place (let alone solos). In fact, my favorite record of the year so far is the recently released Heartcore by Wildbirds and Peacedrums (the video above is them performing the song “Doubt/Hope”). The “group” is made up of a young married couple from Sweden, and most often the songs consist of just the husband’s inventive drumming and the wife’s haunted and haunting vocals. Of course, if you were to describe this to most people they’d say, “Uh, just vocals and drums? Where’s the rest?” as if something were missing. People react this way because they’ve been conditioned to think of songs as being defined as something that has guitars, bass and drums (if not even more instruments, like piano, strings, and backup vocals). In fact, even when musicians appear with just an acoustic guitar it’s considered a bit of a novelty (remember MTV’s show Unplugged?). But, in my mind, the less adorned the music is, the more real and true it is. The same thing can happen with stories and ideas. The same way that a song can consist of just drums and vocals, a story can just be words on a screen. Songs can still be songs, even without guitars; and novels can still be novels, even without pages.

A quick word to say that I’m leaving today for a vacation; for the next week and a half I’ll be in Paris, Venice and Milan. And I’m not taking my laptop, so the only thing being dead I’m going to worry about for the next ten days will be various saints and artists (and, of course, the American dollar). But I’ll be back in late March with new posts. Thanks.

I’ll be on vacation for the next ten days or so, and will not be able to write new posts or update my blog while I’m away.

I’ll be back with new content and posts the week of the 20th.

Best,

Jeff

Hope everyone has a wonderful July 4th. Careful with the fireworks; they’re more dangerous than they look.

Quick technical note; I’m glad to say — thanks to the help of web designer extraordinaire Mary Elkins — that I have finally had the comments on this blog fixed. For a long time they weren’t working, and I very much appreciate the people who contacted me because they wanted to leave a comment and add to the discussion. This has finally been corrected, and I would really love to know what people think of my blog posts in the future, as well as your thoughts on the “print is dead” argument in general. As Anthony Burgess says, “We arrive at values only through dialectic.”

Thanks, all.

–Jeff

Apple announced this week that it has sold 100 million iPods, its MP3 player that came on the market back in 2001. What’s amazing about this is that, at the time the iPod was launched, there were already numerous MP3 players in existence, none of which managed to capture either the share of the market nor the collective imagination of consumers. But Apple’s ingenious design, as well as its iTunes software interface, have made it a must-own item for more than half a decade. And what’s also amazing is that something that started within a very select group (early adopting Mac owners, once only a tiny community) is now nearly ubiquitous (both the president of the United States and the Pope own iPods). But this is much more than just a great gadget; the iPod has also shuffled the music business — directly leading to the death of the CD and, to a lesser degree, the format of the long-playing album — and the iPod’s success means both big trouble and tremendous opportunity for other entertainment industries.

As reported by MSNBC, the success of the iPod and iTunes will have far-reaching consequences, not only in music but for almost every entertainment medium: “‘It’s pretty clear to me, as to most people who have watched it, that the record label business is just the canary in the coal mine,’ said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media who has followed the digital music business for years. ‘The Hollywood studios and the TV production companies — they need to pay attention because their businesses are going to change just as rapidly, and they need to adapt.’” And so what has happened in terms of the death of the CD could also lead to the end of various other entertainment formats and business models. “As downloading television and movies becomes more popular, Leigh expects those industries to have to grapple with the same major changes,” according to MSNBC. “That could mean job cuts, changes in product lineups or any number of other moves.” The success of the iPod will also have an impact on publishing and the “print is dead” debate. Of course, whether publishing will have its own iPod moment, with a singular, killer device drastically changing the playing field, remains to be seen. But there’s no longer any doubt that these changes are coming.

An Apple milestone: 100 million iPods sold

Jon Pareles had a story in The New York Times over the weekend about user-generated content; it doesn’t say anything new, but is a nice recap of what’s happened over the past year. The article focuses mostly on music, but has brief mentions of things like LonelyGirl15 on YouTube, and mentions “online novels” as one of the ways users can spread their creativity across the Web.

Excerpt: “Tech oracles predicted long ago that by making worldwide distribution instantaneous, the Web would democratize art as well as other discourse, at least for those who are connected. The virtual painting galleries, the free songs, the video blogs, the comedy clips, the online novels — all of them followed the rise of the Internet and the spread of broadband as inevitably as water spills through a crack in a dam. Why keep your creativity, or the lack of it, to yourself when you can invite the world to see?”

2006, Brought to You by You

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Saw two stories today which are interrelated; the first is an article in Business Week entitled “Time to Rename the Cell Phone?” The story talks about how today’s smart phones are increasingly being used for pretty much everything except making phone calls.

Excerpt: “Amid the rise of so-called smart phones that do everything from browsing the Web to downloading and storing pictures and music, there’s a growing concern that what today we refer to as a cell phone, isn’t quite the right description for these new do-all gadgets.”

The second story is an article which proves the point of the first article; it’s from the New York Times, and is entitled “YouTube Coming Soon to Cellphones.” This story talks about a few cellphone carriers which will soon be allowing users to download YouTube videos onto their cellphones (which makes perfect sense since some of those clips were shot using cellphone video cameras in the first place).

Excerpt: “‘Everybody carries a phone with them, but they may not have a computer,’ said Steve Chen, chief technology officer and a co-founder of YouTube. People can ‘take the phone out of their pocket while waiting for the bus’ and watch a video, he added.”

So, whatever it is we call “cellphones,” it’s obvious that they have become much more than just communication devices. Or rather, the borders of what we call communication have become — in our flattened, vertical world — much more broad; it used to be that the only way you could directly communicate with someone was by picking up the phone (before that you’d have to send a telegram, but that meant getting a third party involved; the invention of the phone was the invention of true personal connection across a distance). But now you can call someone, text them, IM them, send them a video, or even post to a blog using a cellphone, and thus communicate with a whole lot of people at once. Instead of reaching out and touching someone, you can now touch the entire world. So who really cares what that’s called?

Time to Rename the Cell Phone?

YouTube Coming Soon to Cellphones