As I am starting to write this electronic blog, one of the headlines for the day is that one of the principal bookstores in the U.S., Borders, is filing for bankruptcy. Electronic readers—e-readers—are gaining market share. In related stories, Amazon recently announced that Kindle e-book sales have surpassed sales of both hardcover and paperback books. For those of us who have spent a lifetime reading books, the move to “electronic literature” is a bit unsettling. I still have books on my shelves that I read as a college undergraduate. They have moved with me at least eight times and kept me company in five states. At this point, of course, a lot of them have passed their useful life, having yellow pages and collapsing spines. I will miss them.
The impetus for this blog was my growing realization that the time for books is passing, just as the time of manual typewriters, hand-written letters, and quill pens has passed. Such tools still work, of course, but they are primarily of historical interest now. At one time hundreds (if not thousands) of monks were employed to produce illuminated manuscripts, faithfully (or at least reasonably faithfully) copying from an original or a previous copy of an original. At one time, really, really rich people were lucky to have 40 or 50 books in their libraries. And then, in about 1439, Gutenberg figured out how to print lots of books using movable type. At first, books continued to be a luxury item, but eventually mass production of presses and books led to what was known as “the dime novel.” Everyone could afford at least a few books, and as more people learned to read and write, book sales took off. Bookstores proliferated as well.
At one time, every town had one or two bookstores. Cities had a bunch, including huge bookstores with thousands and thousands of titles (such as City Lights Books in San Francisco). Along with a lot of people, I found it easy to spend hours at a time just looking and previewing. I also bought a lot of books, many of which I thought sufficiently important to keep. As I look at my collection books now, however, it is increasingly easy to see that they have become an anchor to the past—not my past only, but the cultural past. Many of my books are so old that if I really wanted to reread them, I would need to buy a new copy. I also wonder whether I would actually find time and inclination to reread the complete works of Shakespeare or Milton at this point. I still occasionally pull out one of my old books to make sure that I remember a quotation correctly, including the character speaking the words. A number of people have, for example, attributed the line, “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven,” to Milton. While the line does appear in Paradise Lost, the speaker is Satan rather than Milton, and that makes a difference.
Of course, if we were to read Paradise Lost on an e-reader, the line would still be there, and we could still figure out that if Satan is the one who said it, Milton probably didn’t agree. Do we actually lose anything by changing the “platform” on which we read material? In some ways, of course, we both lose and gain with every technological change. I no longer have a turntable and collect records. I no longer have reel-to-reel tape decks. Some people still do, of course, and some continue to be enamored with the “warm” sound of records being played on a good turntables—and, in some cases, they are even using amplifiers that have tube technology. It is, however, difficult to go jogging while listening to music if that’s your only method of playing it. And I don’t know about you, but in spite of very careful handling, a lot of my records ended up scratched. We may have lost something with the changes in technology of music reproduction, but we also gained something. At this point, I have virtually all of my music in my iTunes collection (most of which was imported from CDs I had purchased when they were the prevailing technology). I can’t imagine what my house would look like if I had all the vinyl the music represents stacked along side my books.
At one time, I was what has been called “an early adopter” of new technologies. I was among the pioneers using computer-based instruction and distance learning using the Internet. That is no longer the case. Only recently have I acquired a “smart phone,” and I’m still on the slippery slope part of the learning curve. The handwriting is on the wall: “Change happens.” While some individuals and groups have been relatively successful at resisting change, they end up being isolated from the larger culture. As recent events in Egypt (and a number of other countries in the Middle East) demonstrate, the implications of communication technologies and the expanding awareness of world events the technologies make possible, are far reaching. And the reach extends into the future.
Is there an e-reader in my future? I think so, and I suspect that there’s one in yours as well. One of these days soon now, your children will be asking, “What’s a book, Daddy (or Mommy)?” And if not your children, your grandchildren will be asking. And you can tell them, “Once upon a time….”
