Ben Macintyre Says the printed book is the same object, in essence, that it always was. Music, film and television have all transferred rapidly to digital format; reading in short form – blogs, journalism, e-mail – has thrived on the web since its inception. But long-form literature has proved stubbornly resistant.
A reader who falls in love with a book, even if first read in electronic form, will still want to own it. Books do more than furnish a room: they are our intellectual companions.
makes me think of McLuhan
Makes me remember McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”.
I believe Neil Postman liked to ask rhetorically something to the effect of if a bible printed on toilet paper commands the same reverence as a leather bound Gutenberg bible? That would be a “no”. This is what I think of when I hear my fellow librarians say nonchalantly “oh, it’s just information, the container DOESN’T MATTER”.
Yes, yes it does, in fact.
And I’m also a curmudgeon who likes traditional Carnegie-style libraries with dark oak interiors and Church-like atmospheres…and Greek temple-style exterior architecture or even playful Art Nouveau and there’s nothing about that kind of layout that prevents a place from utilizing high tech equipment effectively. It just doesn’t “look” high tech or sleek. In architectural taste in general I found through the years that I’ve gone from being a naive Modernist to Postmodernist back to unabashed Classicist.
Never
E-books will never be our friends
Never is a very long time.
The container matters!
But,
The container matters!
But, different people love different containers.
I love physical books. They give me comfort and remind me of home. They are my “intellectual companions” as Macintyre says.
I also love my mp3 collection. It gives me comfort and reminds me of home — and large swaths of it come with me when I leave home. I lovingly cataloged it and care for it with checks and back-ups.
You can own an album in physical or electronic form, and you can own a book in physical or electronic form. Love — the desire to get and possess good things forever — applies as much to the digital as the physical.