The Future of the Book?
The Future of the Book? |
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The book is the greatest interactive medium of all time. You can underline it, write in the margins, fold down a page, skip ahead. And you can take it anywhere. Michael Lynton ...the library is still the best place in which to ponder the dream of life. Marcel Proust Our notion of culture now resembles a menu to be pointed at and clicked. Jonathan Franzen As television watching and electronic interaction increases, and more and more people derive, quite unconsciously, their sense of reality...from television... literature will become less and less plausible, and in time will become downright incredible. Alvin Kernan The age of the book is almost gone. George Steiner The agora of the twenty-first century may very well relocate to cyberspace... Steven Johnson Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, thought and speculation at a standstill. Barbara Tuchman |
Is This the Book of the Future?
Now the user is ready to read the selected title. And the E-book has an additional advantage. The Rocket eBook has a capacity of 4,000 pages, or approximately 10 books. The Softbook's capacity is as high as 100,000 pages. As models are improved in the future, it is conceivable that one could contain an entire personal library on one small E-book. It may also be possible to download newspapers and magazines as well, thus creating a device that would offer the user a full reading spectrum. The advantages of the E-book could, in the future, be quite extraordinary. The ability to carry large amounts of data in a light, small, and portable device could be extremely useful. It may also lower costs. Today, much of the expense of a book comes from the cost of the paper, binding, and distribution. If books were purchased over the web and sent electronically to the buyer, publishers' expenditures could be greatly diminished. But will we read them, and will we buy them? One of the major questions
which still remains is whether people will read computer screens for lengthy
periods of time. And what about the initial cost? Will people pay considerable
sums (presently ranging between $200 and $600) in order to obtain the
E-book before a single title is purchased? Finally, will reading texts
on E-books intrinsically change the nature of reading? Certainly, when
printed books were introduced in the fifteenth century, the process of
reading was changed dramatically from the way it was practiced in the
Middle Ages. Should we expect any less from the advent of the E-book?
The fact that one can view this exhibit on a monitor clearly indicates
that we are living in a time of change as revolutionary and as disconcerting
as the time in the aftermath of Gutenberg. As Sven Birkerts said in his
book, The Gutenberg Elegies (1995), "We are wiring ourselves into
a gigantic hive. Life in the near future will take place among an exciting
and maddening and deeply distracting hum of signals."
The questions we now must ask ourselves as we are poised on the edge
of a new millennium are: What will this new world look like? Will it include
the book as we know it, or will the book transform itself into an electronic
gadget delivering text? Will the Internet evolve into our primary means
of obtaining information, completely eclipsing traditional sources such
as the newspaper, the magazine and the book? Or will we continue to use
traditional print media invented during the Gutenberg era?
And if we obtain information from completely new media, how will it
change the way we think, evaluate the world around us, and process information?
Will we become less literate, lose historical perspective, and sacrifice
our private selves, as some thinkers have predicted? Or are we entering
a golden period when vast libraries of information are as close as the
computer sitting on our desk?
Although predicting the future is always a risky endeavor, one thing
is certain. We are now in the process of changing our world dramatically,
and we must find ways to cope and thrive in this radically new world.
As Soren Kierkegaard said, "Life must be lived forwards, but can only
be understood backward." Hopefully, by more fully understanding the print
revolution, we will find the means to understand the coming computer revolution.
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Displayed
in the exhibit is an electronic book, or E-book. This one is made by NuvoMedia
and is called the Rocket eBook. There are also two other E-books presently
on the market, the Softbook and the Librius Millennium Reader. Each operates
in a similar way. The user selects a book from an Internet site and purchases
the book with a credit card. Once the purchase has been made, the book
is sent electronically to the owner's personal computer. The buyer then
downloads the text to the E-book through a port connecting the personal
computer to the E-book. The Softbook doesn't require a personal computer.
Just plug it into a phone jack and download titles from the Softbook online
library.