So I’ve decided to take it a step down from the rhetoric that I’ve been slingin’ around these parts lately in order to cover a bit of a personal matter that I hope I can get your input on. As the title implies, I want to talk about the big influx of digital texts into the market lately and ask what will happen to all the books that we’ve read all our lives. Now, this blog is coming from the kid who refused using DVDs because they were “no different than VHS,” so please, try to put up with my old heart.
The advent of the digital reader has allowed us to take our entire book collection on the move with us, made sure they will never be lost in some great fire, and has reduced the price of these texts many fold. Furthermore, we can purchase these texts on our whim. Now, it’s not my intention to degrade the quality of the new age but I am going to attempt to spur up some nostalgia within you because quite frankly I can’t come up with any real arguments against this new technology so I’m going to have to call upon a romantic one.
Picture your favorite book, seriously, do it. Now there is no way you can tell me that you’re picturing a text file right now, rather, you are picturing a hardcopy of your beloved text. Ideally, this text has been beat up, creased, and has had its margins scribbled in. The paper’s first (and perhaps only) line of defense against the digital text is history. There is just something fulfilling about knowing that it was your hands that creased the spine and it was the oil on your skin that faded the cover of your favorite book. Then again, finding a stain on a page may just remind you of the time you just couldn’t keep the damn soup in the spoon.
The previous arguments could easily be made against the corporeal text but I like the idea of viewing the hard text in a continuum. Last time I researched a paper I had to navigate my way through a maze of library shelves until I found the book I needed. Now (sadly) there’s a pure visceral excitement that I get from doing this but the real sensation comes after opening the book. I was able to see every time that book was checked out since 1973 (at least up until the school switched to a digital checkout system). I was able to see the names of the people who found this text in the sea of books just like I did, and they left for me their notes in the margins and their highlighting in the paragraphs. At that moment we were connected, we were joined by the will to learn, and it was palpable. The check out record worked as a microcasm of an establishment of education, which in essence, is the old guard passing down to the new. And the names in the checkout record didn’t start the continuum but were following the people who studied Shakespeare before them.
Well, that’s the extent of my magical journey through the library and my poetic defense of the written word. Honestly, hard copies offer a pragmatic purpose for me too because I just can’t seem to retain as much information when I’m reading off a computer screen but I don’t really want to find data to justify that. It all just comes down to personal preference, and maybe it’s your preference too.
So, where do you stand? Do you care for the nostalgia offered by the paperbound book? Is it possible that all the digital texts could one day be devoured by a massive fire virus? Do these things even need to be placed in opposition? Is the irony of this digital post too crushing to comment on? Lemme know.
‘Till next time,
-Rainamoinen
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