I got a Kindle for Christmas.
It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t even want one. It was a present.
And, like a lot of people, I was iffy about the whole idea. You’ve probably heard things like:
> I like holding something in my hand.
> I don’t like reading on screens.
> I just like books.
I do like my Kindle. I read more on it. I can search within books, even textbooks, and I can copy snippets of notes.
But that doesn’t stop people from getting very angry when I mention that I like it. Some people really hate ereaders.
I always say that there are a few things people get really angry about:
Why do people get so heated about ebooks?
Do these people feel that ebooks are ‘taking their books away?’
Is it that this new medium threatens tradition?
I don’t remember people feeling this strongly when CDs started being replaced by .mp3s and .m4as, and other non-physical distribution media. Was that different because music has gone through changes (vinyl to CD) within one generation of consumers?
Is it because distributing music is relatively young, anyway? Distributing books, on the other hand, is a centuries-old tradition.
And it’s true, this centuries-old tradition is changing. It’s amazing it even lasted this long. To some extent, isn’t it possible that digital book distribution caught on late (despite the relatively simple technology needed to achieve it) because we’re so attached to books?
We love books. Our culture loves books. Our culture tells us to always love books.
But it isn’t the books we’re meant to love. That’s missing the point.
We’re supposed to love the knowledge inside them. We’re supposed to love the information.
And we live in an age where information has never been more free.
That age may be ending. It’s no secret. The days of net neutrality may be numbered. (I’ll talk about that some other time). But you can get information more freely and more easily today more than any other time in history.
And it’s this information we are meant to love.
I think society has to make the slow, painful realization that books will not be the preferred method for the printed word. Not for long.
There will be much mourning.
It will not be easy.
It will not be brief.
But we’ll get over it. Really.
All information will be nonphysical very soon. That part is just a matter of how easily information is transferred from nonphysical medium to human brain and vice versa. And that’s just around the corner, relatively speaking.
So:
Let us mourn for the book, our dearly departed, may it live on in our hearts and in our antiques stores, may we never forget the magic of its cumbersomeness, of its delicacy, of how it is heavy and old and dead.
Amen.
