Over the last week or so, reading and the role of books have been popping up everywhere, it seems:

• Reading is getting a lot of play in the press: the NEA warned that Americans are reading less and their proficiency is declining, though it appears the NEA needs to learn how to read data. Then, the reading portion of the Program for International Student Assessment was invalidated because of, ahem, sloppy proofreading.
• E-paper continues to creep closer to an everyday reality (and hip-kid variations are making commercials).
• Amazon’s Kindle was released, along with many reviews and write-ups.¹
• And David Weinberger challenged Anthony Grafton’s take on the future of books and libraries.²

As for me, I think people are probably reading as much, or more, as they have been for the last thirty years or so, though they may be reading differently. (Still, my local bookstore is almost always busy with people of all ages.) And I’m not really concerned about “books as objects” disappearing.

When I packed up my own book collection, the 27 boxes I carried up and down the stairs had me asking, repeatedly, why the hell I owned so many. I’ve also found myself occasionally doing strange things when reading printed text, like looking for the search box or the Google Toolbar to find a word, or wishing I could drag-and-drop a hunk of text into my blog writer. So the idea of an interactive, networked, paper-quality device (in Weinberger’s words) sounds wonderful to me.

Kindle isn’t that device (yet), but it’s a step in the right direction, and a direction we should be headed. I know the Romantics will have a hard time letting go of the “feel and smell” of a book, but the same was said of LPs and cassette tapes at one time. eReaders will make more and more sense as the technology improves: financially, environmentally, spatially, and socially.

Reading through the various responses to the above issues, though, I did discover a few concerns.

Beginnings and Endings
One thing I don’t want to see disappear are the beginnings and endings of stories brought about by hyperlink technology. I’m not looking forward to books that hyperlink a word every few paragraphs, constantly pulling me out of the story and “extending” the story’s scope. Stories should have crafted, chosen beginnings and endings. Making the right choices for that is part of the author’s craft, so I don’t need an endlessly hyperlinked story destroying that craft and blowing off the ends.

Haves and Have Nots
Unless we make the technology much cheaper and more accessible, it has the potential to widen the literacy gap. I realize paper-bound books aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so this isn’t an immediate concern. Nevertheless, it’s one more way to wedge money between the well-educated and the poorly-educated.

Who’s Got the Backup?
A small concern for now, but eventually: how will we “preserve” our libraries? I know that in Amazon’s current model, users can download their purchases again should anything happen to their copy. But on a larger, longer scale: how will we guarantee our writings to future generations? How do we pass on our libraries?

Who’s Gonna Pay for This?
The largest issue right now seems to revolve around the DRM. People seem to want open files that they’re free to copy, share, trade, etc., and they get angry when their use is restricted. But realistically, we can’t produce movies, music, and books for “free.” Those things take time to create, and the people working to create them need financial support. I don’t like the idea of any agency having more rights than I do over something I purchase from them. On the other hand, the ability for creators to make a profit from their work needs to be preserved. I haven’t yet seen a viable solution (or proposal) for this problem, and “completely free and open” isn’t going to work unless we find another way to support the creators.

Image Credits:

• Gary H. Spielvogel, Craning for a book, Photograph, Flickr, 31 Mar. 2005, <http://flickr.com/photos/gaspi/7971252/>
• Daniel Horacio Argostini, Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body, Photography, Flickr, 26 Jan. 2006, <http://flickr.com/photos/dhammza/91435718/>

1. The major critiques seem to be that it’s kinda ugly (though the idea was to make the text the focus, not the gadget), the DRM means no sharing (though that’s not Amazon’s choice, they’ve left that to publishers), annotations are hard to share (which is also true of printed books, but I agree–it should be easy on digital devices), it’s expensive (yes, but it will probably drop in price and improve in function soon), it’s limited in its use (instead of an all-in-one), and no one’s going to pay to read blogs or newspapers on the device (agreed). [back]
2. Anthony Grafton takes a long look back at the history of publication and libraries and makes a few conservative predictions in The New Yorker article “Future Reading.” Weinberger, author of “Everything is Miscellaneous,” disagrees with Grafton’s Romantic nostalgia and tech-pessimism in “The future of book nostalgia,” asserting that metadata may solve the multiple-database challenge, the collective power of readers will lead to new insights, and networked reading devices will make reading a public, and therefore radically different, experience (which brings us back to Kindle, and what it’s missing). Weinberger also gives an interesting utopian description of a future library. [back]

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