How to Open a New Book

This has been floating around the internet for a while, and I'd like to share with you some thoughts about the image and why it has such interest now. First, though, here's the graphic:



I love the "moral" at the bottom, like the opening of a book is some type of ethical concern. That the person that incorrectly opens a book and breaks the binding is somehow immoral, or at best, a-moral - associated with the reds, socialists, and communists. Ha.

Anyhow, I think this image has gotten such traction in the library community because it represents, on some level, the perceived decline of the print book. I wrote recently about how this is really not true, but the image is representative of that perception. That books have almost overnight become some kind of talisman for a bygone age. You'd think that from some peoples' writings and opinions that there were no more print books being sold now, anywhere.

This is a reflection of how books have become the most recent analog for the reaction to the "digitization of society." I can think back on two types of information that were digitized previously - music and images. Both had a reaction to the digitization (vinyl and film, respectively) where it was cool and counter cultural to not have digitized things. These reactions are indicative of an initial reaction and opinion to the dawn and acceptance of new media - that the analog and the digital are mutually exclusive - that one cannot fully live while the other survives. It sounds melodramatic, doesn't it? That's because it is. Are e-books actively hunting down their print counterparts and eliminating them? Are vinyl records seeking the complete destruction of MP3 files? No. Why then do acolytes of one type of media campaign to demonstrate how the other form of media is somehow ludicrous, and that the users of that medium are fools and dunces? Simply because you prefer a regular book does not make your neighbor who reads only e-books stupid.

I'll give you an apropos example. The New Yorker released a new app for a digital version of the publication for the iPad yesterday. In the Facebook comments, the first person said in response to the announcement of the app:

nothing like feeling paper between your fingers. World is going to crap with these ipad, Kindles and Whatever . Support independant Book Storees. Cheers

How exactly are e-books seeking the destruction of mankind? People make decisions about what is best for them - in life, in reading, and in music. Perhaps we should just respect that.