Books, we are told, are a half-millennium-old technology on the cusp of being swept away forever. So a journey to San Francisco to immerse oneself in them might seem the cultural equivalent of going to visit the glaciers before they melt. But in San Francisco, the home of many of the very technologies that have drawn a bead on the book, visitors will find a living, historically rooted literary scene that, though it has surely heard the news of its own demise, isn’t buying it.
As a matter of fact, I remembered a conversation I had with some folks at the holiday party at the Carter today. Some people were discussing e-books and e-readers (Nook and Kindle) and I began thinking about how interesting it is that we are ready to dispose of the codex so quickly. I'll admit this is something I am fairly sure I have read before (albeit said differently) but, still, I want to share this with you.
The codex (or book) is something that has been in development for two millennia. Books as an object have a long history before this, though. The first book equivalents were tablets of clay, then papyrus, then parchment/vellum. Only when the leaves were bound together did we have to codex. The Romans created the format, and it is a direct reflection of two thousand years of striving and struggling toward perfection in reading. Think about it - a book is a wonderful, almost perfect, medium to read from (if it's well done). The slow progression and work we have seen in the codex gives us the incredible object we have today.
Apparently, though, all that work was ridiculous - we now have the new perfect information container - the e-reader! Let is embrace it fully, and eliminate our obsolete books! I know this is a bit inflammatory, but it surprises me that we, as intelligent individuals, are supposed to just abandon what is a very fine item to read from and embrace a flawed, imperfect thing to read from simply because it's new? E-readers have been in development for (if memory serves) 20 years or so - how can they give us an equally excellent reading experience.
Ok, so they have their advantages - you can carry many books with little weight, you don't have to go purchase the physical book (something that is negated by the internet), and the text size is adjustable. I simply don't see those trumping the myriad advantages of codices, though. What do you think??
Well obviously I am very biased as I conserve books for a living, as in if there are no more new books I will eventually be out of a job...well not me but conservators in the future. I can understand students using e-readers, less eight and potentially cheaper books, but for me an e-reader takes all the fun out of reading. You can't see how far you have come in a book, no turning pages, no dog-eared pages (I know I shouldn't do that but I do sometimes), no bookmarks, no fun. :)
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