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The Revolution will Not Be RandomizedAug 11 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Ebooks, or even the very idea of ebooks, seem to have struck a chord. I don't think they should carry the burden of the future all by themselves, however. They are like enemy scouts - you dispatch them and think you are safe, only to see a wave of ten thousand soldiers come over the hill a minute later. Like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Freeze-frame on the e-screen. All of us who love books, I'm sure, love the physical nature of them, the smell, the curl, the wear and tear, what Pracowity in his epinion here (Scratch & Sniff) aptly described as the fetishistic nature of books. But the real tsunami building behind this little breaker is the disappearance of the physical world taking place in all aspects of our lives. Ebooks, when all the bugs are worked out, will be marvelous, and our children will never miss "real" printed books. They'll carry the entire library to school in their backpack, and have the answers to any question they can think of at their fingertips. The problem is that it is all too easy. Part of the fun of reading, for me anyway, is the challenge of finding unusual books, and the serendipity of chance encounters with un-sought-after books. So much of the marketing hype on ebooks, and Internet news portals for that matter, is about getting what you want or like, delivered right to you. How do people know what they like? When will people finally get completely bored with the Top 40, over and over again? It's already happening. That's why we have Napster, or the Internet for that matter - not to read the latest Dow Chemical press release. True, the great promise of ebooks is that any and every book will be available all the time, and editorial outlets like epinions and other places will do a good job of turning people on to new things. This is all good, and I look forward to it. And especially to saving forests from the saw. It is possible, however, that this is part of gradual preparation for a future without forests anyway (they will fuel other forms of "progress" besides publishing), or live music, or freshly prepared meals - in short, the beginning of the end of the physical world as we rush headlong into the virtual world. So when people feel nostalgic for the sensual qualities of a printed book, I think it is only the tip of the iceberg of a greater fear, that all physical beauty that we enjoy in life will disappear, replaced by a neutral, asensual virtual world. A couple generations is all it takes to grow accustomed to the idea. I'm sure if you transported someone who lived in the eighteenth century to the present, they'd quickly go mad. Where has the dirt gone? And the farm animals? And the odor of the human body? Theme parks of the future will be open spaces of trees, dirt, rock and water, nothing more. It'll be like an acid trip for our descendents. And kids will go to special raves at libraries, where people read aloud to one another from ancient printed books, and thrill to the sound of human voices unsynthesized by the likes of Microsoft. There will be a re-birth of the oral tradition, simply because e-culture will be too easy, too accessible, too predictable, but most of all, too isolating. Pardon my tangents, but one last thought. Bill Gates is having large flat panel screens installed on the walls all over his new mega-mansion, hi-tech "picture frames" made to display digital versions of the great paintings of the past. I read an interview where he said that this kind of technology is so wonderful because people will be able to program these digital picture frames with whatever kind of art they like, and only paintings they like will appear on their screens. They will type in "Impressionism," and if there happens to be a heat wave at the time, they'll get a soothing Pissaro winter scene soothe and cool them. By all means, get an ebook. Just read it by a river, or in the shade of a tree that you just helped save. Press the "shuffle" button. Pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming, and to feel the glorious pain of being alive. Future generations may not be so lucky.  |
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