My first thought was that reading and books haven’t changed that much
for ME since childhood, but then I realized that when I was growing up the
“internet” did not really exist. This
makes me think about a couple of things: 1) My reading choices were almost
entirely dependent on what could be physically found on the shelf at my library. Now many of my reading choices come from a
Wikipedia article about the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with hyperlinks to
innumerable topics. 2) I never got into
comics as a kid, but what if I could have downloaded them from Hoopla like I
can now? I’ve never been sure why comics
have never garnered my interest (I like Marvel movies quite a lot …), but then
how much of my interest in anything is based on simple accessibility?
As for the second question, I don’t think we will be reading less in
the future (compared to the whole of human history and not just the “peak” of
the “century of the book” (Le Guin, 2008)); reading is still a learned activity
that in many ways is “power itself” (Le Guin, 2008). The amount of detail a text is capable of,
the power it invests the reader with by which they participate in the act of
creation, the social nature of the “bestseller” phenomenon (books Le Guin says
that readers want because “everybody is reading” them, though not “finishing,” “so
(they) can talk about them”), and the “collaboration” with the author that
reading engenders are all aspects that guarantee and affirm the power of
reading as an experience (Le Guin, 2008).
However, the physical book seems destined to change. Though the physical book is an enduring
technology with an incredible history that brings a tactile energy to an
intellectual exercise that is and will continue to be somewhat indispensable
for many, the enormous amount of resources it actually takes to produce a
physical book make the lower overhead, ease of access, and ease of
storage/transportation of the digital book kind of a no-brainer
replacement. Really, the most
interesting part of all of this is what publishing is going to look like. One of the biggest services that traditional
publishing has probably provided is the “vetting” of what constitutes our
literature. Because the production of
physical books is expensive only the “best” make it by the gatekeepers, but in
an age when I can Kickstarter my own novel and make a million digital copies I
don’t really need to worry about those gatekeepers. But it is exactly this “gatekeeping’ service
that I think will keep traditional publishers alive. There are simply going to be too many ebooks
for the regular reader to keep up with and the publishing industry, if they can
figure out how to get paid for their services, is positioned to give us a map
to the “best” work, though I know it will certainly not be the only map out
there.
Work Cited:
Le Guin, U. K. (2008). Staying awake: notes on the alleged decline of
reading. Harper's Magazine, 316(1893).
