Tom Swift and His Electronic Book

Or another rant about how I dislike the idea of online only media and the doing away with print. Can't we have both?!

So they say it's coming, the library will be wires and screens and little cubicles. Gone will be the books and basically all print media.
Read:
Electronic books offer creative possibilities for expanding access as well as changing learning behavior and academic research. Content can always be accessible, regardless of time or place, to be read on PCs or on portable book readers. Books need never go out of print, and new editions can be easily created. One can carry several titles at once on a portable reader and, over time, build a personal library. Features such as full text searching, changeable font size, mark-up, citation creation, and note taking will enhance usability. Print text can be integrated with multi-dimensional objects, sound, and film to create a whole new kind of monographic work.

Yes, it is true I am a Luddite and change is hard. However when I heard the new fangled thing called the computer when I was in junior high and how it would be more than just a huge calculator and would be able to serve us information daily I was nothing but excited. I still am. I do love cyberspace and all it's possibilities. However, I also love the connection with real people, real objects, real places and real books.

There is a romance in books that the future seems to not understand. To pick up a book that is either brand new or used is to pick up more than just the information. For however long it takes you to read the contents within it, the book is real, it's paper, it can be burned, it can be lost, it can be dog eared, written in, torn, stained, carried on busses, carried into restaurants, lugged around with several other books it becomes weight, it's an object. It carries print, remember how that revolution took over the world and changed it forever? The future claims ebooks will do again what the Guttenburg did before. Will it? I am sure it will make a hell of an impact but it will lack something.

It cannot be touched. This is good they say. Never lost, never out of print, never destroyed. But never romantic because it lacks the mortal qualities we do? The irony is....it will be out of print. No books will be printed on paper and sewn or glued between two covers. Books will be out of print. The idea of carrying several books on an electroniic reader and downloaded like music to ipods sounds interesting and I am sure there are many who would love that. I cannot fathom this simply because my eyes do not like the computer screen too much. Long blog entires and articles are read in spurts, I scan, I am impatient in front of the computer and I scan just about everything. In fact I doubt if my longer blog entires get read much. That's fine, they are for the purging of rants more than anything.

I understand books like On the Road cannot be kept long in libraries, constantly stolemn, that in itself tells you something doesn't it? Anyway, for these sorts of titles and academic books I understand it useful to keep them electronically so that their information be made available for study, education, learnin' and the like but for enjoyment? Hmmm I don't know. Who has ever swiped a book? Who has ever spent a good sum of money on a first edition, who has taken a book to get signed by an author? Who has checked ebay daily to make sure they get that out of print find? Who has a nice little shelf or mantle in a room that holds several titles that are not only read and re-read but just pisked up and thumbed through once in a while, just to feel and know it is yours? And when those portable book readers make their way into everyone's lives, how are you going to show the "public" , those around you, friends...how bookish and booky you are? Will you be writing portable book read contains over 500 titles in the "Books" section of Myspace (we know that's here to stay)?

I like my books as books. I still buy books, I want my own library in my house one day, shelves floor to cieling. I was at Half Priced the other day, in their rare books section. Beautiful! I can't help but find it orgasmic to view all those titles on those shelves. Some I want to posses as they are, others I feel I must purchase new and add my own history to them, put on my own shelf until one day they are very old. There are still many, many kinks to be worked out with electronic books and even electronic journals such as archiving (how?) but their attraction seems to blind even the most level headed person...it's that old midway novelty act thing, the concept car thing... you know what I'm talking about, you see those old mini docs done in the Atomic Era about the future home and robots and flying cars. We have Segways but no flying cars as of yet. The future is as much a turn on to some as the past is to others. It goes wrong when you jump into either one blinded to what the disadvantage are. This electonic book and journal thing..I'd say it still has a way to go so why rush the romance out of carrying a magazine into the loo with you today.