Whether you like it or not, e-books are changing things. This change is nothing new. It's easy enough to forget that books are an innovation. Front cover, back cover, in-lain with paper, printed with ink, tied up neatly with a spine-those are not age-old technologies. Books outdate the printing press even-when they were scribed by hand, usually by monks who had nothing better to do, besides fasting and being all around holy.
But the printing press-like your Kindle or your Nook-was a technological boon. It revolutionized things. With its imposing frame and corkscrew loaded with movable type, it turned book making into an industry rather than a practice or a craft. It played a definite part in the Protestant Revolution-Martin Luther's ideas were spread by books flowing freely from the printing press, throughout Europe. It was a game changer.
E-books have the potential to be a game changer as well. Reasonably, with a suitable device and Internet connection, you can get a book anytime from anywhere. There are no time restrictions, no reliance on book stores or libraries to stay open to get your word fix. In the United States, copyright law essentially dictates any book published before 1923 is public domain. Imagine that: every book written from the beginning of recorded history to 1923, free. To put it in perspective, that's every Mark Twain book, every Jane Austen book, free, on the Internet, just waiting.
But there is inevitable backlash. Independent bookstores, libraries, publishers and book aficionados have voiced criticism of ebooks. Again, this is inevitable. It's a common reaction to new technology. Gutenberg's printing press was probably met with fear and derision. The first caveman likely got flak for deciding to write something down rather than commit it to memory, but all this stems from the novelty of technology.
The question now becomes: What does a book mean when it's no longer in physical print? Is there a sort of devaluation? Maybe the form transmits, but not the meaning. The real heart of a book lies not in its cover or its ink, but in the text. A word is not worth less because it's printed more; books are transient but the word lives on, whether it's printed on a page or a screen.
A good analogue is mp3 files, certainly relevant with the recent SOPA/PIPA affair. Before mp3s, music was traded on CDs, on tapes, on vinyl, on cylinders. The mp3 is just the next link in the chain. The problem, of course, is the amount of freedom in the form: since mp3s are not physical products, there's a lot of freedom in disseminating them.
Now, is music ruined by mp3 files? Hardly. E-books, by the same token, do not ruin reading. They also do not ruin the quality of writing. If anything they open up more freedoms. Just as the printing press democratized information (by making it more available), e-books make it relatively easy to put information out in scores. It makes publishing easier--reasonably, if you want to publish a book, all you need to do is format it into an e-book and get it circulated.
Now, there will always be people who prefer books to e-books, and it's within their right. Even today there are aficionados of printing presses, and Torahs are still scribed by hand. New technology never necessarily invalidates old ones, but merely opens up a plethora of new potential.
Are you a paper fondler? Let Sean know why swiping your fingers across a screen just is not as exhilarating as the potential for a paper cut at sreichard@wisc.edu.
