Hey, E Readers! Leave Our Books Alone!

Barney’s article “The Vanishing Table, Community in a World that is No World” brought up a number of valid points, though ultimately his argument fell short in one particular spot. Barney seems baffled that we, as citizens of modernity, have little respect for the wonder that is technology. We just can’t appreciate anything because we don’t understand it, and we seem to live in a magical world where technology creates itself and we simply plug in. Barney here is inferring that we need to consider the work involved in creating these technologies – to acknowledge their tangibility, and maybe then we wouldn’t be so whiny, impatient and dismissive (Comedian Louis CK sends a similar message here). And yet, Barney’s argument is based upon the very intangibility of these things – he seems to place technology on this pedestal just as we do.

He does bring up a number of interesting questions, one being “can virtual experiences or technologically mediated experiences be as enriching as “real” ones” ? While in my final paper I plan to argue “yes”, I understand Barney’s point of view when I relate it to my inexplicable hatred for e-readers.

I remember in my third year ethics class that when my professor declared that e-readers would eventually replace all physical books, I simultaneously recoiled in horror and in disbelief. But my professor had claims to back it up: journalism is predominantly online now, with more and more newspapers folding every year; we don’t have books from 500 years ago, so it would be a cinch to move towards the digital books as the ones stacked in libraries remain untouched, and eventually fall apart; people want to exchange and absorb information quickly, e books will be accompanied by a number of applications, such as chapter summaries and author commentary. I still doubted my professor, but with Dr. Herman’s accurate prediction of the Twitter craze I couldn’t take any chances.

At first I couldn’t explain my hatred for e readers. I’ve always had a resistance to new technologies (case in point, my cell phone from 2006), but I felt especially insulted by the ideas of e-readers. Why?

Much like Barney, I must be playing the nostalgia card. In answer to his question “can virtual experiences or technologically mediated experiences be as enriching as “real” ones”, in the case of e-readers I say absolutely not. There’s something about reading that goes beyond just absorbing the text. It’s about feeling the pages, bending the spine, highlighting your favourite parts and lounging wherever you like with your book. It’s about weighing down your backpack, and piling books in your room like trophies of knowledge. People don’t want to charge their books, they don’t want them in file form, they don’t want to look at anymore screens dammit! E-readers, pacha! They’ll never take off. A passing craze, a passing faze, before everyone comes to their senses.

Now, e readers seem to be everywhere, and the popularity of the iPad isn’t helping.

I still don’t think that the e-reader experience is better than or the same as reading a book. My love of reading is closely tied to its physical aspects. If I left the argument here, Barney has won, he has gotten me to agree with his argument about the value of “real” experiences. But the argument does NOT end here. Barney states that technologically mediated experiences will never measure up to real ones, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t one day, or that they don’t already for certain people. Barney grew up in a non-digital age, so his feet stand firmly in the good ol’ days as he remembers them. The same goes for me with books, I grew up with physical books and it is the only way that I understand what it means to read.

E-readers will develop their own appeal, their own ritual aspects which some people will hold near and dear. They will be very “real” experiences for a lot of people. Take writing as an example, ancient authors would argue that writing must be done with a quill and with ink, and for them writing can’t happen any other way. But does this view devalue the writing process when it is done with a pen, a pencil or a keyboard?

Children of the future may be saying “there’s something about downloading a book, about clicking to the next page, about the glare of the screen that just makes the reading experience.” Barney is letting nostalgia lead his argument about communities. Just because the way we experience a community is changing doesn’t mean that they way we experience it is less valid. Does the medium always matter?

What do you think, is nostaligia holding us back from accepting new ways of experiencing?