To watch Klein discussing the future of reading, click here.
The title of a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts was “Reading at Risk.” The follow-up, released in November 2007, upped the ante. “To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence,” placed the consumption of Moby Dick up there with questions of poverty and health care. Weighty stuff. Around the same time, Newsweek published a cover story entitled “The Future of Reading”—I assumed the gist was along the lines of, “Nobody will be doing any, and the Russians will win.” I was wrong. In an almost uniquely American take on the subject, Newsweek decided to peer past the decline in reading and instead enthuse about the creation of new, expensive technologies that would help us read—namely, Amazon’s Kindle. The newsmag’s decision made a sort of perverse sense. After all, books may be in sharp decline, but compared to, say, 1992, reading on computer screens is way, way up. If you could put books on a computer screen, and maybe connect that to the Internet, you might really have something.
So I consulted my conscience, which is as much gadget-head as bookworm, and quickly came to a decision: I would simultaneously support reading and the introduction of expensive new electronic devices by buying a Kindle and proudly toting it around town for a month. That would give me time to determine whether this really was the future of reading, or whether the nation remained threatened by grave and unnamed consequences.
The Kindle, for those who dodged the hype, is the latest in a long line of handheld, computer-like devices meant to spark the digital-book revolution. It’s a big mission for such a strangely designed little gizmo. The Kindle is bone white (or, perhaps more accurately, iPod white), a bit under eight inches long and a bit over five inches wide. The bottom third houses the world’s most unintuitive keyboard: the letters all jut out at different angles as if the designers had just figured out diagonals but hadn’t quite decided which was their favorite. Running up the right side is a “next page” button, conveniently placed so you accidentally press it whenever you pick the device up.
One look at the screen, though, and you forget that everything around it seems to have been an afterthought. The Kindle uses a technology known as E Ink, which deploys negatively charged black particles and positively charged white particles to create something that looks, and acts, startlingly like paper. There’s no reflection in the sun and no discernible flicker on the screen. Compared to traditional LCD screens, whose light and flicker force your eyes to constantly strain and refocus, this is a profound advance. It’s almost calming to look at. The downside is that the Kindle cannot scroll through a book as you might expect. Rather, it pages through, going momentarily blank as the various particles reshuffle into the next set of words and images. Even so, the collision between the artificial and the organic is remarkable, and almost indescribably strange upon first glance. Imagine turning on your TV only to see the sky—not a broadcast of the sky, but the actual sky, right there where your screen should be—and you’ll have some idea of what it’s like to look at the Kindle for the first time.
I must take exception to Klein's declaration that paper is a "wasteful, inefficient, and costly method of production". This is valid only if you view reading a book to be a singular, individual event. In contrast, paper still excels when books are treated as communal or archival objects -- in other words, as objects to be shared or preserved instead of read once and then discarded (or ignored).
For example, while helping my parents pack for a move, I uncovered a tattered and worn copy of "The Mad Scientists' Club", which I had enjoyed immensely as a child. As it turned out, my sons also enjoyed that book when I brought it home and shared it with them 35 years after it was printed. I somehow find it difficult to believe that electronic versions of old favorites will be as easy to preserve as the childrens' favorites which will still be just as readable when that box in the garage gets cracked open in a decade or two (or longer). Whether it be a dead battery or a "dead" format, I see it as all too likely that the content saved would be unreadable in too few years, much less shared with children or grandchildren.
Similarly, paper books excel at sharing. Like many readers, I have no compunctions about wanting to introduce friends to good books (and good authors). How would I casually loan my sole electronic copy of a good book to a friend? Would I have to resort to buying a copy for myself and a copy to loan out? Will the e-publishers even allow their customers to loan out that precious content, or will it be treated like other software?
I'm sorry, but paper editions are still very efficient and very effective the moment you start looking at the content beyond the constraints of "my convenience, now".
Posted by William Clardy
on Sun 11 May 2008 at 11:46 AM
Thank you for this insightful article. Kindle is definitely not going to kill off print books any time soon for many reasons including that the later less expensive to replace and much more ubiquitous.
Klein's ideas about extending the idea of a book into a continually-updating text is a good idea that publishers need to embrace also. Of course, this will depend on writers who are willing to do the updates and finding suitable substitutes (if any) for deceased authors.
Posted by Jason Gross
on Fri 16 May 2008 at 11:48 AM
The New York Times Doesn't Think We Need a New Word for Reading on Screens In Order to Differentiate It From Reading On Paper, But ....
....BUT.....there is a spirited discussion about all this now online in hundreds of blogs and websites, and a recent interview with Dr Anne Mangen in Norway sheds more light on the issues invovled.
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR ANNE MANGEN IN NORWAY ON READING ON PAPER AND
READING ON SCREENS
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-dr-anne-mangen-in-norway.html
conducted by reporter/blogger Danny Bloom in Taiwan (August 15, 2009)
Anne Mangen is a reading specialst in Norway,
and a paper she published in late 2008 in the UK on the differences
betweem reading on paper and reading on screens has catapulted her to
the forefront of the debate on this controverisal topic. Even the New York Times has taken notice.
In a recent email interview, I asked Dr Mangen to go over some of the
issues involved here. As some readers might know, I have been
advocating that society adopt a new word for reading on screens, since
I feel screen reading is so different from reading on paper, and I
feel that with a new word we can study the differences better -- and
point out the differences better, too -- and I have gently, quietly
suggested the word "screening" to mean "reading text on a screen". Of
course, not everyone agrees with me; and even Dr Mangen does not agree
with me, even though it was her 2008 academic paper that got me
started on this quixotic quest. But that's okay. I respect Dr Mangen
highly, and I still consider her my mentor on all this.
When I asked her that since reading on paper is very different from
reading on screens, does she think that at some point we might need a
new word in English for "reading on screens", she replied: "Not
really, because I doubt that one single word is able to denote the
complexity of the process in any accurate and useful way."
MORE.....
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-dr-anne-mangen-in-norway.html
Posted by bloomingidiot
on Tue 18 Aug 2009 at 11:44 AM