Updated 5/12/2007 with link, also via Weinberger, to Mark Pilgrim's "Future of Reading".
Long and interesting piece by David Everything is Miscellaneous Weinberger about the future of books and libraries, written as a response to Anthony Grafton's Future Reading - Digitisation and its Discontents in the New Yorker. Weinberger is no "anti-library philistine" - he is notably enthusiastic about libraries and librarians - but that does not stop him from acknowledging what he describes as the "existing and coming discontinuity" in the way that knowledge is/will be stored, mediated, and distributed, and the changing role of printed material. Weinberger's article, which is worth reading in full, concludes:
"Many of us share Grafton's nostalgia for books. But what will we miss about them, truly? The way they feel and smell? What does that have to do with knowledge, wisdom, understanding? We should not be shaping our systems of education and learning around the fetishes of collectors.
When we have interactive, networked, paper-quality devices, we will say good bye to books, and good riddance.
And our hearts will break a little."
I suppose my feeling is that the "when" should be more of a "maybe", notwithstanding Amazon's Kindle. Having stuff to refer to, search, annotate etc - a lot of it - on or accessible from a device is one thing. Getting down to some serious reading on a device rather than on paper is another, and the sheer utility and flexibility of print for this, in the bath, in bed etc., will take some beating. [5/12/2007] And for a provocative and much deeper and broader view, see Mark Pilgrim's 19/11/2007 The Future of Reading - A Play in Six Acts.
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