All these electronic fantasies are Just One EMP burst away from disappearing. The written word on paper will probably out last humanity.
But will you be able to curl up with your VR on a cold, damp weekend, coffee within arm’s reach? VR may replace movies, but I don’t think it will give you that sense of lazy content.
2
I buy books with CASH and read them. Big brother and the data machines don't know what I read, when I read it, what I note down or who I lend the books to. Oh, and they can't take them away from me.
The data scrapers and pirates out there are sucking up all sorts of data from your e-readers folks all of it without your consent.
1
Great story Ms Harrow.I see a lot of comments here by book lovers (of which I am one). But most of them sound like they are "Whistling past the Graveyard", as they insist how books will always be here. They will, but greatly diminished. Unfortunately, I can see your future you write about here. Even now, quite a ways before your future happens. Sure, many thousands still read and love books, but the masses will always gravitate toward the "Easy". What is is easier than putting on a headset or having an implant, & let the story do the thinking & work for you?
I see the widespread cell phone addiction cutting through all strata of existence. When your VR finally arrives it will be enslavement - on a massive scale. And sadly, it will be embraced by most. Odds are, I won't be here to see the final result, & I am sadly ... grateful for that.
I laughed when I read this. Recently 4 of my 5 grandchildren (all under 11) were hanging out all quietly reading books. The 5th, a 2-year old had a picture book and was making up her own story. I asked, "Where are the iPads?" The answer from the oldest without looking up from the page, "Book with paper pages are better!" I've always known that children are wiser than adults, and it's great to live alongside "5 Wise People."
4
I'm just now stumbling across this essay in mid January (six weeks after it was originally published), but wow. It was a thought-provoking read that actually felt like a possible missive from 20 years down the road.
I was not familiar with Ms. Harrow, but I'm going to look for "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" on Amazon now. I will probably buy a physical copy, just so I can enjoy the feeling of holding/smelling/touching a book while I still can ;)
1
I would really not want to personally experience most of the things that happen to characters in books.
Also it's hard to imagine that production would be democratized when you think about how much time and detail has to be put in to a television show, which is relatively static. One person alone in a trailer park can write a convincing, good novel, because books remain dependent on the imagination of the other person to do the legwork.
Is it even experiential if you can't choose your own adventure so to speak? Is this not just really detailed, emotionally prescriptive television?
1
The smell of a bookstore cannot be replaced by a ‘ virtual’ smell o vision . Sorry
As to the content , i pity the poor souls whose lack of imagination does not permit their minds to wander Not people i would associate with
1
Your certainty is compelling. Still, for some of us -- it is not stories per se. The text echo of tellers, the poets song, the conversation across centuries, the illuminated art of our voices, in their vaults of beauty will still compel. Speech will find its tablet, unless our voices grow quiet. You've blown off the frame, as your cyber pals have done. And it is true, we remember how things have changed, we librarians of anachronistic pulp. It's true, I'm offended by your bleached nonsense and travesty of decay. Your words are a reflection of where we are. Stymied by the news that nothing will soon exist. Least of all the format of digital sand along the drowned beaches. No Jane in the sky and all the grids down. Chauvet caves and their symbols? Submerged. Your writing is experienced and beautiful, sad you will cease to exist like the rest of us. Ready?
Ah, yes, "experience" mediated by technology must be better than the unaided imagination.
That may well be true, for people with weak, untrained imaginations. Sad.
2
The author should check and see how robust the vinyl market is these days. She should also consider that writing is not only stories, and that the sounds of the authors' languages can be as gratifying as the narrative being spun.
1
Can't help but mention that the Koreans and Chinese actually invented the printing press, several 100 years prior, and there were several unsuccessful attempts at replicating it until Gutenberg figured it out...
But yeah, books!
1
While I am a longtime and committed book lover, I thoroughly enjoyed - and largely agreed with - Ms. Harrow's Op-Ed. I was also surprised at the spread and passion of commentators in defense of the printed word. Last year, Pew told us that 25% of Americans read no books in any form in the year prior to the survey. That percentage is rising. Sales or rents of university-required texts are in decline and today's students increasingly eschew lectures and even tutorials. Like Ms. Harrow, I suspect that the most successful future authors and educators who compete for our scarce attention will be 'experience brokers' . For some, the amazing interplay between books and our imaginations will persist. Others - right or wrong - have already moved on and many others will likely to do so as the lines between media blur.
6
Reading increases the richness of your thinking.
The ability to understand symbols, the ability to think abstractly, the ability to do math are all directly tied to the ability to read.
Reading makes you more empathetic.
Reading results in increased vocabulary and improved writing skills.
Those who read have higher intelligence and general knowledge of the world than those that don’t.
Reading reduces stress.
Those who listen to read-alouds, get calmer.
4
What balderdash! All books are "stories"? Is that all you read/
1
Printed literature was not invented by Gutenberg in 1439. The oldest surviving printed work found in the British Museum is the Diamond Sutra, printed in China in 868. Using wooden blocks, the Chinese mass produced printed literature centuries before Gutenberg.
The Chinese also invented paper over 2000 years ago. Paper money and playing cards were also invented in China.
Over 400,000 copies of one Buddhist collection was printed in the tenth century. Confucian scholars also produced massive works that could be called the world's first encyclopedias.
Nor did Gutenberg invent movable type. The earliest movable type was invented in China by Bi Sheng in 1048. At first movable type was made out of terra cotta. Later movable type was made out of metal in Korea.
Printing spread to the Middle East and Russia as a result of the Mongol conquest in the 13th Century. It was only one of many Asian inventions that spread to the West at this time. Prior to Gutenberg, the paper was placed on top of the inked type and a cylindrical roller was used to press the ink against the paper.
Gutenberg's invention was the use of a screw press rather than a roller and the use of ink that included linseed oil. It is debatable if the screw press was an improvement over the roller, but the linseed oil worked better on metal type, which was more durable than terracotta type.
The smaller number of characters in the Roman alphabet was also an advantage for Europeans.
3
Blah blah blah no need for writing no need for words.
Before Gutenberg, Homer didn't need books, he just talked, blah blah blah, spewing syllables.
So, how did the Iliad and the Odyssey get written? Ummm.
No iphone, no perfect binding, no pencil, but somehow someone wrote a work of literature (gasp) that looks a heck of a lot like a book. If you know how to read.
2
What is this guy really saying? He may be a kind of writer, but not a very good one.
@cdatta
The fancifully-named writer is a she but, yes, she seems to be saying "Look, mom, I'm writing!"
Somehow that seems to go along with broadly predicting the future. When you do so, you're harder to firmly gainsay in a lot of ways, and that smacks a little of self-approval. The way-more-knowing-than-thou tone usually puts me off.
This prediction has been made lots of times, from 1950s science fiction to William Gibson (what you call "neural threads" he called "microsofts"--before Microsoft was a thing). Let's assume it comes to pass. You missed the biggest application of all, the one that drove the success of VHS, high-bandwidth streaming, online payments, and secure browsing: Porn. Of course, you knew that. Didn't you?
Microsoft (the company) predates Neuromancer.
The idea that the only people who go to bookstores are "aging millennials" and hipsters is idiotic. All kinds of people go to bookstores. I see little kids with their mothers there for story time. I see elderly people who never wanted to adjust to digital formats. All kinds of people prefer to read from a physical book over e-readers. Nostalgia and hipness are minor reasons why people prefer physical books.
2
You know what? Don't tell us that.
This tired old mare again? Books aren't going away.
Reading forces your mind to create mental images. Virtual reality does this for you, and encourages laziness in the brain. Books should be an integral part of everyone's education.
1
If books disappear, what will Republicans and their ilk ban and burn?
2
@gtodon
How much de-platforming, de facto censorship,and ganging-up on free expression generally is actually the work of Republicans "and their ilk"?
Taxing them with the wrongs of their opponents is hardly necessary if you want to find things to pillory them for. Legitimate reasons are in pretty rich supply.
People who get all their information from a 2 inch by 5 inch screen, wasting their lives "liking" other people's absurd, self-involved, and trivial lifestyle posts, get the sort of life they deserve.
The rest of the world will cherish books for centuries to come.
2
"It's true your beloved books have died." Who granted you the authority to make such sweeping proclamations? The sense of quiet discovery and fellowship found in bookshops and libraries are sadly replaced by the lonely glare of a solitary screen.
Undergraduate hubris. As usual.
2
@David Landrum
Medieval copyists would still be in business if everyone could pack so much accurate punch into just four words.
1
This op-Ed is a real reach. The fact that e-books are supplanting printed ones does not support the argument that reading is a lost art. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll now peruse the rest of today’s digital NYT.
2
I'll also be dead. Big deal.Things change.
3
God help us if this future comes to pass.
2
It is entirely likely that "the Verse" will be hacked by "a middle school student from Michoacán" or more likely some part of the even less developed world. No American child of 2036 will have the intellectual curiosity or the discipline to make the the effort. It will take someone disciplined enough to actually read books. Most Americans don't even have the discipline to read the entirety of this article, and (as of 8:30 MST) less than 500 have the mental acuity to think or write anything cogent about it.
Literacy is already over. It was dying at the turn of the century. Aside from a few mossbacks who actually read the New York Times, we have already descended into an age in which more than half of Americans refuse to take advantage of the information at their finger tips.
The "verse" and it's competitors will be an entertaining toy for the lazy, then, like the smartphone, it will become the tool of those best able to record and project their baseless opinions and raw emotions to make a small and pointless living harvesting micropayments from fickle, but insatiable followers. By the time it arrives, there will be no one left capable of reading, let alone seriously considering or understanding Adam Smith or David Hume.
In 20 years, I'll be dead. So I won't be able to read books anyway.
1
Have you been in a public library lately? You'd better make a trip with my grandchildren before you announce the death of books.
Books dead?
What a bizarre assertion.
Try to convince the busy librarians throughout the country of that....
One word response that ends all debate: vinyl.
Reminds me of the film “Brainstorm!”
No.
The format of print books itself has value. It engages the active intellect and imagination in ways digital and virtual means do not. A person retains more cognitive control over print, while digital and virtual means suck them in and reduce agency, and I would argue, their human dignity.
This essay is cute for a 20 something debut author. But as a 40 year old mother and experienced therapist, I have seen the damage that the sudden digitalization of our lives has done to the mental health of young people and the decline in literacy that is the result of substituting tablets for print in schools.
I do not allow my children to use devices or screens. Period. They live in real reality and they read paper books.
I know they will eventually have tech in their lives, but at least I can give them the memory of freedom and reality.
And as for myself, I will always read paper books.
Eclipses and certain demographic categories aside, predicting the future is so notoriously fruitless that I wonder why anyone bothers. Some people just enjoy trying to be impressive, I guess, or are battling boredom. Some hate the world and want to squint, grimace, and groan till a spell is cast and presto, it's all better now. Ta-da. The future is for vulgarians, Paul Fussell asserted.
Woody Allen's Sleeper plays it for laughs but others I've stumbled across always try for the beyond-serious super-knowing air. This one is typical.
I sit patiently, waiting for my flying car, my twelve-foot rib of celery, and my Orgasmatron.
After the climate catastrophe collapses civilisation (before 2039) you will find that paper reigns supreme again.
1
I'll be dead in twenty years. I would hate to outlive books.
“In a world of rising seas and wealth inequality, of superstorms and superbugs, there is nothing more precious than escape.”
Which is why I am cutting back on the debilitating news in the NYT. But I keep my subscription — my contribution to democracy.
1
The author of this “article” says “I work primarily in scent and sound, collaborating with other authors to build a five-sense narrative,” whatever that means. When you write a book, we’ll be happy to consider your opinion, but until then...
1
"The world's first movable type printing technology for printing paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song Dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051)."
Wow, Just wow. an incredible vision
1
I am one of the guys who invented the electronic book back when we used MS-DOS 1.25, and my company, Serendipity Systems, was the first commercial publisher. However, my personal library includes a book printed in 1615 and I don't expect that any of my electronic publications will last 400 years. That is why I also publish ink-on-paper books.
60
I heard the Theater was dead too. And the Grey Lady ... is her hair grey because she's closer to death? Either way, laying claim to how the future will look sure seems like hubris to some of us.
2
Yawn. Didn't I read this twenty five years ago?
2
I take issue with the idea that books are not experiential. How do I know?
Because every single one of you reading this can sympathize with "the book was better than the movie."
Your imagination has an infinite CGI budget. As long as there are writers who can harness that budget, people will read books.
318
@Danny
Excellent post, Danny!
9
Virtual reality and its improvements will provide an opiated thrill for the masses. Just what the Controllers want (the oligarchs, their pet politicians and their media mouthpieces). They will peddle escape as 'freedom.' Critical reading, and literacy itself, may become the resort of a shrinking erudite segment. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but can it beguile like electronic faux-reality?
1
You forgot one of the most important and certainly the most ancient of the things that stories do, and it’s something your nightmarish vision of the “Verse” would never allow: they create solidarity, bonds between people, groups that defy the intense atomization, objectification, and monetization of our “selves” on the internet (including in this peculiar dream of yours). I’d prefer not to be siloed off into a digital catacomb spun from self-aggrandizing comic book fantasies and POV pornography, if it’s all the same to you. Books will have to do. And they do, so well. Enjoy your video games.
1
I certainly hope not.
1
They will pry my books from my cold, dead fingers.
Good to know that Big Tech--Google, Microsoft, Amazon--will make
it into the future! Good to know that snark will be alive! But wait:
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, And snark are alive and thriving right
now! Books have disappeared from libraries! Reading skills are
dropping! Long live devolution!
Stop with the emotion. Books are here and printed word will always be here because of their simple durability. You can still read a Gutenberg Bible, as well as cave drawings. Good luck trying to listen to an Edison cylinder, or watching old nitrate films. How about listening to 8-tracks or cassette tapes, or watching old VCRs that have been near a magnet (or just cosmic rays?) What will happen to all our photos in the cloud? Durability counts: when electromagnetic or other "soft" media can last 600 years, then it will have replaced books.
Storytelling does count for sure, but the stories must be tell-able (or read-able.) and anyone who can express themselves can create a story, if they can read and write they can document it. The chance of all persons being able to create stories in the "Verse" is nil, and will further separate humanity.
I do not know what David Brett of the University of VT is talking about in terms of no one wanting to read books anymore. I would suggest to him that he leave Burlington every now and then and travel to the rest of VT where there are bookstores that have books, and the libraries are wonderful. I can name a few Groton Public Library, Peacham Library, Galaxy Bookstore in Hardwick VT (one of my faves) and many of the people I meet are voracious readers of print and e-books. We share books and there are little free libraries around the state and in Montpelier too. I see children reading all the time and back in NYC my friends children were great readers and still are.
3
I write in my books. In the margins and on the blank spaces. Mostly for research I highlight sections. My parents did the same. I inherited recipe books from my mother with notes about substitute ingredients and which dishes were favorites to specific family members and friends. From my father I see which Mark Twain jokes he treasured most and which poems he desired to memorize. I love the inscriptions and dates from the books I received as gifts. I get a kick when reading to my kids a book I had as a child and revisiting what delighted me about it when I was at their age. Some genres might work in other formats but technology is not as universal as technicians may think.
1
This is a cute piece, but it seems ludicrously implausible that such a sweeping view of historical context would survive what books would not.
Nota bene: Gutenberg only reinvented the printing press; the Chinese had already invented it centuries earlier. In our globalized world, surely the newspaper of record can ensure even its editorials reflect a less Western-centric view of history. In order to imagine the future, shouldn't we first familiarize ourselves with the past ?
By the year 2029 print newspapers had completely disappeared. Later historians ascribe (archaically derived word) the decline of newsprint to, ironically, the New York Times, which, despite annual profits in the millions, increased its print subscription price by at least 10% every year for 20 consecutive years, thus gradually eliminating its print circulation.
2
Never. Captain Picard carries them on the Enterprise.
2
Print books can go just about anywhere and never run out of power. To turn them on you just open to any page.
1
I'm reminded of the many times I have seen a movie adaptation of a book I've read where the characters, scenes, action, etc. were nothing like what I had imagined from the book. Sometimes the movie was really good; usually not. The point is not that greater detail and more "realism" is not what makes a captivating experience. Typically, it was the writer's power of suggestion --an ability not to describe in detail, but to more powerfully evoke an experience that captured my imagination and created a powerful reality for me. Marshall Mcluhan was wrong. The medium is not the message. The experience evoked by a talented story teller is the message.
Here is an issue. Gutenberg DID NOT invent the printing press. The Chinese had been pressure printing woodcuts for centuries.
HE INVENTED THE MOVABLE/REUSABLE TYPE SYSTEM.
AND THEREIN LIES THE STORY.
If you cannot, will not even get the basic facts straight how can you expect to be taken seriously.
Back to the eighth grade please, stay awake this time.
2
Craig Millett, from Kokee, Hawaii, wrote: "Yes there is something more precious than escape - the engagement with the author's work and my own imagination."
Imagination: something that turns to a pause of reflection. It reflects personal experiences, "experiences" similar to what we are watching, reading, and living.
The written word is everywhere, though. Good movie?
Good writing. Fun game online? Good writing (and coding).
Nicholas Kristof reported in his review of Armstrong's book on scripture (and I paraphrase): that the God of Scripture is not on a cloud somewhere but is an "ineffable ... unknowable transcendence."
Much like writing itself.
Writing transcends. It is a part of virtual reality. Unless, of course, reality becomes fantasy, a problem seen throughout the world where many believe they are the hero in their own movie.
Sounds like the future, huh? Oh boy!
Life itself courses through our being into an intellectual (transcendental) imagination. Religious scholars and many others have discussed and puzzled over this since consciousness itself: poets, musicians, novelists, and all of us.
It came from the eons and found itself in the teachings of sages and religious texts throughout the world: Thou shall not covet (when one does not want for survival).
Simple, right?
I was about 13 when I first got addicted to H.L. Mencken.
Mrs. Rossi -- a very pretty blonde lady teacher who I was infatuated with in the ninth grade -- assigned my class to write an essay on Lord Byron. So I went to the library and assembled a pile of books on him. They bored and stupefied me. So I started looking around for something better to read. There was an open copy of one of Mencken’s books on one of the library tables. I picked it up and began reading it. It made me laugh, and I have been reading Mencken ever since.
But that is not the end of the story. Next day, I asked Mrs. Rossi if I could do my essay on Mencken instead of Lord Byron, and she said just this once I could. I got an A+ from her on the essay. And that is why I still am in love Mrs. Rossi.
1
I would suggest a read of Vonnegut's Galapagos. A few people find they are the only humans left on the earth, from whom humanity springs anew. They have a device that contains all the knowledge in the world. It doesn't matter.
For those that collect the written word to preserve ideas, it is not clear anyone will care in 50 years. None of my friends are interested in inheriting my library. I frequent archive.org and download truly wonderful books that have been downloaded less than 100 times around the world. When new, these books were issued in the thousands.
I don't think books will ever go away. They are the greatest source of information––precisely because nobody reads them!
My wife and I walked by the local bookstore last weekend and decided not to shove our way inside the mob. My millennial kids buy and read books and then share them with us. Our front stairs is piled with read books waiting to be taken to the used bookshop in the local library down the street. Not sure where the author lives, but almost every town of any size in upstate New York has a thriving local library that provides books, talks, children's events, meeting spaces, help with your taxes, and even access to computers for those that don't have them at home.
3
My young children and their generation have surprised many of us by rejecting this notion. We Generation X parents, like many, thought that books were dead and bought our children Kindles. We have watched as all of our children, and many of their friends don't use them. There will always be something visceral and real about the feeling of a heavy book in your hand, the sounds of the library plastic as the book shifts in your hand and the smell of the paper. I thought these sensory experiences were merely the memories of my childhood providing comfort, but watching the new generation prefer a physical book all over again just goes to show that, well, you're wrong. Books are alive and well.
4
A big thing -- maybe the elephant or the wise old dog in the room -- is this thing called imagination. I don't mean the writer's imagination; I mean the reader's imagination. In this world of VR, which will be cool and fun, everything is filled in for the consumer, even if one can manipulate the story. A reader creates worlds from a writer's words. Those imaginings are as unique and vivid as each of us. I read Tolkien as a kid on autumn days and nights, with the swirl of leaves outside and deep red sunsets out the window. I was in a world of my own making, guided by the writer. Words! Will we ever stop writing them or abandon their music and force? Only when we cease being human.
1
The fact of the matter is that, thanks to licensing, most books being read today are rented rather than owned. We've already seem Amazon delete books from readers' accounts, and even your local library can only loan out a few versions of a book they've purchased at a time, despite their being no technological reason for such a limit.
This is why I do the same thing with books that I do with movies and music: When I make a purchase, I also pirate a digital copy.
I'm happy to rent content on Netflix. But I refuse to merely *rent* content that I've legally purchased and paid full-price for.
@Michael-in-Vegas Apologies for the typos. I'm literate, I swear!
Once you buy a book, it's yours forever. I have paperbacks still readable after fifty years. My virtual world? Every three years I need a new device to explore it, and the old one ends up in a toxic landfill. I need a monthly cable fee. I pay subscriptions. I cannot easily or legally lend it to a friend. And all my stuff is in the cloud, subject to hackers or changes in terms of service. I spend plenty of time online, but the Matrix is no replacement for a good book.
4
Let us remember that most great ideas, policies, systems of thought, letters of recommendation, or produced by reflection and analysis. None of which are provided by virtual reality.
"But what was it you loved, really? Surely it wasn’t the bleached-wood-pulp and acid-free ink, but what the books contained: the epics and tragedies, the memoirs and mysteries, the 10,000 ways we’ve escaped and explained the human experience for centuries. The stories."
What do I love? The intimacy and creature comforts of sitting in a comfortable reading chair, the physical sensuality of holding a book (or magazine or newspaper) reading, maybe pausing and putting down what I'm reading to reflect on it. I've yet to find the digital/electronic analogue.
The stories abide, but as has been noted, "the medium is the message".
2
Mr. Harrow assumes a false equivalence between the experiences of reading, always requiring at least minimally active engagement, and VR, also at times requiring such engagement but more likely to be scripted and passive experienced.
As long as the desire for intellectual engagement remains -- the underlining, the underlining and scribbling in the margins, the pause for reflection -- books in printed or electronic form will endure.
1
For me, ebook reading is much easier. I do however only buy cookbooks and art books as hardcopy. They do not work well as ebooks.
I wonder what will happen to imagination when we cross that bridge... When we live stories instead of developing our own mental images, as we do with print and audio, will that slowly go the way that memory has? Some time back, I remember learning that when print displaced oral storytelling, the human brain actually physically changed and our memory capacity markedly diminished. Will that be the case with imagination, when all aspects of the stories---5 senses worth---are provided for us to consume?
Cool read.
3
"Social media is flooded with..."
Got that far and said forget it.
Any science fiction writer who thinks "social media" will still be around in even five years let alone hundreds of years is just, well...silly.
Arthur C. Clarke predicted video communications. (among many other correct) Right!
Isaac Asimov predicted robotics revolutionizing the workplace. Right!
Star Trek predicted flip-phones and iPads. Right!
I
Ha! I'm still waiting for my flying car, nuclear energy "too cheap to meter", and that fusion power plant that produces limitless energy and recycles all of our trash into its elemental forms.
3
Books give us freedom of thought. Books don't leave a digital trail. As tyrants become more prevalent in our world, books may be our vital link to a free society.
6
By posting a comment, I am admitting to reading some of the NY Times on line. But the fact is, I pretty much hate reading on line. The screen bothers my eyes, and I find it harder to absorb the content. I am on line at the moment because my print edition hasn't arrived. Once it is on my doorstep, I am out of here.
In 2039 all of us will be dead.
Really? Get serious and quit wasting our time with futuristic nonsense.
3
This is an old story. Google "Brain in a vat".
Was this a reprint from the nineties?
1
I wonder if, in this fictitious future, whether there would be any printed-word NYT editorials?
1
Damn those horses!! Our beloved walking is dying. Damn that bow and arrows!! Our beloved spears are dying. Damn that Gutenberg!! Our beloved illustrated manuscripts are dying. Damn that Edison!! Our beloved candles are dying. Damn that TV!! Our beloved radio is dying. Damn that internet!! I’m writing this from my local Starbucks, where six people are reading. Only one is reading a newspaper.
2
Books are dead, but only for the increasing number of people who can't read.
For the rest of us, books will live forever.
4
That's what they said about records. You know, the 33 1/3 RPM type?
1
As usual, Op-Eds from the Future that do not take into account the near-gravity-like certainty of massive climate chaos disruption is an exercise in, frankly, the higher denialism.
If it's indeed higher. I think rather the opposite: this is the denial of those who, presumably, know (and think they do not deny), as opposed to some brainwashed evangelical who thinks "global warming" is from the devil. I actually have more sympathy for those people, who grew up and live in a bubble.
I have more books than my bedroom can hold -- thanks to Amazon and Ebay.
1
"Social media is flooded with nostalgic images of textbooks and battered paperbacks, and the best-selling candle scents are 'Indie Bookshop' and 'Library Dream.'”
Books are gone but scented candles persist... 'tis truly a bleak future we face.
My grade ten Social Studies class had a choice between an e-text and an old cardboard and paper copy this year. Hands down, they went with paper. The argument is settled.
When I moved to Chicago from NYC in 1975 I was shocked by an absence of book stores. Except for a few very small Krochs and Bretanos stores, public libraries, and even fewer used book stores Chicago was literarilly a barren city. Then in the mid 1980's came the Border's super-bookstore renaissance. A short time later Barnes and Nobles sprouted everywhere and it looked like the book revival was here to stay. The hedge fund manipulation of Border assets to drive up share holder profits at the expense of the stores was responsible for the demise of the Border stores. Amazon and the digital revolution are causing extensive Barnes and Nobels store closings. The article is indeed true that books are fast becoming an acronism. The pages of my 20 to 40 year old library are yellowing and turning brittle. Books have become things to display on the coffee table as a home decor rather than something to read.
I took a break and enjoyed reading this beautifully written, provocative piece. Now I'm going back to work on my latest painting--oil paint, brushes, canvas.
1
At the rate new technology is being developed and pushed on the public, by 2039 all the methods Ms. Harrow lists in her article that will push books into the grave will be joining them there.
By that time, I’ll be 90 years old, if I’m still alive. In the meantime, I will continue to read books, loving the feel and smell of them, falling asleep with my glasses hanging off my nose and my face buried in the pages.
And I’ll plant trees in atonement.
2
Many Libraries are thriving.
The book and the library have evolved and continue to do so.... The library is the soul of the town...
2
When I walk into my library, the staff often outnumber the patrons. There are books on the shelves near the desk marked "new arrivals," yet when I stroll through my favorite section, mysteries, I rarely see an author I do not know or a book i haven't read or considered. We have changed. I have changed. My attention span has been chopped down to size. I am addicted to adrenaline. I don't like myself as much as when I was "lost" in books.
My local library is packed.
@Zejee Really! I do live in the rural South. I find a similar downward trend when I visit libraries in larger southeastern cities. It's not a loss I mourn. The books available to me will outlast me. I just find it curious. Are the people in your library reading paper or are they at computer stations?
Non fiction, particularly history, will survive because it covers so much and much of it is not given to virtual presentation. However, virtual is a lovely counterpart with virtual reconstruction of lost buildings, people, and landscape. Generally, virtual is shallow compared to text where detail, opinions, versions of fact, and detail are cumulative not one off experential.
Remarkably, a bore remains, whatever she uses.
Interesting how the author choses to ignore the surge in vinyl record sales, the spike in print book sales in 2018 (695 million unitshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/books/paper-printers-holiday-sales-books-publishers.html) with a corresponding decline in e-book sales, and the return of film in photography, trends sparked by the millennials in a noted backlash to the digital world presented by the author.
3
Re-read the essay!
She didn't ignore them. For example,
“bookstores are now antiques shops haunted by aging millennials and the kinds of effortlessly hip retro teenagers who might have collected vinyl records in previous decades”
Yet, what she emphasizes is what a tiny group that is— and how retro and dated — and that they are no competition for the new synaptic virtual reality!
It's an amusing thought experiment, and I can agree with the point to some extent; I love to read because I love stories, which is why I also love film, television, and theater. However there is something to reading a physical book that I do not experience with the others, even on a kindle. I like the feel of a book in my hands. I like how a new book smells. I like being able to tell how many times I've read something by how creased the spine is, and I like turning pages at my own pace, bookmarking them, and being able to go back easily for reference. I like being able to physically browse my bookshelf, and I like randomly catching a glimpse of something I haven't read in a while when I'm sitting on the couch, and pulling it off the shelf to read.
It is about the story, but sometimes it's also just about the act. I suspect I'm not alone in this.
7
I remember reading a book from the 50s predicting moon travel for tourists by the 80s. Still, the article might make for a nice TED talk.
Does anyone get the irony here that this article is using to describe the future, those obsolete articles of faith: words?
Words are being used here as they always have been called upon in their unique fashion--to arrange into a coherent set of symbols that spark an unconscious understanding of meaning.
The terrible problem attempted here is that visual or audio experience (even with smell included) is only a primitive use of the mind.
Reading words, sentences and paragraphs organized into chapters inside books requires an abstract notion known as thought.
With the intellectual growth of human beings, experience was categorized and organized into sounds and gestures, then became vocalized as words, then written symbols which became letters of an alphabet grouped into words=ideas needed to articulate our life experiences. Unless we begin to seriously regress as reasoning creatures (which, despite attempts to crowd out thought by machines), I doubt that any simplistic gadget can replace the wonder we've found by written storytelling.
Books are just too remarkable an experience.
3
Yes there is something more precious than escape - the engagement with the author's work and my own imagination.
10
Here is one thing that books provide that your hi tech entertainment doesn't : safety
In order for the tech world to function, the world now depends on increasingly health hazardous systems.
5G may be faster but it is also more damaging to our health.
And our dependency on energy has led us to the edge of a cliff
I'll take books over all of your shiny escapism.
Also, make sure to emerge once in a while, or else you may not understand what happened when our tech based world comes to a sudden halt/crash.
Virtual reality won't save you then...
2
TV didn't kill movie theaters. Nor has Netflix. Books are here to stay.
43
You write as though the only purpose of books is to tell stories. On the contrary, from long before the invention of the printing press, the principal purpose of books is to store and retrieve information. Let us lay aside the digital universe of science and mathematics for a moment. The kind of short-form verbal information that tends to clog the internet runs counter to the our need to store and retrieve large bodies of information in the form of words. Books are the length they need to be, not the length that suits a server or the short attention span of a lot of the readers who depend wholly on digital sources of information. As for stories, not all stories are suited to streaming. Some stories are very long, a format that the book serves nicely. We have been hearing about the demise of the book for decades now. Still around. Still flourishing, notwithstanding the short-sighted decision of high schools and other erstwhile repositories of knowledge to cater to the short form that adolescents prefer and the short attention span that it spawns.
1
Went to a bookstore last night, to have a look at the "Writer's Market," in order to see whether I could salvage a career that's lasted me 19 years but which slowly has devolved from salary, benefits, health insurance and 401k to no salary (I make about $13,000 a year as a freelancer) no benefits (ha!) no health insurance (Thank goodness for Medicaid - go Elizabeth!) and - savings? What are those? I'm also on SNAP benefits and visit a food bank once a week.
One way to get rid of books is to get rid of writers, most of whom cannot make a living anymore. The public is now served by hacks who must produce and upload 1-5 stories a day including obtaining photos, which used to be handled by "photographers" who worked in "photo departments." These articles are often cobbled from various other news sources instead of the "writer" leaving their apartments.
Show me a writer and I'll show you a barista, sex worker, Uber driver, postal employee. The difference is that a talented writer could one day look forward to giving up the day job. Now it's labor from high school to the coffin, no money, no fame...and still we hope.
Not so fast. Regarding the books I want to keep and refer back to, I purchase the hardback or paperback copy. All others I read on Kindle. The books I keep are chiefly histories and biographies.
As many other readers have shared, I too love books. Their feel, their smell, the intimacy of memories tucked into their pages to be saved along with their stories. But I am also an avid VR gamer. And via VR I have “touched” places, walked dusty roads, to which...much as I love them...mere combinations of words could never have carried me. Add more senses to the mix and, at 68 years of age, I am a little sad that I will not likely see the Verse.
The whole point of the written word is the experience of stories through LANGUAGE. The verbal narrative is intimately connected to human experience, the shared human experience. Virtual reality, on the other hand, is a singular distraction, not an experience that can mean very much. For all the people wearing headsets, for all the solipsism in our world, people still prefer talking as the fundamental way to express themselves. And the best of language lives easily and naturally in books. And that's why we love our books. And so, Guttenburg's invention is safe. For now. After all, we made it through 1984. Well, barely, but we made it.
1
Articles like this are a dime a dozen. Kindle has been around for a while and twenty years ago many wrote that in 20 years books would be dead. Instead the authors may be dead and books are still rewarding people like myself with their content and visual beauty in library shelves.
2
As many have said, there is something almost magical about holding a book, inhaling its scent and being able to literally turn pages. However ... and it's a big one ... books are created for people to read, enjoy, entertain, ponder, educate, enhance language skills, travel to exotic places, and appreciate the writers who create this word-art.
Having said all that, in addition to loving the tangible book,I eagerly use my internet book account to read on my computer the ones I have purchased online, and I take my e-reader with me in travel, to appointments, even to the gym.
For eons I said, "You can't cuddle up with an e-reader!" Then I had an epiphany: Yes you can. A book is a book, regardless of format, and I will always gratefully accept them in any readable form.
A book will always be a magnificent gift, no matter how I read it.
1
I caught my son immersed in The Tropic of Cancer, so I had to put a block on his literature....
Books are not dead. My library is not a virtual reality salon. My mother continues to make her living selling books as an independent bookseller. In a world in which the NSA, CIA, Russia, Facebook, and Google are spying on all of us and publishers, forced by government censorship, can (and do) change electronic books with the press of a button, what is the attraction of this vision of a book-less world? Come back to the real world, Alix.
38
That’s why it’s pre-emotes as science fiction. As all great science fiction does - this piece explores a world far from our daily truths.
2
@Me Not sure you quite get the point. I don’t think the author sees much attraction in this future world either. But sadly it isn’t too difficult to imagine it coming true.
2
@Me
This is part of the "Op-Ed from the Future" series in NYT. It seems plausible, though, no. It took me several paragraphs in before I realized it was fiction!
1
As a children's librarian I'm seeing this now. Children are not reading conventional books, non-fiction is is a death spiral, and research is done via Google search. When I opine books among the young are perishing, I'd met with resistance from book lovers, I'm one myself, and always say, "No one felt sorry for the unemployed monks Gutenberg replaced." Time moves on.
I will always love a weighty book in my hands...the soft "whish" of turning pages...the smell of old ink and paper. I love the softness of paperbacks that are well-loved and reread multiple times. I don't see a point in my life that this will change.
You love the pleasant ritual. Others might enjoy a warm fire and a cat on the lap. That’s fine but it has little to do with the actual reading.
@Zamboanga Best ritual of all—a book (which I am most certainly reading), a warm fire, and a cat (or two) on my lap.
Imagine a future where all information is digitized and encrypted and only Amazon has the password...
1
I assume that by the time this happens we will finally have the jet packs and flying cars the Jetsons promised us.
2
If you’re addicted to reading, you know no other experience can replace it.
And I think there are enough book lovers to protect the future of printed books. Just visit @Litsy or “Bookstagram” or YouTube to see how many young people read, collect, and cherish “real” books, both new and vintage. My 25-year-old nephew doesn’t go anywhere without a book, even though he prefers computers for almost everything else. The survival of books and reading is in good hands.
I think this point of view misses a very important piece of the conversation which is the issue of sensory overload that we experience today. It's known and established that screen time creates anxiety and over excites our nervous system. All sorts of screen time limit apps are being created as we realize what a mess we created for ourselves and our kids. Educators are acutely aware of how much books are beneficial for development, as opposed to screens, especially critical thinking and imagination, in addition to the sensory aspect. Books are wonderful escapes from reality, they enrich our lives, enhance our imagination and culture and are sensory detox. I only see a growing market from here.
4
Is that the reason why so many of us refuse to read books on a regular basis?
If this comes to pass, there will be VR experiences about reading the printed word.
1
Thanks.
I think I'll go out for a walk.
Without my phone.
1
My husband and I live in a mid-sized town in Texas, about 75,000 people, and we volunteer in our local public library, working mostly in the area where books are checked in. Believe me, people are still reading books! Real printed books. As to the national numbers, I have no idea, but from here books are not dead. And most especially children's books.
The library also offers e-books through a program that covers a lot of central Texas, as well as cd books, dvd's, computers available to everyone, and many family outreach programs. In addition, our library won a national award last year.
Books may indeed die, but not quite yet.
1
The difference between literature and the virtual reality "experiences" hypothesized by the author is that, for the characters in the books, everything that happens to them is real. For somebody putting themselves inside a VR story, it is, in the end, only an illusion.
1
The screen is like ancient scrolls. Random access while reading is key - not repeatedly hitting the back button or scrolling up and down. Studies show that kids prefer books to screens. Books will never die.
1
As a teacher, this is what I am experiencing in the post-book era. Texts that students clearly understood a decade ago no longer make sense to children. This is because more and more students can read the words but they don’t “know” the meaning of enough of them to comprehend the text. They can not read deeply enough on a screen to understand the questions they are being asked. They can not comprehend enough of the text to form an opinion that is based on what they read.
In the future, because they can not understand what they are reading, individuals will no longer be able to form an understanding of the world around them and their place in it. I fear they will not understand what they are being asked to vote on. They will not understand the meaning of the contracts they sign. They will not understand what is data supported information as compared to propaganda.
1
They said the same thing about vinyl. Refused to die.
4
Cassette tapes and vinyl are more popular among smart kids than streaming and CD's. WE will not let books die. The ignorant masses who have never read...will not care if they die. But the few of us who are not buffoons like the masses...we will buy books.
4
Ms. Harrow,
I hope you're wrong.
2
Wow, this is good! Nice story telling in that old fashioned media, words on pixels. ... but I will say that abstracting an "experience" to symbols has its merits. We might miss the smell and taste of Falkner decadent south, but we got it in a form that will be forever, now passing out of the solar system and headed for Alpha Centauri.
Well, this was written by someone who hasn't done a lot of library research. Many, many old library newspapers still exist only in hard-copy folios, they haven't even been captured on microfilm yet, never mind about about getting them into a VR headset. Most holdings in most special collection libraries are in the same state; only a few copies exist and only a few people in the world are interested in them. Outside the libraries, anyone who owns a novel inscribed by Charles Dickens would mortgage his house before he would give up that book. For art and photography books, hard-copy books are still a far better resource than anything on the internet or in electronic form. Some family bibles get passed down with pride for generations, and are considered the most important of all heirlooms. There is most definitely a place for electronic texts and Kindles, but so long as there are book-lovers and scholars, hard-copy books are not going away.
10
It will be a great loss. The loss of print - magazines, newspapers, books, and their attending institutions like libraries, newsstands and bookstores - will be a great loss to society.
"Surely it wasn’t the bleached-wood-pulp and acid-free ink, but what the books contained: the epics and tragedies, the memoirs and mysteries, the 10,000 ways we’ve escaped and explained the human experience for centuries. The stories."
Totally wrong. Not everything is a story. And books are objects, and have utility as objects. The pulp, the ink, the font, the paper, the glue, the smell, the feel, the whole thing called a book stands on its own even before you read a single word.
6
@John Xavier III Well, I disagreed with you about something the other day, but not today. Right on the mark.
1
Ronald Sukenick foreshadowed this in his story "The Death of the Novel" 50 years ago, but Gore Vidal and other literati had suggested the same thing many years before that. Books will die only when the paper they are printed on disintegrates. That is physically true for most books printed after 1800 but no so for most printed before 1800 because publishers used vellum paper (the Magna Carta is printed on vellum). Until then, people will keep reading them in great libraries, the beach, bedrooms, cozy studies, and even coffee houses.
Ms Harrow's vision breaks down quickly if I imagine trying to experience her essay as virtual reality or any other technology where I get to "live" her prose with smell and sound. Her argument, as it were, mostly works for fiction.
Are journalists of the future going to take us on a journey to some war-torn land so we can experience the horrors that we once only read about? Would we want to?
Furthermore, the author seems to be confusing books with the alphabet. I read her op-ed on my laptop. It's printing in an electronic form and it has nothing in common with a book except my act of translating the letters of English into meaning.
As many have pointed out, new technologies rarely completely supplant old ones. Fiction may be taken over by simulations, but I can't imagine a philosophical treatise or a linguistic analysis of languages ever being anything but read, in whatever medium the alphabet takes on.
Although I read the Times and other news sources online and have a Kindle, I also buy and cherish books. A house is not a home to me without bookcases and the books I have collected over the years, as well as those collected by prior generations in my family. They are timeless; e-books are not.
5
I'm not sure at all about the "extinction" of the book, but considering that the cell phone, computerization, and electronic transmission of language and graphics depend on electricity and that the works t can go bottoms-up, say, a thermal nuclear strike, sabotage of transmission facilities, frauduletcies of transmission, etc., etc. I think the printed word is not going anywhere, soon. The problem with the printed word is lack of currency, dated information is also the bane of electronic transmission of information. Let's just put it this way, when you're transmission's impaired or your cell battery goes dead, you could be too. Ask anyone in the military.
I had to sell or donate twenty two boxes of books after a recent move into a smaller house, and still I have them in every room. Each offers a story beyond what is found in the pages. Together, they tell the story of my life.
I could not part with the early 19th century leather bound copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson, purchased on Charing Cross Road forty years ago. Who wrote 'good old Johnson!' in spidery cursive at a particularly fine anecdote? Who was the schoolboy whose French earned him the prize of Les Trois Mousquetaires, circa 1914? I study the boy's name on his bookplate and wonder if he was killed in the Great War. I find comfort in the inscription in an elegant edition of Blake's Songs of Innocence, from a husband to his 'Lina darling, on her 21st birthday, 1887. The one beautiful poem of my life.'
The provenance of a book fascinates me. The leathery scent and smell of fresh print seduces. The signed copies recall readings given by authors, from Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood, to Christopher Hitchens, Paul Farmer, JK Rowling and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Even the sometimes irascible Maurice Sendak signed my book, and wrote 'Boo!' Would I have exchanged a few brave words with the brilliant Hitchens after reading a Kindle version of God is Not Great? Probably. Yes. But I like having the tangible reminder sitting on my bookcase.
Books, forever.
7
I can read literature easily enough on an e-book, but for anything that goes into detail and generally requires page flipping, such as history, say, or mathematics, a good old paper text is still the way to go.
2
Few now remember the embarrassing nadir of the Times' intermittently insightful series of "op-eds from the future," published way back in the twilight of the 2010s, which proffered the ostensibly bold prediction that books would, by our time, be replaced by virtual reality.
Its premise was, as many then suspected and we in 2039 know with rueful certainty, strangely quaint (and chaste!) with respect to the eventual uses to which VR technology would be put. More crucially, though, it was profoundly disconnected from stories themselves--what they are, how they work, and why we need them.
(That the piece's author seemed to forget that books existed for many centuries before the invention of the printing press is a relatively minor, but telling oversight.)
Even the most "escapist" genre of fiction--to say nothing of nonfiction, which figures in the op-ed not at all--allows for multiple levels of engagement, from the most detached and analytical to the most emotionally invested. Readers who buy and borrow books today seek, in reading them, something quite different than, and irreducible to, sensory experiences by proxy. Virtual experiences have a real, and really contested, place in our lives today, but they don't (and can't) enable us to both inhabit and observe other minds and lives in the way that literature can. Nor (to give movies their due) do they allow for the deliberate direction of our attention upon which cinematic storytelling depends. Medium matters on.
Reading a book is a voyage of self-discovery as active imagination and projection is required. This is not at all required of VR and video where passive participation is the norm.
"Books may be dead, but the stories themselves ... trapped in paper and pixels, ... are still very much alive." Perhaps but far less alive than when they are being generated inside one's own brain.
"Virtual reality transcends literacy" perhaps true in some sense yet VR is entirely dependent upon literacy (including visual literacy) for interpretation, contextualization, and meaningful engagement.
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." Carl Sagan
6
Processing visual and auditory input via a virtual reality headset, or any virtual reality delivery system we can conceive of now, is more closely related to playing a game with Wii or, oh, picking up a lacrosse stick or snowboard and heading to a field or a slope than it is to reading. The language centers of the brain are activated when reading, but so are areas associated with spatial awareness and what I will loosely call reasoning, and reading also evokes complex emotional responses that, due to the nature and pace of reading, also provoke reflection while reading and after reading. Yes, reading is an experience, just as snowboarding is an experience, just as a VR world or game is an experience, but VR is closer to snowboarding than it is to reading. The fact that the mind not only responds to language when reading, say, a novel, but also maps the novel as a territory (that's why you can so often find your place in a book on the first try--your brain has marked out the journey via your hands), while also provoking you to analyze the decisions of characters shows the complexity of what this op piece suggests is just a temporary turn in narrative.
Reading a novel engages the brain's linguistic and spatial functions in a way that neither getting on a real snowboard nor pulling on a VR helmet does. Like many tech-utopian ideas, Alix Harrow's piece is not founded on good science, in this case brain science.
@Nemo Your last paragraph could be applied to the reading the Times in print or in digital form. There's no comparison. That's why--even though it costs a barrel of money--I am probably going to go back to print rather than this crummy experience. And then there is the annoying endlessly repeating videos that now pollute the home page. To say I hate them is putting it mildly.
No no no. When the power goes out, I will take my books. Whilst the power is on I will take my books. They are more beautiful than any screen.
8
"Johannes Gutenberg hadn’t invented the ink, the paper, the press or the alphabet, but by combining their powers, he built the first printing press..."
This is simply not true. Movable type printing was being used in Song dynasty China hundreds of years before Gutenberg. There's no clear evidence that he knew about or was influenced by the Chinese examples, but he did not build the first printing press (and vellum isn't paper, as the wording here seems to imply).
3
Gutenbug mechanized it, and his model had a revolutionary impact. Within a couple decades every major university in Europe had one, sharing and disseminating information on an unprecedented scale.
@CJT Yes, I realize that, but that's not what the piece itself said. It's worth noting that printing (primarily woodblock) had a massive impact on intellectual (social, governmental, economic, etc.) life in China as well, but hundreds of years earlier (as woodblock printing had begun in the late 7th century, with a full-scale commercial printing industry by the 12th). The scale of information dissemination in Europe a few decades after Gutenberg was definitely not unprecedented; it been going on on a great scale for centuries in China. This is not at all to understate the impact of Gutenberg (or at least printing, as he himself quickly went bankrupt), but just to point out that it is not a uniquely European phenomenon.
2
@Ni Jian Good for you. This column repeats the mistakes of so many amateur historians. It helps to know something about materials to write, however briefly, about material culture.
1
I don't see printed books going away any time soon as no electronic device has the feel of a book nor the flexibility to mark pages and flip to them easily without having to type into a search box.
1
Bonks have always been about the power of your imagination. Even a non fiction book will take you to another place to experience the reality of the story. We may be less inclined to sit thru a book more than ever, but attention spans change, needs change, and the comfort of that paperback on a long trip or quiet afternoon will always be a welcome and energizing stimulant to the psyche.
1
@Jsbliv: One of the great typos ever in your first word.
I'm a high school English teacher. My kids don't read much. Certainly nothing like we did.
And when they say, "Why read the book? I saw the movie,"
I always tell them that it's like saying 'why ride a roller coaster? I saw one on TV."
4
I download e-books and still buy new and used paper books online. Buying used books is a great way to recycle. There are bad things about e-books, but one great thing is that books that have been out of print or soon would be going out of print, survive because of e-books. No one will publish a paper book with very limited sales potential because of the cost. An e-book costs very little to warehouse, produce and distribute, so books with very limited appeal can live on as e-books.
1
I kept a small library in a house I rented to various twenty somethings, sons and their friends. Despite having many electronic and other entertainments that they brought to the house, I learned that they started reading the books from my small library – from the medieval Russian Chronicles resting on the kitchen counter to the Dictionary of Quotations (for the “great pickup lines”). I don’t think they would have read the books if they were not there quietly asking to be picked up. That is what books on shelves do. They don’t have to be turned on, plugged in, or connected to the internet; still they manage to catch your eye each time you pass by and wait patiently until you reach for them.
3
When our 95-year-old friend was getting his home of many years ready to sell, we had to convince him that his grandchildren would probably not want his beloved World books. A book I give to many of my reading friends is "Howard's End is on the Landing." It is about the stacks of books we keep and don't read or look into for many years as volumes just continue to pile up.
I grew up loving books--and I just parted with the Bartlett's that was given to me in high school. I did save for a while longer the inscription. I grew up loving libraries. And I have spent the better part of life involved in publishing. But there will come a tme when things are very different--or perhaps a wiser generation down the road will look into a book and a library in a fresh way--and rediscover what generations before them have venerated. The writer has faith in stories and we should have faith in knowledge.
Books and reading have been the highway for both.
I respectfully disagree with this assessment. I think readers in general are changing, but I am particularly think that younger generations are starting to recognize the limitations of the virtual experience and are craving more. A tangible object in one’s hands produces a very different kind of a fact send something that is pixels only. In addition, the reliability and privacy around anything that is held network bound is coming under more serious scrutiny. I believe that ink on paper will continue to grow and eventually come back and thrive.
I turned Sixty this last week... thought I would preface myself before giving my take...but reading through this well written, if alarmist, article and the many comments that followed, frankly reminds me of discussions around any retirement home of old men complaining how the changing world, technology, and new ideas are destroying American society and undermining traditional civilization.
I love my printed books also and in fact, my favorite is the sizable collection of Folio Society volumes that rest on my shelves, but I dearly love the Digital Age and my Kindle which allows me to read anywhere at any time, storing thousands of printed books into a portable device. What's more, digital magazines are environment-friendly, as there is no waste paper. I read the NYT on my computer and I don't worry about having to recycle it.
In my observation, the Digital Age is actually building literacy globally, as it provides easy, cheaper avenues to read anything you desire. This is, after all, The Age of Information.
More people today are reading than at any time in history, and not just because of the global population stats; but also because literacy rates globally have never been higher. Digital publication and broadcast promote this trend.
Believe me, Faulkner and Steinbeck read just as good on my Kindle as they do from a printed page.
4
The irony of this piece is that it was written by an author who loves words. Ms. Harrow's beautiful style reveals where her heart truly lies: "Stories are shape-shifters, infinite and immortal: They’ve been painted on the walls of Chauvet Cave and pressed into clay tablets; sung by griots in the streets of Old Mali and cut into the Peruvian desert; danced and drummed and whispered, spun like spider-silk across the Atlantic and painted on the undersides of overpasses."
What other commentators have missed is that Ms. Harrow doesn't actually believe books will be replaced by virtual reality. Just as they have endured the "arrival of radio, then film, then television and then the internet," so too will they endure the rise of virtual reality. Why?
Because the magic of what books offer lies not in their depictions of reality, but their ability to communicate meditated truths. Audio, visual, or VR all seek to communicate truth but include so many details and distractions that their meaning is too often drowned out by noise.
Bring on Virtual Reality. And long live the edited, precise, and revised truths uncovered through the written word.
When I read a book it isnt so much about the story but about the way the author uses words. The art form of writing will always be around. Even with VR somebody has to write down what happens first.
2
The thing about books is that they age well. Digital media is too easily overwritten, replaced and, above all, obscured by a morass of bad, bad, bad(!) information. Literary history is too subject to trend algorithms in the godhead of the internet.
The death of small publishing houses and book sellers marks a dangerous, new terrain for literature. These dying entities were often the only source of cultural integrity. They supported brilliant translations, obscure authors, out of print masterpieces, and so much more.
Now we have Amazon.
1
I do have a visceral relationship to print itself. There's something powerful for me about deciphering the ink-on-the-page images; this is not natural (writing never has been) but I am an addict. Books are my drug of choice, period.
2
I'm excited for the holodeck and holonovels to replace the antiquated TV and movies that we have now! But I will temper my expectations for some great flowering of new experiences from amateurs globally. I suspect that the finest holographic/VR experiences will be delivered by the newest evolution of the Hollywood studios.
Meanwhile, the 'printed text' will continue to trundle along its own separate path, whether as books, ebooks, cellphone novellas, or some other form.
1
This is a logical progression. For the near future (20-50 years), I argue: Why do people still enjoy and even prefer vinyl records? True, they have a richness not possible with digital recordings. I think the same holds true with books, and not only in museums. The exception is further into the future (200-500 years). If, the human race survives that long.
1
Anyone might put out a book/song/video now. This seems like an expansion of possibilities. But story distributors, the electronic kind as much as any other, pick and choose according to their algorithms.
Digital books can be taken away, changed, edited at any time. They cannot be shared, nor can they be read privately. I had an electronic cookbook removed from my library about a year or so ago. No notice or warning. Went looking for a favorite recipe and, zap! No more. Publishers have the right to take back their electronic books from devices, I was told. There was an updated e-edition of said book and I was welcome to purchase that one. Instead, I purchased a fine used print edition of my original book.
1
I hope we don't lose books. My Nook died taking over a hundred books with it that I cannot access. My library of books, however, still exist and I can enjoy them at will.
3
@ExPatMX If you have a tablet or smartphone and can download the Nook app, you should be able to retrieve your books.
This trend to digital can only be a good thing for the planet. As the population mushrooms and the necessary push for more and more people to become educated will make demand on trees for paper books untenable. The key will be to start reusing reading technology and building reading tools that will transcend generations and be handed down. Right now we have a throw-away technology society that is equally untenable.
Fahrenheit 451! Without the government banning and burning books, the dystopia may continue. All said it is not only about storytelling as eating is not only about getting nutrients into the body. The tactile joy of holding a book, enjoying its high-quality binding, not to mention the much higher quality of the visual content are just some of the benefits of the printed medium. If books indeed die, future generations will be deprived of some of these qualities. That will be a shame.
1
The end of paper books signifies the end of culture. People are becoming lazy and less intelligent as a society as time goes by because of the ease of internet and other forms of media. I am 30 years old and I will never stop buying paper books.
5
"Progress" is not inevitable. Empires and their technology fall. Digital data may, someday, be no more readable than a cuneiform tablet. In fact much of it will be unreadable without the computers necessary to do so. How many of us have floppy or hard discs we can't read now?
The point is that we may want to keep books around. They can be read with eyes alone.
1
VIRTUAL SHEEP
What stories an narratives? This writer has no idea of what culture is. Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer etc. how can this be read without meditation and the book? Everything is not consumption and technology. Behind the brave new world of virtual technology-be it only through all that is lost from the vanishing of the Gutenberg galaxy- something sinister may be lurking: zombies with no ability to reflect, virtual sheep who can easily be led down the garden path.
5
This paper's op/eds about current reality are science-fiction enough for any taste. Events have finally caught up with the great science fiction writers of the 20th century, men like Huxley and Orwell whose prescience was such that we have heard frequent reference to their writing of late in utterances like "How did those writers in the 1930s and '40s know what was going to happen?" Ms. Harrow should settle down with a good book.
2
I hope Americans do not find themselves trapped in a dystopian Fahrenheit 451 future where firemen are sent out to burn books instead of putting out fires.
This column is utter nonsense. People read books because we enjoy them, much as we enjoy a soft shirt, a pet, or sticking our toes in a cold ocean on a hot day. Books are also used as communicators in a whole variety of other social manners today; someone reading a good book or newspaper on a subway is almost by definition more intelligent and more immersed in the infinite variety of experience than someone glued to an electronic device. If I were young and single, I would lump those device slaves in with alcoholics, problem gamblers, and other poor suicidal souls as a very poor bet for company.
5
Some of us read books not mainly for the stories, but more for the words, the sentences, the syntax, the paragraphs, the language itself. Virtual reality’s got nothing on that.
3
The first printing press and the first mass produced book was ”the lotus sutra” in China around 1 ad.
The lack of education of our educated elite is quite stunning.
2
Books will live on, long after we are all dead.
You will have to pry my printed books from my cold, dead fingers!
2
A newspaper (yes, newspaper) story from 2050:
The Verse ended its bankruptcy reorganization yesterday, emerging a shell of its former self. "It's part of the backlash against the internet, a hunger for life that isn't connected to a network that governments and corporations can monitor," said Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books. Only 25 years ago, it was common to see subway passengers and coffee shop customers staring at screens; since the eye cancer scare of 2040, everyone carries around the latest New Yorker, Atlantic, or Paris Review (and oh yeah, the New York Times). The papers and magazines are of course later dumped in non-polluting solar powered energy generators which have solved climate change.
Storytelling with smells and illusions seemed cool for a while, but the experience was a passive one that left most people craving the reading experience. Curling up with a book, turning the words into ideas and images in our individual minds, may turn out to be a permanent human desire, like live theater.
5
Well put! To theatre we might add live music and the playing of real instruments crafted by real humans and powered by human breath and human appendages?
1
Perhaps it is time to reread Farenheit 451 to realize what is at stake.
Books: it is always better to remember than to forget...not because you know so much more...but because you have so much more to tell.
Things will break down as they always have. The people who prefer to be entertained will take the course of least effort. The people who prefer to entertain themselves will be willing to make the effort to do, hands-on. There will be some natural crossover, or course.
It's something like watching a RevWar reenactment vs. participating in one.
It's difficult to accept an argument based on historical developments when basic historical facts are inaccurate: "The book survived the arrival of radio, then film, then television and then the internet."
Motion pictures were popular LONG before the arrival of radio. The generally-accepted launch of broadcasting was 1920, twenty-four years after the invention of motion pictures (1896), a full six years after Charlie Chaplin created his "Tramp" character and five years after D.W. Griffith's blockbuster "The Birth of a Nation."
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It took Mr. Harrow, the author of this piece, 1500 written words to tell us that the written word is on its deathbed. When he can communicate without words the complexity of the ideas offered in the piece, then I will worry. Until then, I will keep writing, and people will keep reading.
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@An American Expat I don't know whether MS Harrow needed more words or fewer to make her point, but none of us are reading very carefully any more. More than a few commentors are having trouble recognizing that this is an "op-ed from the future".
@lilrabbit I'm well aware that the piece is intended to be read as if it was written in the future (2039, in this case). Perhaps it is you who didn't read carefully, as nothing in my comment indicated otherwise. As I said, if the piece was written in 2039 --- which is not very far in the future, really --- then its very form and content belies its assertions. I think the written word is here to stay for as long as we humans are here to stay.
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I hate to tell her this, but e-book sales have been dropping for the last couple of years. They also consume no energy.
Also, children learn MUCH better from actual books.
This explains why, when photography was invented, the art of painting vanished. Oh, wait...
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When I was a child in the Sixties, my mother read to me the books of Sendak and Seuss. Decades later, when my daughter was born, my mother gave those books to me. She had saved them so that one day I would be able to read them to my children. Now that my own daughter is grown, those same books have been saved so that she can read them to her children. It is impossible to describe the experience of sitting with one of the books open on your lap and your child cuddled beside you as she listens to enchanted words while gazing at magical illustrations. It is difficult to imagine the gift of love embodied in books passed from the hands of one generation to another being replicated by an electronic reader. Certainly parents will continue to read to their children. Ms. Harrow is right that the stories will still exist. If she is also correct, however, and Gutenberg's invention is abandoned, then something special will be lost. Except, of course, within those families that will continue to treasure books and pass them on to their children. Authors like Ms. Harrow may even write stories about them one day.
The Verse requires no printing press, no paper, no ink. It also elides imagination.
Books are not just stories. What seems to be in decline is an appreciation of language.
Just a reminder that first movable type had been invented in Korea several hundred years before Gutenberg made his first press type in Europe.
Just a small fact because you Western guys still tend to disregard other people’s accomplishments.
For example American school textbooks still say that Columbus discovered America. The tens of millions of Native Americans are reduced to nothing.
1
this is one of the few features in the Times,
(this from a reader of fifty years)which just
doesn't work. after reading a few of these
columns,I detect a certain smarminess and
intellectual arrogance unjustified by the
content (ie:the prognostications.) for
instance, this writer seems to think that
books are going to be essentially extinct
sometime in the future. this is absurd.
the feel of a book,the smell of a new book,
even the musty smell of an old book,will
always bring back memories, like Proust's
cookie,to the minds of dedicated readers;
not to speak of the experience of learning
new things and encountering new and
original characters.may books be forever!
2
Tyne author should try reading some books other than YA novels. She may discover that books are far more than printed stories. I'm so glad that both my early 20s children live books. They greatly enrich our lives. I wonder if the author allsto believes that the only reason to travel is to take selfies. This is a sad and shallow piece.
In Star Trek, the holodeck is designed to be just this experience and yet, Capt. Picard still reads books and so do many other characters in the show. Why? It's a different storytelling experience that opens your imagination. VR will too but we like to experience all kinds of things in all kinds of ways so books may yet survive. They certainly will when the grid fails and our power usage drops. What then Verse? It doesn't take electricity to make a book--just ask Gutenberg.
I used to have bookcases filled with books - old textbooks that I never opened, great novels that I wanted to read again and again, and a few old books from my parents and grandparents' world. Today I have Kindles and iPad readers, and still have the books from parents and grandparents but have recycled or given away all of the other books - down to 2 tall bookcases (which still feels like too much). I love the flexibility of the e readers - I used to travel internationally a lot and carrying multiple books in english to tide me over in Asia or Europe added a bag to my travel gear. Now it's easy to access 6-10 books with no added weight, no additional use of fuel, no charge for excess bags. We also still buy children's books for the young ones - easy to hold, bright pictures and creating the love of reading. But once they hit school, why should they destroy their backs (and shoulders) as we did. (Not to mention the ridiculous costs) Hail the e-textbook!
Marshall McLuhan noted that as a technology is obsolesced by a new one it become art. Consider vinyl records, now the realm of the hipster, or blacksmiths, once a village mainstay and now a craft fair attraction. Books are headed in that direction as information carriers but are likely to become decorative home accessories or carried around by hipsters of the future.
Great essay, and I love the line about stories being shape-shifters.
Yes, story-telling will never die. Humans will always tell stories.
But books aren't just about stories; they're also about the way words are strung together to tell those stories. No movie (or virtual reality experience) can replace that.
That we may lose our wonder at some people's ability to use words is terrifying to me.
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The Alexandrian Library existed from the Third century BCE to the Sixth century CE. It once was home to the most learned people of that time; Eratosthenes, in 235 BCE, calculated the circumference and diameter of the earth, Aristarchus asserted that the Sun was the center of the solar system and the planets revolved around it, Herophilius discovered the central nervous system and proposed that the brain housed the human mind, the school of anatomy mapped the body's veins and arteries, Heraclitus and Philolaires proposed the earth revolved on its axis, and as every student knows, Euclid. There are a number of theories for the eventual destruction of the library. I consider the causes, which are evident today, more invidious than those given. They are orthodoxy and the celebration of ignorance as if it is a virtue.
It's not about the medium, it's about the entire experience. A Kindle is handy, but it can't replace the connection with a book in your hands, your bed, or just standing ready on your shelves.
I keep reading the obituary of the book. But I am not convinced. The book is a triumph of human-centered design, comfortable to hold, easy to carry, easy to see. It is also made of recyclable organic materials and does not present a stubborn electronic waste disposal problem when it's useful life is finished. My adult children are avid readers and mostly read books. The youngest has a kindle for travel. This is my anecdotal evidence and proves nothing. But the sweeping generalizations here, unsupported by data, also prove nothing. The old publishing houses were businesses, and their model doesn't work anymore, but it's a big leap from there to the death of the book.
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Cultures create technologies, and in turn, those technologies re-create their birth cultures. It's part of the myth of progress that lasted until the middle of the last century, when things turned inside out and upside down. Once the mother of invention, after WWI, invention became the mother of necessity. The invention of need (captured brilliantly in the MadMen series) changed civilization and the cultures that comprise it. That said, "the book" as a physical artifact will always have a place in most cultures as long as a sense of nostalgia and "age value" endure. Virtual experiences can give us much, but never the fulfillment of owning a treasured physical object, the rubbed edges and foxed pages of which marks the passage of time, and hands that pulled it from the shelf, held it, and the eyes that may have read it.
1
Cheap neural implants that can record and deliver any sensory experience? THAT is really science fiction - I see warp drive as more attainable.
On the other hand, Microsoft's 'Awegment' sounds TOO close to reality.
“If you’re reading this today, it’s likely you’re an anachronism yourself: someone who grew up in the era of library cards and Sunday morning newspapers, someone who loved books too much to let them go.” That is absolutely 100% correct. In 20 years I’ll be ninety and still be surrounded by a few thousand of my anachronistic old books. I cannot control what happens after I am gone, but a world without books is not one that I am in any manner desirous to experience or even mildly optimistic about.
The stories may survive, but the equations won't. Imagine a "five-sense experience" in quantum electrodynamics.
Reading has been one of the passions of my life. But I now read almost exclusively in digital format. My beloved NYT is digital.
I have every book and the NYT on my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air. I download several books a month from the extensive ebooks available from our public library system.
I went to digital books because I was traveling abroad regularly. When I had read all the books I had packed for my trip before I'd left my home airport, I was forced into the airport book stores (oxymoron!), foreign book stores. I had to pay for luggage by weight, and I immediately bought my first Kindle.
Thank goodness I made the change.
If you don't want technology, I hope you don't 1) read by electric light 2) drive to your library in a car, 3) enter the library through an automatic door, 4) use electronic checkout AT the library.
Get a horse. Oh, wait, horses are used almost exclusively for for expensive sport and entertainment in the 21th Century.
Knowledge and creativity are not disappearing. Cheer up.
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"In the age of cheap and accessible virtual reality, most consumers prefer to experience their narratives rather than read them."
I don't know if most consumers prefer it, but I certainly don't. I probably won't be around for the travesty of not having books to read, but there will still be individuals who enjoy a good book and some capitalist, in an alliance with individuals who feel the need to put their ideas and stories on paper, will be happy to provide the experience for them. I am not too worried about it though; I remember back in the 60s when we were told that we would have driverless cars that would fly above the traffic when need be, and yet we still sit in miles of traffic in automobiles that constantly require our attention and refuse to fly. I am confident that in 2040 my daughter will still be able to procure a good book to read.
Reading increases the richness of your thinking.
The ability to understand symbols, the ability to think abstractly, the ability to do math are all directly tied to the ability to read.
Reading makes you more empathetic.
Reading results in increased vocabulary and improved writing skills.
Those who read have higher intelligence and general knowledge of the world than those that don’t.
Reading reduces stress.
Those who listen to read-alouds, get calmer.
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Books were a medium for cultural conversation. The "verse" you describe is a medium for economic competition.
I wonder what Marshall McLuhan and John Cage and Timothy Leary would say about all this chatter.
The thread I see is that content rules. Yes, it can be impacted by the delivery medium, but the interaction with content is the residual element.
Think about “water boarding” versus “swimming”: same medium - very different experience.
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Thank you, Ms Harrow.
Reading is fundamental! Sharing stories while our beautiful blue marble hurls through space and time, sharing stories keeps us grounded and helps us soar.
And your humor here is not lost on me, nor the bracing attention to legacy.
In the Twin Cities we have an establishment called Half Price Books, that accepts and then resells used books, vinyl, cd's etc. It is a very busy place. I took 8 bags of books over there recently, and I never leave empty handed. Also, the Little Free Libraries are a great place to put your used books. As a retired librarian, very comfortable on the web, I will state that books will never never never die.
1
What a provocative piece: or a piece for provocation - yet, I think that the end of such pieces proclaiming the end of books, of printed texts and images bound and distributed on paper are what is more likely. When I was in library school in the 1980s, this kind of “end of the book” talk had already been around for 50 years. “How could books possibly outlast the allure of technology x?” And then the sins of anecdotal evidence, small sample size, universalizing of experience and opinion will be committed and published with prophetic imprimatur. What’s predictable is not the end of the book; what’s predictable is the author’s zombie argument.
I tried out VR at a museum exhibition a few years ago. Never again. When you're in surround-sound, surround-feel, and surround-visual environment you are trapped. Your body and mind are controlled to a degree that I found repulsive.
When I read, I'm "in the story" but I'm still myself. I can be immersed in the author's world, but not trapped in it or controlled by it.
Long live personal freedom. Long live books.
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But then there is my 16-year-old granddaughter who may have to move out of her room after Christmas so that her new books can move in.
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Even if no other book was ever printed, this planet would still have billions(?) of book, plus all of their digital derivatives. The visual form is human communication isn't going to atrophy too soon.
I've been building my library since I inherited a small stash of books from my father. There are more books out there than I can imagine. One of my joys is to decide if a book belongs in my collection, or if I should let it go, like a bird flying out of its home cage to never return.
I'll take your tired pages and unread histories. Maybe when they put me in a box, my collection will be complete. More likely, there will remain many stacks that need sorting and repairing. Oh the many quiet joys of a single book.
2
It's easy to imagine an engineer converting a classic book to a watered down VR version to make it easier to experience. However, it's all but impossible to imagine the engineer creating the classic story from scratch. Somebody with a mastery of writing -- let's call them an "author" -- would have to create the script. Those scripts -- let's call them "books" -- would be warehoused in a building - let's call it a "library' - where people could see and read them to experience all that the author truly intended to convey. Wow!
3
Guttenburg made information more available to the masses (and put many scribes out of business). Screens continue that trend. Should be go back scribes?
1
I love pieces which assume a future free of the possibility of a human civilization/life ending event. Hope is still out there, but the trust in or fascination with technology is still too naive
1
I dunno, but on the train I take to and from work in Manhattan I see young people reading books among other young people that are tied in to their i-phones or headsets.
IMHO, I don't see those reading books now, dropping books in 20 years when they're in their 40's.
BTW, I'm an author myself, with some books that can be bought on-line.
1
It is not so obvious that the printed word will vanish.
For example, none of the currently available e-print or online options offer me a reasonably simple way to consult an index. or a prefix, or any other page while reading any particular page. It is so much easier in a printed book to riffle the pages back or forwards to a desired point.
I'm sure other commentators will have added all the other usual advantages of the printed word as we konw it up to now.
Perhaps the book, if it could talk, might say (with Mark Twain), "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".
3
You are very much mistaken about what book-lovers love. It's not the stories, it's the language. Shakespeare didn't invent his stories; he invented the language (both the language of the plays and pretty much the modern English language). No one wants to read the story of Amleth in Shakespeare's sources. It's the marvelous language of Hamlet that rings through literature, film and journalism right down to the graphic novel. Someone who thinks books are just about stories doesn't know much about books
4
The difference between a story and a novel? Language. How the story is told is as much of the experience as what happens. That’s what we would lose if VR is ever triumphant. May that day never come.
2
Books may be soon subject to the same dynamic as music where we have to pay and repay for the same content in order to maintain our ability to consume that content (e.g. vinyl records, 8-track, tape cassettes, CDs, streaming, etc.). Archiving efforts at the Federal Government are hampered by not having the old devices and operating systems available to them to read and process documents in their many software versions.
Nice sci-fi piece.
I mainly write for a living, mostly in trade pubs and websites, along with work for private clients. I am long accustomed to the words I herd being in print and on screen. It doesn’t matter.
But for your story, 20 years is too soon. 50, though, may be possible. But 20 years from now books will still be around, albeit in lower quantities. Magazines will be fewer and further between, replaced by virtual versions. This is already happening: I see it in the trade pubs I write for. Some are already virtual only, others have web and print versions.
My writing, by the way, is in the print industry. And print is in trouble. But it is a long way from going away. It has a habit of adapting to change, and using advances in technology to maintain its presence. However, a bigger problem is that people are increasingly reluctant to read. TV and video is just easier and faster. This preference is going to contribute more to the demise of books, magazines and newspapers than any imaginary technology.
By 2039 daily newspapers will be gone, or far thinner. Some may just be weeklies. Already the NYT’s Sunday edition is packed with stories that ran during the week. Makes me wonder why I bother to get it. Except that it’s nicer to read than my iPad and there is more detail, more backstory, more nuance, than I get on TV news.
@Noley I find reading to be much faster than video or TV. With those media I'm locked into their one after another blocks of time. With reading I can quickly review what I've read, re-read, go ahead, etc. Reading is liberating, video is confining, despite what Marshall whatever his last name said.
1
Reading is one of the great joys if my life. Books from the traveling bookmobile when I was a kid to the library when I was older. Screen reading is convenient when traveling but sitting down with a hard copy book is my preferred way to read. Also hours looking at a screen seems to make my eyes dry. Since I am in my seventies hopefully I will not see the demise of the printed books in my lifetime.
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I much prefer to read newspapers, magazines, books hardcopy. I can shut out the world. Lots of young people use the sunny, warm and welcoming Westwood MA library which has areas with comfortable lounge chairs, tables and two working gas fireplaces. There will always be people who prefer hard copy.
Tests prove: students take better lecture notes and member more by writing in note books by hand.
Though one cannot correct on the PC, editing to be sure must be done really hardcopy.
1
Funny. I went into a bookstore in my town yesterday and it was packed with people of all ages. Likewise my local library a few days ago when I dropped off some Ruth Rendell mysteries my wife had been reading.
3
The key difference is the active nature of reading a book. I actively pick up and leaf through a bound book; I imagine its imagery; I interpret its meaning. I actively experience my own powers of thinking and creativity, rather than passively consume a virtuality in which the experience has been constructed for me.
4
I have always what will replace the classic floor to ceiling bookcases in Manhattan apartment, you see them in the brownstones and lofts. The new glass box condos have none of that charm.
There is a reason that people turn to text when they want to understand. You can parse a text, analyze it, combine it with other texts, and more. Also, text is a compression of experience, which makes it a more efficient transport of information. Which would you prefer as a warning against touching a live wire... A sign (text), or the experience? And which would take more time out of your day?
Text is static, it takes work to take it in, and it's not shiny like VR or the movies. But there is its strength. With a text, I get to create my own understanding. I can check my understanding and develop it. I can return to it again to see how my understanding has evolved.
Face it, if experience is so superior, why did we invent text in the first place? Of course text cannot replace experience. But neither can experiences replace text.
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I still enjoy a hardcover book to read. It’s my favorite way to read. Turning the pages and holding a book is comforting and exhilarating at the same time as the story unfolds. I do read on my iPad and iPhone when I travel but it’s just not the same as reading a real book.
2
As long as writers continue to create the kind of stories you do, we'll be content to take them in via e-reader or a dimly lit cave wall... as long as the good work keeps coming...
When a breakthrough device allows me to lie in bed, flip pages when I want, change my position and the distance of the page from my eyes, to scan pages for the visual wonder of white rivers slicing through the text, to contemplate why a particular font is used and how another might be more effective, to close the book and mentally explore a spin-off idea inspired by the text and and and...then I MIGHT be tempted to opt out of bookbuying. I have my doubts.
1
Alright. Here's the virtual reality 'experience' of the future for me:
I'm sitting in a cushy wing-back chair, circa 1970's/Early 1980's America. It is Sunday morning. On the footstool before me lie several pounds of newsprint, the contents of which should take me several luxuriant hours to consume. I am merely at the starting point: Section A, Page 1. There is light classical on the "stereo" (too complicated to explain); my coffee and cigarettes (hey, it's my VR, get your own) is beside me. Already I am in bliss.
This virtual reality I would indulge often and repeatedly. By the way, is it possible to OD on VR?
2
Fantastic bit of sci-fi with my morning coffee, really well done.
Humorous, poignant, sharp, and cutting.
After I raise the lid on my barrister's case and send some appreciation to the contents, even to the one's I haven't yet read, I'm going for a walk. The complex reminder of sensory presence in this piece renews my intention to be present and to notice, to experience.
Thank you for a bit of brilliance.
1
It's not just about the stories. It's about the imaginative dialogue between reader and text, which is only possible away from a visual medium. A reader is an amateur pianist encountering sheet music, how well you play depends on how much you put in.
1
Books, unlike many other mediums, can become very personal. There is the obvious factor: you own it and hold it. But beyond that, you can read it intimately over and over on your own time, underline meaningful passages, bend pages on purpose or accident. The book becomes your book, especially the ones you love and cherish. Still reading takes time. Not everybody will be a book lover. But the medium, I think, we always be there because it is irreplaceable.
2
My daughter has a disability and her brain cannot create pictures from words. These scientific developments would be a gift for her. For those of us who can imagine characters, places, events, emotions, beauty and so much more, this deprives us of the joy of bringing part of ourselves to a story. That is the real wonder of reading.
Just read Rebecca McCarthy's excellent narrative essay, "Norman McLean and Me," at The American Scholar online. I use Adblock Plus and thus wasn't bothered with pop-ups and such. Although I am an inveterate hold-in-the-hand book reader, I also have a limited amount of money to spend on my reading, so free online articles are great. "Books may be dead," but not the draw of that sensation you get when reading something that makes you glad you can read and appreciate good writing. Doesn't get any better than that.
Our entire family are rabid bibliophiles and logophiles. We ALL request books as gifts and since our son was a toddler we have had a serious monthly book budget. Since we haven't had a television for over a dozen years we spend the $70 that would be spent on cable, on books. Non fiction books.
There was a special series on Netflix about Bill Gates which we watched on our laptops and there was an audible 'WOW' when his assistant was shown packing books he was going to take with him on a trip. Since we each have a book bag with 2-4 books each even for a week end get away. Books that you hold in your hand and savour will never die!!
3
The invention of the printing press decimated the ability of the ruling class to control thought & culture, autocracy lost its base. No longer were the "masses" restricted from learning & thinking about the factors affecting their lives.
Often enough these days, sections of "The Federalist Papers" are cited to demonstrate the Founders feared the path through which a president could become a dictator.
The faulty premise in Ms. Harrow's opinion piece is that the "stories" that are shared are fictional or semi-fictional narratives. The critical importance of non-fictional texts in printed form is ignored. Facts are not important in "stories" but are essential to understanding the world around us. Treatises on science, politics, economics, philosophy, etc. are not "stories." They are the bases upon which reality can be determined.
A number of commenters already stated that e-books have diminished in popularity and importance since their introduction. This is also true. Those of us who still value printed books do so for many reasons: the ability to underscore/highlight important sentences, write marginal notes on meaningful passages, & have them handy to quote, refer to, lend or reread whenever the mood or occasion strikes.
Digital books can easily be subject to deletion or censure, & reduces the ability of the reader to determine verifiable facts. In an era when truth itself is being challenged politically, printed books become a keystone for reality itself.
4
The world will no longer be a stage, it will be a file. It will morph into what Ray Bradbury thought of when he wrote “The Veldt.” We will, well, not us, but people will live in houses that will have the ability to take you visually anyplace in the world or universe on command.
2
I use a kindle in doctor’s offices and trains, but always have a real book as well. Technology is great sometimes, when it works. When I’m home, I’m always using the real thing. Nothing can replace holding a real book in your hands, particularly a well preserved antique. My eyes hate screens.
1
This is such an optimistic article! The way humanity is going, I wouldn't be so sure we'll even reach 2039 -- with or without books.
5
The death of books has been predicted - wrongly - for ages. Frankly, I spend too much time in front of my laptop for work - I refuse to waste my leisure time on a screen. I don't need fancy technology to read a book, and I don't want to take electronic devices to read in bed or in the bathtub or in the garden. With books I don't have to worry about power outages, or whether I have the right bunch of electronic devices to read what I want to, or whether out-of-print books have been digitized, etc. And I like the feel and smell and weight of books, along with the inscriptions in books I have received as presents, or found in antiquarian bookshops. I do not need virtual reality devices to enjoy prose or poetry of any kind - all I need is the relevant book, my eyes and my mind.
11
“For centuries, the printed word was the dominant narrative and informational format in the Western world.”
Printed word was the dominant narrative in the ‘world’, not simply the ‘Western World’.
As for experience - actually the smell of bleached wood pulp was surely an experience in and of itself. I can still tell a distinctive smell from the type of paper used - and in fact, in our days, it was one of the first things we did - smell the pages, as strange as it might sound.
2
I thought I would be the last person to ever embrace the ebook. Nope, love it. Having hundreds of books available in different languages and reference books too..all in my phone, ereader, tablet...wonderful. I often think of what someone like Ben Franklin would say. He'd have ebooks too, I'm sure.
1
@denise, nah not Ben. He brought the free library to the colonies.
I love books, and why wouldn't I? The doors they open to the past, present, and future are truly wonderful.
My wife bought our first set of encyclopedia's in 1964, we didn't have children yet, but then along came 3 boys, and to this day they remind us of the value those books. And now they all read, as do our grandchildren.
Books are the lifeblood of a civilization.
3
I collect sci-fi books and currently have a curated collection of 200 so far (not that many really) most are mass market paperbacks from used book shops.... most have a degree of mildew, Browning pages, and failing glue in the spine... that is to say, most of these books will not survive much longer than 50 years or so. They look pretty on the shelf however.
Books will live as long as people do. Human nature says so. Hard copy is the soft way to read. Being an Mis analyst and Photographer for many years intensely involved with electronic display I firmly believe this. A recent retinal occlusion (tho realizing it's rare) adds to this admittedly opinionated position. Thanks to the author for raising the issue
2
I am 59 years old. I have frequently commented that “I’m glad I will be dead when books are obsolete.”
I just hope that day is much later than 2039!
1
The codex will continue to exist because it is useful. Ebooks are great for searching but bad for flipping through.
A few other thoughts from an aging librarian and ebook pusher:
1. Sometimes people like to flip the pages, especially if they’re using a multi-volume treatise and don’t know which volume they need (especially if the index is in its own volume)
2. I was recently asked to scrounge up a holy book for an attorney to bring to court so a witness could swear on it. The court wouldn’t let the witness swear on a holy-book app.
3. Can you imagine a congregation sitting there with holy-book apps? Or do you think faith communities will be dead in 20 years too?
2
As a technologist I understand the attraction of any digital format. However I also understand how fragile it it. The digital form of the early space program telemetry records is currently unusable. Degradation of those computer tapes from the 50's and 60's has effectively ended their existence. Books, especially if printed on acid free paper last centuries. I earn a very good living in my work, but I would never trust the stories and histories of my world to digital media for the long term. Yes, diligent refreshing and maintenance will keep it for a time, but your not likely to see a book in digital form created in 2019 usable or even available 2219. Keep in mind that if that 600 year old Bible had been done digitally we wouldn't likely be reading it today.
13
I’ve read a whole bunch of the comments here, and I think many people are missing the point of the article — mostly by being defensive about books. (I love books, have a large collection, and will never stop reading.) The point is, it is the story — human story telling — that is eternal. Stories were told for at least 100,000 years before writing was invented. So the medium is important, yes, because it conditions how we experience a story. But all media have their pluses and minuses — and whatever the media, the story is the essence of the presentation.
5
@Philip S. Wenz Nothing is truly eternal, is it?
Prediction is difficult- particularly when it involves the future. Mark Twain
11
I am disappointed by the failure of most to adopt VR, and the readiness of so many to pooh-pooh and dismiss it out of hand. I read voraciously, but VR is my favorite medium. Last night I went to glaciers in Iceland. I went all over Muscat, Oman, and inside the national museum of Oman. I went inside a refugee camp in Lebanon, and out onto a Lebanese beach, and into the hills. I went not only to Machu Picchu but to surrounding areas as well. I visited different areas of the country of Georgia, too, all of it in VR, as if I were physically there, and without putting the CO2 in the atmosphere that I would have to in order to fly to these places. Seriously, what kind of person claims to care about education and awareness of the world, but doesn't want VR? It's mystifying.
2
What platforms are you using??
I saw a intact copy of the Gutenberg Bibles on a trip to London about 9 years a go. As a history person and former history teacher it was exciting stuff. In the same exhibit in one of the British museums, I saw a fairly well intact copy of the Magna Carta, some Beatles lyrics written on the back of envelopes and a prayer book that Henry Tudor used as a child. There were other things I can't remember. One of the holy grails of history is the Rosetta Stone, which I saw on the same trip.
PS: Books are not dead!
5
Nope.
Notice all that's described is entertainment. Words are much more. They produce justice. They explain science. They express thought.
Fiction has been going downhill since The Brothers Karamazov. The funny thing about everything else, non-fiction, is it doesn't have a name. But it's what matters in this world. Journalists deal with statements, with labelled facts. That's why broadcast news features talking heads - word fountains.
This future Op-ed isn't based on solid evidence. We barely understand how language functions in the brain, or how visual material translates into memory. With each new step forward, the slope steepens.
That I read this in an online newspaper is ironic, because online papers are so slow to change. They must evolve their GUIs. The newspaper as we know it evolved in the French revolution. Hundreds of newspapers tried to compete, using every possible format. One stuck -- the broadsheet. Nobody predicted it.
Today's online papers are doing what all businesses do faced with new technology - trying to reproduce what came before. Hey, stop fearing the future. Experiment.
4
Augmented reality and books are unrelated things. Anyone weeping about the death of books is out of touch. My son, my husband, I, am reading more than ever thanks to the Kindle White. We have 2600 books on 2 devices without the bulk, the need for a light source and, most importantly, without reading glasses or any glasses thanks to the resizeable font.
Gutenberg wouldn't be weeping either, given that the Gutenberg Project has gazillions of downloadable books for free. The mouldering piles of books and ink should go back to the dust whence they came. We should stop killing trees and wasting electricity for the sake of someone's weepy idea of what it means to read.
(but not too hard, given things like the Gutenberg Prfdoject)
5
As a gen Z, I promise you that books aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. We love them, too- and not just for the “vintage” feel. It’s not vintage at all- we were raised on them, too, as we will raise our children in the future. It’s a magic you can’t explain or replace. I know that, understanding the threats of addiction and the lack of learning that comes through screens, that I will be raising my kids with far less technology than millennials were taught was appropriate in the name of “education.” I know many my age agree that reading on computers is absurd- in fact, I don’t know anyone in my friend circles who does so. It’s the older folks who seem to prefer their kindles and whatnot. Books will be okay.
5
The future the author describes may or may not come to pass, but anyway this article is very well written and gave food for thought.
1
Books will outlive us all.
1
Wonderfully written op-ed.
Nothing can replace the excitement I get from the smell of a used bookstore.
Just who is this “we” you carelessly toss around?
1
Amusing fantasy, but I don’t think so. When I worked at two major publishing houses in the late 80s and early 90s, people in the business were worried and talking about the death of books in the coming decades. It’s safe to say after three decades that they needn’t have worried.
1
I am 67 and have two daughters, both intelligent, ages 31 and 25 -- who have never held a newspaper in their hands. I have no doubt that their children will either. I live overseas and have been reading the NYTIMES and the Wall St. Journal online for years. I love real books, but that's only because I am "old". Over 95% of my books -- in English -- are now downloaded from libraries digitally, or bought from Amazon on my Kindle. I used to love bookstores and the thrill of wondering through them, just like I loved record stores. Time changes, life changes. This genie is out of the bottle. The people lamenting the loss of paper books on the page are probably all over 30, if not more. But I have no fear that writing will stop. Only the medium used to read it. And that, as Mcluhan says, is the message.
1
We all have cameras and ample bandwidth on the very devices we are using to post comments here, and yet we'd all rather read and write comments than create and view little videos.
NY Times readers are surely a pro-print group, but the advantages of text are strong. It is the purest, fastest way to transmit ideas from person to person. And for more complex material you can slow down, savor and contemplate the ideas without having to scan back and forth in a video. In text, the whole idea is there to read and reflect upon at your leisure. In a video or "experience", the idea evaporates the moment you pause. If the "experience" is complex enough, you might even pause it and write an outline to make sense of it.
Text on paper may vanish but text in some form, e.g. electronic, has a long life left.
2
More likely in twenty years it will be the internet that will be dead, done in by its own potential for destruction. Likely, internet-enabled drones and self-driving cars will have put suicide bombers out of a job, internet-enabled infrastructure will be taken down by blackmailers and hostile agents, our nuclear command and control apparatus dependent on Chinese chips embedded with malicious code will make us subservient, and the total lack of incentive to correct phony "information" will either put society at a standstill or force it to abolish the internet. In any event, my copies of "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984" will still be amenable for a bereft younger generation to read.
Books are reality. Virtual reality is an oxymoron. Like fake news and alternative facts. If you read books, that will be apparent.
4
All it takes is a lengthy power outage to prove there'll always be need for books that are real. As for the heightened VR experience, it reads as positively nauseating -
8
Two books to look at in this connection, Fahrenheit 451 and the Time Machine, show what happens when there are no books. Also, imagine if we get rid of all books and then the internet disappears. How will knowledge be transmitted? Think about that.
5
The joy of reading is truly a gift. A gift that the public library continually provides us with a library card. A sanctuary that is open to all ,the library a cathedral to books.
The smell of books , hold them to put down and pick up and reread is as important to the majority of us as breathing is.
The wonder of great writing and beauty of books will never disappear.
252
@Tony Not a problem as virtual books can be made to look, feel, (and perhaps even smell and taste) like the real thing while saving the trees to help absorb CO2 ;-).
In fact, one day we'll surely see 3-D virtual libraries where you can even (for a small fee? ;-) sleuth through the card catalog and travail the stacks... who knows?
2
@Tony e-books can be downloaded for free from many public libraries and other sources. I enjoy reading via my kindle as font size, type, and brightness are all adjustable.
However large format books with photos (coffee table style) I still hold near and dear to my heart. Digital copies either do not exist or diminish the experience.
8
@Tony
I really don't care how my books smell so long as it's not Fabreeze.
3
This has all been predicted before, like the last fifty years. I knew people who claimed that taking psychedelics would make religion, art, literature moot because of the immersive quality of the experience. It didn't, except for maybe those who ended up in the booby hatch. One problem with new technology is that people get used to it very quickly and you have to continually ramp up the experience through more sexual content or violence and the spirit of story telling is lost. The problem is that the market and "literary system" begins to adjust to these things and it gets driven by money before it finds itself as an art. In the end it may displace the printed word but the printed word will gravitate, freed from the mechanics of the market, to new, fresh, vital areas completely absent from the market and the hordes. That's where the actual innovators, actual creators will go.
90
If I wanted to be in the story, I'd play video games, or just do something in the real world instead of having a faux experience. For stories, I'd rather be an observer, and have my ideas and emotions piqued by the power that the written word, and great cinema, have on us. I want to be entertained and informed, not be part of the action. I'm sure there will be a place for VR in future story telling, but it will be alongside books and film.
107
@JS Agreed. None of the old story telling media have ever really disappeared, but have always found a place among newer formats. Visual storytelling dates back to cave art and continues today in many media; drama performed on stage is alive and well, even as it has coexisted with cinema and tv since those media were invented; oral storytelling continues on the radio, as well as in countless private settings. There's no reason to think that writing, presented on the page and electronically, will be eclipsed by virtual reality, or anything else.
5
Printed books have survived both television and e-books, both of which were predicted to kill the medium. They'll survive even if holodecks become a thing. Screens make me anxious and remind me of work, and it seems like there are more and more of them in our daily life. Nothing beats a paperback that people like Jeff Bezos can't take away from me on a whim.
190
@T. Warren I'll stick with hardcovers, bought second-hand at various outlets. When you get older, paperback print seems harder to read.
14
@T. Warren
In fact, Jeff Bezos made books more accessible
I have thought a lot about this trend lately and it concerns me.
Not enough attention has been given to the fact that online books and magazines can easily be replaced with fictional narratives when authoritarians take over. The printed word is the last line of defense against authoritarianism.
254
@Kyle This is a problem that has been bothering me for years, going back to the time when the government tried to get librarians to give them people's names and which books they were reading/had read. It was then I began collecting books, history and political science books that can't be "edited" by whomever is transcribing them for public use. I now have one room, all 4 walls, of books. I've tried to explain to my grandchildren what the future of totalitarianism could bring. I've encouraged them to read Bradbury. They do seem to understand.
41
@Kyle I agree. Propaganda comes in all forms, but digital narrative is so simple to create and spread globally, within minutes.
22
@Kyle Wow Kyle: thanks for taking the time to comment. There are quite a few things with which to disagree in this article but your point is so important.
7
Many people love to read. Eighty percent of the best paying jobs go to people who write well. The best writers are people who read a lot.
Yes, Ms. Harrow is a science fiction writer.
2
There’s a great thing about books, no batteries.
151
@John
No batteries, no political censorship. It's tough to establish an electronic underground when the state terrorists cut the juice and transmission sources. That's why the printed word isn't going anywhere...
6
It seems rather disingenuous to herald experience-immersion devices as a new and better form of STORYTELLING, while also claiming that they "transcend LITERACY, LANGUAGE, ability and geography". Stories without words are not stories, they are mere image streams. Streams of experiences do not bring their sense or significance with them. They reveal nothing about the causes of what's experienced, nor about the meaning or likely consequence of events, nor about the purposes, emotions, or thoughts of those observed acting in the experienced scenes, nor ... All of this requires thought. Thought that can be put into words. (Else it cannot be evaluated as accurate or inaccurate, deep or shallow, wise or stupid, ethically admirable or execrable, or ... )
True, the USERS of Verse might be able to supply the words, by describing the scenes they experience — making THEM the authors of the stories. But a typical individual's descriptive/analytic/poetic powers fall well short of those of even mediocre novelists, let alone insightful or inspiring ones.
By the way, I’m sure Ms Harrow is aware of all these points, and agrees. I read her piece as an instance of Provocation, satirizing ill-advised Advocacy from a dreaded possible future.
4
Well-written. However:
It's not one or the other.
1
'Your book is on the best-seller's list in "The Jungle"', I brought to the Thanksgiving table. My host smiled for he did not know, and it is ironic for his work takes the reader back to The Book of The Dead. Perhaps in Ancient Times, Egyptians walked about with tablets even then.
'We all have a story' was a repetitive refrain from an elderly stranger staying at the inn, and out of the blue came the character of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, which my guest thought boring in the telling. After she left, and feeling perplexed, I realized the soul of Olive had visited.
Perhaps there will also be no museums in 2039, but for those of us who feel that time is pressing, what better gift than to donate to estates celebrating Wharton, Dickinson or James for instance, a collection of their writings on paper.
We have a circle of 'sensitivity readers', wishing to tamper with the works of authors of all ages, and this circle could be deemed culpable of stealing words. Stories live on, and they tend to get warped in the sharing, and often erroneous with the passing of time.
'You should read other publications than The New York Times' from a staunch Republican friend recently, and it was tempting to retort that he should read 'More'.
With appreciation to Ms. Harrow, off to explore her "Ten Thousand Doors of January", after finishing "The Grinch who Stole Christmas".
1
There will always be those who summarily dismiss books - Trumpsters and Republicans come immediately to mind.
11
"No one knows when the first printing press was invented or who invented it, but the oldest known printed text originated in China during the first millennium A.D. The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist book from Dunhuang, China from around 868 A.D. during the Tang Dynasty, is said to be the oldest known printed book'
3
People will always find books.
90
Architects take note: bathrooms in homes and offices now must come with articulating arms for holding ipads and other e-readers
Reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last” with Burgess Meredith.
5
@Sue Generis then he breaks his glasses. Fortunately I'm near sighted so I could still read
1
Over my dead body- oh wait, I may or may not still be here but it would be the end of humanity if actual books were to disappear-
3
Books still work when the power goes out; 'nuff said!
6
Sometimes the ‘old’ is priceless. Sometimes it’s forever. Dream on, pilgrim in your digital happyland. Come the apocalypse (any old apocalypse), and gee, where’s the electricity?....
then, an humble book will still be standing.
3
When has any art form ever been replaced by a new technology? It simply adds a new form of expression, it doesn't make the old forms redundant. VR isn't going to replace books, just like films didn't replace books.
Experiencing Gadsby's green light through a VR experience would be stupid. The book wasn't about what it feels like to look at a green light.
100
@Anthony Flack -- You are so right. There's a green light on the bottom of my kindle when it's charging. A nice, bright shade of green you can see from across the room. Not a very deep experience, just looking at it, but it does prompt me to open my e-book and read something.
1
@Anthony Flack
And nothing important about Gatsby's experience of the green light can be represented by visuals, digital or otherwise.
The written word is not replaceable.
2
No disrespect to the clearly talented author, but something made me wonder about her age -- and sure enough, she is just 30 years old. She may not have the life history to remember that the "End of the Printed Word" has been predicted for longer than she has been alive. I realize these are "future historical" accounts, and I find them all quite interesting. But homo sapiens sapiens is notoriously bad at predicting the future, so I will take this with a grain of Imported Martian Dead Sea Salt!
4
I like reading books, especially library books. What would I do without books? -- Free of charge, nothing to plug in, no battery to recharge, no earbuds, I can take them anywhere, no one can track what I'm reading and target me with ridiculous and annoying ads, no danger of being hacked, no software to continually update, they make no decisions for me but stimulate my imagination, they are peaceful and quiet, they are there when the power goes out, when the signal vanishes, when the grid crashes, when those best and most cherished friends go missing, when the cat dies, when the plantar fascia inflames and there is nothing to do but lie on the sofa, moaning, and turning pages. What would I do without books?
6
Yet another weak attempt to predict the end of the most utile invention in the history of humankind. The last time the book was supposed to be dead was 2015, with us all reading e-books by that date. What happened instead is a brief flirtation that was quickly abandoned by most of those who experimented with it. Sixty percent of readers never even gave e-books a try. Ninety percent of children showed zero interest. Generally smarter than most adults, they were happy for a break from a screen.
But let's just say for the sake of argument, this prediction that literary content can be beamed directly into your brain does come true. Publishers still own that content--or at least the content worth wasting a brain-beam on. And they'll still perform their critical function of sifting through a sea of dreck for content worth pumping into your brain. And editing that content. And proofreading it. And going to the effort and expense to let you know it exists. Anyone who has waded into the cesspool of self-published works one finds on Amazon in search of the one one-thousandth of one percent that has any merit knows exactly what I mean. Publishers aren't going anywhere, and neither are books.
4
The author has it wrong. A book is not just about stories in a different format. This is extremely simplistic. It is about the written word. About stories written out or experienced exclusively through scripted signs and words. Not about the experience of stories and senses, but about the experience of the word in the page (or read aloud from the page. The choice of words, the sound of words, the combination of words to create a special kind of experience--different from film, radio, paintings, or virtual reality or Verse.
5
No doubt books will not be commercially viable, perhaps, but they will continue to live because some of them have what Pound called news that stays news. Newspapers, however....
The books will not die in short time; however, it could change its format several times from now to 2039.
With a real book, I don't have to worry about the battery running down. I will never tire of reading before bed, under a roof, in a tent, on the beach, on a mountain or while eating green eggs and ham.
1
Precisely because words themselves are not at all sensual they compel the imagination of the reader to fill in all the blanks. It is in our minds that we sense the look of the scene, the sound of the dialogue, the smell of the fog coming in off the shore and into the scene playing out on the pages before us, etc. Authors traditionally write stories with words, but those stories truly come alive when read. The reader imbues the words with his soul, and the result is a story taking on a life of its own in the silent, restful hours the reader spends with his book in hand. The more we convey the stories sensually (the visuals, sounds, smells, and even textures on a screen and, soon, in a VR hologram) the less the recipient is involved with those stories. He receives multimedia in all its wonder, but he has little to no opportunity to impart his own soul into what is conveyed. These stories will entertain but not enrich. They will thrill, at least until the multimedia illusions become old hat, but they will he dead things. In many ways, the post-literate world will be like the pre-literate one: Post-literate stories experienced through VR sensuality, as per-literate stories had been experienced through the sensuality of song or dance. Stories will be (as they had been long ago) communal, tribal, less personal. Will there be room for private, soulful storytelling in this wordless brave new world? Will there be any space allowed a person, his imagination, and the words he reads?
1
Just as Torah scrolls are still hand written on vellum by a scribe, the Jewish texts will continue to be printed in books. The words are important, not just the message. (If it was good enough for God, it’s good enough for me). If the VERSE delivery system relies in any way on electricity or similar power sources, it would be impermissible to be touched on the Sabbath.
2
That was one of my first thoughts! I was picturing these little struggling presses run by sabbath-observant folks, churning out paper books to prevent their families and communities from going completely batty during a three-day yom tov.
1
In the approach to the turn of the century, A&E had a two-part documentary on the greatest inventions and inventors of the soon to be vanquished millennium. I knew number one would be Sir Isaac Newton, the other ninety-nine were up for subjective grabs. It turned out number two was Newton, number one honors went to Gutenberg. I was gasping for air for the next three seconds before I realized, "of course". I don't think books will go the same way as the phone book, I think we collectively have to do a better job of marketing books, not just as fundamental - but FUN!!! Put the right book in the hands of a willing reader, they will transform into the biggest advocate for passing the torch to future generations.
1
In my small city the library is the busiest public building in town and books are constantly being used...I know, since I work at shelving them every day! The twice-yearly used book sale funds new furniture and people are waiting in line for doors to open for the sale. There are busy book stores in several locations in town. Parents regularly come in to borrow as many as 50 books at a time for their children! Story time is jammed with kids, who also love the "Read to a Dog" sessions. Really, I can't envision a time when books won't be in use, in spite of electronic entertainment.
4
These arguments always rest on the nearly invisible, elephantine flaw that electricity will remain cheap and accessible to all. Virtual reality can only work if there is electric power to drive it. Once gas goes past $5/gallon, and other fossil fuel prices reach their actual costs of production which they have not yet done, electricity will become so expensive that people will begin to think it unwise to spend it on entertainment.
A printed and bound book needs no electricity and can be used for hundreds of years with only a single energy/resource investment to produce it. Once the lights go off, and they certainly will at some point, which do you think will survive?
8
My Kindle broke down. It no longer works. So how permanent was that?
I've never had a book that broke down. No magazine ever refuses to turn on for me. I don't have to recharge my bookshelves. I never have to talk to tech support to read my books. Pamphlets fit snugly in my file cabinet and will still be there in 20 years. My annotated copies of 37 Shakespeare plays haven't evaporated. I can write in my books, mark the pages so that I can find favorite passages, locate quotes easily, and flip back and forth while reading them. My Kindle never offered this flexibility. It's gone now, and there's no reason to replace it.
This wayward Op-Ed writer of the future should be sounding the death knell for the Kindle within 20 years, because it's a lot more likely to fade away than books. How many people still have a VCR? Books, on the other hand, have been around for hundreds of years and they have lasting power.
27
Thirty years ago weren’t we bemoaning the perils of deforestation? Now we are bemoaning the fact that paper books are obsolete?
2
@Jason - yeah, except the former became true and the latter didn't.
As a mid-20s college grad, I can tell you that this is melodramatic at best. Bookstores are quaint and the rise of the independent bookstore isn’t driven by some romantic notion of bygone days. I grew up reading real books... on paper. My friends read books, my peers read books. Digital brings convenience, but the sky is not falling.
22
I have often been asked why should one read contemporary literature. One of the reasons I have to answering this tiring question is views of people like Mr.Harrow. If he has read anything that was nominated for the Man Booker or the National Book Prize he would know that literature isn't just plot. Yes virtual reality would give us that. But what it would not give us is the internal texture of a well drawn character. Moreover, since at least James and Joyce, and maybe long earlier, literature has been about the ways to re-invent and bend language itself. One of the novels nominated for the Man Booker is over 1000 pages long and composed of 4 sentences. Does anyone read Proust for the plot? Maybe the world will be like Mr. Harrow describes, but I will be glad I will not be around to hear the impoverished dialogue of that time.
6
More likely in twenty years the internet will be dying, if not dead, done in by its own potential for destruction. Likely, internet-enabled drones and self-driving cars will have put suicide bombers out of a job, internet-enabled infrastructure will be taken down by blackmailers and hostile agents, our nuclear command and control apparatus dependent on Chinese chips embedded with malicious code, and the total lack of incentive to correct phony "information" will either put society at a standstill or force it to abolish the internet. In any event, my copies of "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984" will still be amenable for a bereft younger generation to read.
7
You need to get your story straight. Bookstores are not filled with antiques unless they are antiquarian bookstores and many bookstores are not filled just with boomers but often people people much younger. The younger people are frequently in bookstores with their children.
This reads like a prejudice full of generalities. I think your prediction will enjoy the future with the Jetsons.
5
Nope.
For one, in any scenario there's nothing to replace the picture book for the 1-5 year old set that is nearly as beneficial and practical.
6
Digital media is a privileged medium for those who are not visual impaired. To reduce migraines, moreover, I need less screens in my days and nights.
5
@Tom Unfortunately, publishers don’t publish nearly enough large print books. Ebooks allow the reader to increase font size. Thanks to my Kindle, I was able to take Joyce’s Ulysses with me to Ireland without toting a 5 lb book, and then to read the entire opus without visual distress
1
@Lawyermom, I have a student who is severely visually impaired. Why would she complain about professors who make all readings online? Why does she prefer print? Based on our conversations, the answer to the first question is those professors lack empathy with her condition. Your point about the convenience of e-books is taken; nevertheless, it doesn't address my point about reducing my screen time.
This article reminds me of artistic depictions of the futuristic year "1950" drawn in 1900, showing the city skies crowded with men in handle-bar mustaches pedalling personal cigar-shaped dirigibles.
6
The author of this essay seems to think that books contain only fictional stories or non -fiction narratives. How could virtual reality technology, however sophisticated, reproduce the intellectual content of philosophical treatises, essays on scientific discoveries, or analytical studies of history?
Even with respect to literature, pictures in our heads cannot capture the greatness of Homer or Shakespeare, for example, because the status of their works depends in part on the beauty and subtlety of the language, not only on the compelling nature of the narrative.
The written word, whether we harness it to stimulate our imagination or to challenge our view of the world, strengthens our thinking skills. Virtual reality technology can supplement this ancient learning tool, but it cannot replace it without impoverishing us intellectually.
14
Considering that humanity is projected to be extinct in much less than 20 years, we should probably be working on preserving the remaining books and technology for future civilizations that come across our ruins and want to find out what made us tick.
3
@Fallopia Tuba wow. I’m a scientist and I hadn’t heard about this. Did Paul Krugman write that somewhere? I enjoy his fiction.
Books already are dead to a portion of the population. Most of my relatives, for example, would rather watch TV than read. The majority of them haven't opened a book since they left school. (Notice I used "left," not "graduated.")
But those of us who love books--and there are millions of us--will pass that love on to our children, and they to theirs. Remember, books aren't just a product to us; they're a passion. The publishing industry no doubt will change, but books will live on, thanks to those of us who appreciate their worth.
12
It wasn’t just the stories. When I was a teenager, not long before “trade paperbacks” began dominating the book market, I could tell by sniffing the pages of a paperback if it was published by Bantam (surprisingly good) Airmont (terrible) Penguin (surprisingly blah) and Signet Classics (heavenly, you could see the English countryside when you (literally) buried your nose in a Jane Austen novel.
3
Because she is confident that the stories they transmit are permanent, contemplating the death of books leaves Alix Harrow unmoved—even giddy. But Harrow fails to grasp that the replacement of the book by virtual reality would mean the disappearance of the art of literature.
It is not the stories that keep bringing us back to Shakespeare’s plays or Baldwin’s novels or Charlotte Smith’s poems: it is the beauty of literary language itself. For a writer to overlook this is (to borrow from Shakespeare) the unkindest cut of all.
9
I don't buy this argument at all. We have heard all this before and there are still books and bookstores.
Maybe the major publishing houses are going under, but there are a myriad of small publishers going like gang-busters. And they are publishing really interesting books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Amazon did its best to out-do the small bookstores, but here in Honolulu there are some nice small bookstores selling truly amazing, not NYTimes listed fiction. Same in Maine where we spend our summers.
But I think the major reason why books will always be around is because, when we buy a book we truly own it. We don't have to give it back to the publisher. We can loan it to our friends. Now try any of that with an e-book. In fact, most software companies are moving to yearly licenses for everything, nothing will last for even 5 years. When you run out of money the e-book or software disappears.
To me, that is THE ONE reason why paper books will always be with us. Just as Asimov said....
13
How beautiful your words! I AM a story and actual book lover, tactility, smell, sound of the pages turning. I still heave them into my suitcase to carry them distant lands. Thank you.
4
I have been reading about the "death of the printed word,
for decades now, but whenever I sit in an area where I have to wait (physician's office, subway, airport, etc.) I see people reading. I have an iPhone which I listen to when in the gym, but later in the day, I still read 2 newspapers (print), a couple magazines (print), and after dinner relax with the current book (print) that I am reading. If print is dying, it is doing so at an imperceptibly slow rate.
6
It's more likely that the book will not die but will return to its status of privilege as it becomes the means to store all the significant information, the advanced theories, the clearest communication on behalf of power. Only the powerful or the wannabe powerful will read books and control the masses who are all immersed in virtual reality or some form of modern iconography that convinces them that the powerful who read books are their benefactors.
4
This is way too flip. Couldn't read this to the end. If the written/published word makes as little sense as this, newspapers and books should end up in the scrapheap. But most writing that I read is far better than this.
9
Awesome work of fiction! I love it when works of fiction are given space in places like the NYT (as long as it’s clearly labeled as fiction, of course). All of this is extremely silly because the brain is far more complicated than that, but I think that’s beside the point; the best part of that story was the realization that most would prefer to feel experiences for themselves rather than just reading them. It can be cool, fun, and masterful art, like in certain ARGs, but the opposite, like in... I won’t name names here.
Tl;dr- good story, people really would do that if they could.
While I enjoyed this creative column I disagree with the author's thesis and exaggerations. Books will not disappear. As a college professor I work with Millennials and Gen Z every day and find many of them love reading and love books, actual physical books. They often openly will lament their overattachment to the digital world and when introduced to mindfulness practices, including "Slow reading," are very engaged. This article presumes that everyone prefers looking at screens or will enthusiastically embrace virtual reality. I think not. Our human nature requires connection to concrete realities, like face-to-face interactions and engagement with the physical world and objects, like nature and books. I actually think younger people will be the ones who guide us to the much-needed "corrective" in how we balance our addiction to technology. I'm by no means a Luddite, but I do tire of these prophecies of extinction. Don't assume we all buy into the AI future, despite what Big Tech would have you believe.
12
Reading is a miracle, but also a mixed blessing. To my mind, there is an enormous difference between learning a phonetic alphabet with about 30 characters, and Chinese ideograms, the most bare bones version of which requires 2600. The student that results from each culture will be different solely because of this. The commitment to learning 2600 characters makes memory and docility the most important criteria for success. Even in our culture, those children who can sit still are rewarded but to master the Chinese system requires a degree of conformity which helps to explain why Emperor Xi's horrific "social credit score" has gone unchallenged by 1.3 billion people.
2
@stan continople
Interesting, but I read this entire post by recognizing the words, not phonetically. Isn't this very similar to ideograms? We have 26 characters made up of lines and curves of different angles and sizes. The Chinese make up their ideograms from lines and curves as well. Eventually, they learn what the assembly of squiggles means. We do the same with ours.
I went back to physical books and absolutely love it. Physical books are superior hands down. There is zero chance that a popup advertisement will distract my reading. A physical book has never asked me if I want to upgrade it, because it is already perfection. When I turn the page of a physical book, it always works. I don’t see my own reflection in a physical book. Maps and pictures are always sized perfectly. If paper had been invented after the computer screen, we would all be raving about how superior it is.
43
@Eric I agree completely. I would add that physical books tend to engage more of our senses than screens do, which is very rewarding for our brains.
5
Reading a 'story' on an electronic device is like living on gruel. This might be expedient if one is confined to a cell or existing in a tiny house, but compressing the world's literature into a tablet with a lighted screen smacks of utility at the expense of art.
Not a surprising viewpoint coming from a futurist.
4
I'm still watching Mash. Books are forever.
7
The erudition is in this piece but not the wisdom. We don't need another gadget to further distance us from the here and now. Some day the most elite will have the privilege of interacting with the analog world. They will make books one at a time. Learn papermaking, ink making, calligraphy. The less fortunate will be consigned to dwell in the tinny digital world, propped up by expoited programmers.
7
As a former letter press owner, operator, and typesetter, I will miss the printed word.
There's the feel of the paper, the sensuous depth of the ink, the sinews of the letters and the serifs.
Fifty years ago I could print and bind books of poetry and art, before copier machines became ubiquitous. As a college student I skipped meals to afford a set a 12 pt Centaur type. And there was something almost like meditation in setting the type.
Today I still need my news-paper. I write in a paper journal. I have printed music on my music stand. I go to sleep with a paperback book.
I do a lot of chores and things I have to do, on the screen. But for everything else, I like the feel of the written word.
6
The human craving for story telling, listening, opining, discourse etc. will long outlive any format through which such is delivered. In ages past, it was word of mouth, then it was scrolls, then parchment, paper, print, mass print, digital books and then to today. Who knows what the next evolution will be?
Our kids do their home work on their smartphones. I am not smart enough to know whether that is good or bad in the long term although doing it with pen (the kind that delivered ink through a nib) and paper seemed like it was a lot more fun. But try telling that to current teens and they think we are anachronistic. Their current mode of delivery, however, does not make their opinions and solutions any less readable or less accurate.
So let us sit back and see where this thing takes us. In the meantime, here is wishing you all a good book or two during the holiday season.
4
Wow. Truly weird piece. Thinks that books are exclusively for fictional narrative. If that were so, maybe they would go. The printed word conveys information faster than all the videos, podcasts and immersive VR in the world. As a scholar, all I can say is that knowledge would be lost without books, real knowledge that was hard to earn in the first place. And maybe someday we'll find a more efficient means of encapsulating and passing on knowledge than the written word, but currently we haven't. Nor do we seem particularly close.
20
The Odyssey has been around for a while. I'm not too concerned about your books.
4
I guess I'm one of those weird 'aging millennials,' but I love reading physical books. I get enough screen time from my phone and computer. Many of my friends feel the same.
I think books will still decline somewhat, but never completely go away. This article seems just a touch melodramatic.
18
Interesting. Libraries are stronger than ever and circulation and visitation numbers continually grow - all in the face of futurists who said that the book is dead.
This reminds me of the scenes in Soylent Green and Tron II ... where books were treasures. Those authors got it right.
12
I barely have any books anymore ... but now I have a ton of e-books, Kindle and Audiobooks/Audible books ... and it all fits in less than the space of any one single book I have ever had.
How can anyone be unhappy with that?
That said, we have 3-D Printing, and lots of new capabilities and technologies ... I am sure it would be possible to order and manufacture a very nice hardcopy book for those books people want to display or lend or just read in their hands.
I am not unhappy with this technology, and I doubt books will disappear any more than all vinyl records have disappeared. People will always love books. but in the end it is the ideas and people we are introduced to in books that matter, and they take up even less space than the ebooks or audiobooks.
4
@Bruce I've read a good number of books on Kindle and like that I can adjust the type size but get v frustrated w trying to look at charts or pictures in a book on Kindle. It's also v frustrating that I can't easily go back to search a character when he was first introduced since I'm halfway done w the book.
5
@Dolly Patterson
I hear you on the graphics complaint and I agree ... but really, that will get better over time, and it already has. I have a Mac desktop, and I find that I like reading more on the Mac Kindle App and this allows the graphics to display better.
Also, on a Kindle or Kindle Fire ( which I prefer ) you have used the Text-to-Speech function and have the device read to you, PLUS, you can follow along as the Kindle will highlight each word that it reads.
You can also get the Kindle and Audible version of books and listen. I read a lot of non-fiction, so I prefer to have these books read to me when I am driving or doing something that does not require my full attention.
I confess, I've never been crazy about reading off the screen, but I do prefer it these days, but I more prefer to listen to audio. BUT, I also like to read and highlight and make notes in my digital books ... and that is not good for hardcopy books.
Do you know that you can highlight or bookmark various points in books, as well as search?
@Bruce If you're going to carry the weight of a Mac w you to read a book, why not just carry the book which doesn't require charging?
***
For over 30 years I've listened to Books on Tape but listening rather than reading (hearing vs reading) requires a different skill set and most people learn more by reading than listening (a reason students take notes in class). I like to listen while driving on trips (not too short or I loose my concentration) and/or while trying to go to sleep....the catch is I fall asleep and have to rewind to figure out where I quit focusing on the story).
Nonetheless, can we both agree to support and patronize Keppler's, one of the last true-blue bookstores which offers authors' reading at least 4 or 5 times a week? :-)
1
Before books people had wonderful memories, storytellers could remember tales that were hours long.
3
@John
There's more writing than just literature. Plato wrote his dialogues. It's my belief that Philosophy could not flourish without writing. It's one thing to memorize a chronology of events and another thing to construct logical arguments. With a story, one can always make things up to gloss over forgotten areas. That can't happen in philosophic or scientific writing. Philosophy and science involve the construction of arguments. I see textual writing as the handmaiden of philosophic thought.
Also, I'm still not convinced that tropes/images such as "wine dark sea" can be seen in the mind's eye without the aid of writing. I don't think that the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales could be created without seeing the words. I do think some of the tales told by the pilgrims in the book are the type of thing that could be invented without text. IOW, while there were stories before writing, I don't think there was literature before writing. I think writing improved crafstmanship.
2
“Experiences” are all in the present tense, whereas much of the joy of reading is encountering sentences that earlier readers, many long dead, were delighted or instructed by. The printed page holds our history together; a virtual reality “experience” of the Constitutional Convention would certainly be vivid and exciting, but reading the Federalist Papers prepares you to participate in the history of the country as it unfolds into the future. If the printed word dies, so does the history it archives, protects, and fertilizes. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen!
4
I've been reading this same story, the end of the printed book, for something like 30 plus years. And I suspect that I will still be reading the same story for the next 30 years. And there really doesn't seem to be much evidence that it is happening. Print books are going to be around for long time to come. They will share space with e-books and screens, but books will still be here.
25
The “end of the book” has been predicted for a long time, but like records, they have staying power.
11
Who’s got the time to go through pages and pages of sentences when one can immediately gratify with a streaming movie, documentary, series etc. Multiply each content option with the number of channels available etc.
I bought Harper Lee’s ‘To kill a mockingbird’ almost a year ago, have tried reading it twice with interest, but got bored and have not picked up since the last time. I haven’t given up completely yet, but chances are...
Welcome generation Z - who do not know of a world without the internet.
One of the black periods in book publishing was the time when publishers gave up on illustrations. Many of the commenters here do seem to have brilliantly vivid imaginations, but the pre-photograph books of yore gave a flavor and depth that no other medium can match, including your personal imagination. I have an 1849 5-volume set of Charles Wilkes' exploratory voyages and the countless engravings and exquisite maps send me into a spin every time I open one of the books.
5
@dressmaker
Ohhh ... I used to love pictures in books, but honestly most of the ones I had or saw were simple black and white line drawings. That's OK because the whole point is to stimulate one's imagination.
This is all a little fraught. I'm seventy, but I've spent most of my life in the computer industry in front of a screen. I'm also a public library trustee and book lover. Both physical and digital books have their place. Audio and multi-sensory literature also has its place.
Digital books are wonderful when your old hands have arthritis and your eyes don't focus like they used to, but paper also has its charms.
I have 17 year old grandsons and I mentor high school kids. When I ask the young ones about digital vs. paper, I get funny looks. They don't care! They like both. And they also like video games, audio books, and YouTube. Some of the nature photos and videos they have made are amazing. I wish I had as rich an environment 50 years ago.
In our library circulation numbers, paper circulation was declining in the 2010s while digital was rising, keeping our total circulation flat or rising slightly on increased digital circulation. But for the last few years, both have been rising.
My conclusion: both paper and digital reading will be around for a long time to come. Humans, inexplicably, are built to read and will keep on reading any way they can. But there are no limits on what humans can do and appreciate.
9
You lost me when you suggested that no one would want to experience crafted stories when real peoples' stories were widely available to live oneself. We see a version of this today, when inexpensive reality TV competes with and tries to elbow out expensive, wonderfully creative story-telling on HBO (and elsewhere), but the two options are different in kind, not just quality.
Those who enjoy reality TV do so for the pleasure they derive from a sense of schadenfreude, or voyeurism, never for a sense of artistic uplift, or to stimulate the imagination! Even a great life filled with adventure and excitement will appeal to a different sensibility than great fiction, just as biography today appeals to a different readership than a good novel.
Lastly, the value of editorial discernment should not be underestimated. Great art is great partly because it chooses what to show and what not to show, what to leave to the imagination. To experience another's life would take a lifetime and involve enormous amounts of drudgery to slog through the boring parts. To extract the crucial parts, and to fill in the gaps as needed to understand what was left out, is a creative act in itself. No form of pseudo-experience that fails to recognize this fact will ever truly fulfill the human need for stories.
6
Written words are clues that cause our minds to draw images in our head. We have wonderful freedom to make a variety of choices and "see" different images depending on how we choose to interpret the written word. When someone takes a written story and illustrates it - with their pictures, their sounds, their scents - then they are removing our freedom to choose what we might imagine something looks or sounds like...
I,for one, have no desire to give up my freedom imagine the visual of what I am reading... But I am a designer and I design things for a living - so I enjoy the challenge of creating something visual in my head after reading words...
Perhaps others do not mind giving up their freedom to imagine in return for a "canned" version coming from someone else's vision... I am guessing there will always be some of us who choose to see things through our own imagination and do not want someone else to do that for us...
4
pdf has been around since '93 and has been public for more than a decade. It now supports layers and 3D objects. Once presented in public, a document is liable to be backed up from server to server and about as immortal as a paper book (more so than ones from 1900 on sulfite bond). VR is a potential competitor for TV, but hardly for literature and certainly not for, say, history or philosophy.
Despite the frustrations of teachers expressed here, high school in the '50's was just as indifferent to culture, but the digital world certainly made it far more accessible than it was then. In one form or another, books have always had enemies and in one form or another, they will still be around.
1
I don’t think paper will go away. We have know idea how long digital storage will truly last (magnets do die) and if you look deep enough you will find that there is a serious crisis in the information storage field regarding migration planning. Paper lasts thousands of years if cared for properly, we know this for a fact. Jury’s out.
8
Books are not just stories. They are words, beautiful words strung together in ways you can only hope to aspire to. They are paintings made of words. Each one by itself fairly insignificant but put all together and processed through the mind of the individual reader they become something totally unique.
I also like the small and feel of a real book. It takes me back to a magical place of my childhood when my imagination knew no bounds. No virtual reality can approach this. And yes I am of a generation that had library cards and read every day but I have raised 2 children now in their early adulthood who value their books beyond all else.
21
Ms. Harrow, remember how you're not supposed to spill the beans about the future? It was the little clause about the Time Travellers' Prime Directive when you got your time machine license.
4
Beautifully written piece, very amusing if a tad self-contradictory. This sounds plausible, although I'd argue that one of the great things about books is that they let us use our imagination, giving us much more freedom than films for example.
I love my kindle, and I often read the NYT online but I love books too. First, you can find your way in a book, you can browse back and forth, or underline textbooks for a quick re-read: Call me old, but I don't think that digital books can compete with that. Besides, the non-virtuality of old books means they have a life of their own besides their content: I own a Webster's dictionary that I bought in Marseille, used, of course, since it was issued by the American Army in 1969. It apparently went to Vietnam. It's a book with a story obviously, in a 'Six Degrees of Separation' kind of way. Also, books have a smell, the pages make a noise, and you can drink and eat while you read. They already offer a very complete experience to people in the know.
12
Philip Roth said in a 2013 interview that we now live in the 'Age of Screens'.
He also said that by 2033 the serious novel would command about as much of the American public's attention as poetry did in 1913.
Or was Mr. Roth missing something then?
3
We have read the impressions on clay in Mesopotamia five thousand years old. Probably almost nobody can read the 5-1/4 inch floppy discs used until twenty years, ago. As the electron systems change and the storage devices change, data saved in older ones are lost unless efforts have been made to copy them to new media. We are in an age where keeping data costs money and can make us vulnerable to others using what we do not want. At this point in time written records are more endurable and more likely to remain accessible than is electronic data.
27
Even if new books are not printed, books will be a media that can last for centuries. Electronic media has no standard and endurable means of keeping it, so whatever is not copied to new media is likely to lost like the notes of a singer of two thousand years ago. Most people have no grasp of how transient are our electronic communications happen to be.
22
@Casual Observer
Well, as somebody who has seen 8 track, VHS, and floppy disc come and go, I definitely know how transient electronic media is.
2
I take the T into Boston every morning. Yes, lots of people are on their phones, but TONS of riders of all ages are lost in a book. Plastic-covered hardbacks from the library, old beat-up paperbacks marked with sale tags from Boomerangs, and Kindles (yes, not a “real book”, but you get my point) abound. Maybe Boston is an outlier because it’s an academic hub but if I were to guess, these people are probably office workers, blue collar folks, service industry employees, and students alike. I also note I take the T through the lower/middle class parts of town, not a commuter rail or one that goes through Wellesley/Newton/Brookline.
22
@Britt
I run a library in CT. Our circulation is up and keeps going up. Somebody out there is reading.
4
Very entertaining. "Timaeus" is a nice nod to Plato and Atlantis.
I'll confidently bet on the survival of text-only storytelling, precisely because it leaves so much to the imagination. As our imagination fills in the details, we develop an intimate, personal relationship to a story, on our own time.
I'll also bet on the survival of printed books, which become private possessions and trusted friends, with no intrusions from hardware, software, or power companies.
I'll even bet that in 2039, some authors will still be using typewriters (like Tayari Jones)—for similar reasons.
11
Wow--so many illogical leaps, misrepresentations, and straw-man smackdowns. No wonder Ms. Harrow doesn't tout a medium dependent on words.
Will just note a couple of strange standouts.
"Why read comic books when you can live them. . .?" My dear, your 5-senses medium can't possibly match my imagination or that of anyone who has spent much time in actual reality. Moreover, the faculties needed and developed by calling on the imagination are useful in many other kinds of thinking and analysis--especially, for example, higher math.
Also, I never really thought of Toni Morrison, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Doris Lessing, or Margaret Atwood as "lone white male[s] sweating whiskey over [their] typewriter[s], perhaps pausing to light another cigarette and glare at the horizon." Maybe Harrow should spend more time in reality (minus the "virtual"). Good grief.
67
@cmk Ms. Harrow is a writer. Of books. Her piece is a work of satirical imagination.
1
How does immersion in sensory experiences communicate abstract ideas? And if all the creative energy and imagination lie in the production of these stories, what happens to imagination in the one who experiences these stories?
7
I'm a high school English teacher, and every day I do battle with teenagers' hatred of reading. "It's too hard!" "It's boring!" "It takes too much work!" "I'd rather play video games or watch TV."
There is the enemy, my friends: cell-phones, laptops, and television. Our kids want that "ping" of instant gratification. They don't WANT to become more educated, more intelligent, or more capable of dealing with the world. They want all their needs serviced and satisfied in a split-second.
I challenge my students, "You just haven't found what you LIKE to read. For every person, it's a different genre--literature, poetry, engineering, math, psychology, chemistry, biology, physics, biography, history, art and music. Walk around any Barnes & Noble for 15 minutes. You'll find something that catches your eye and your imagination. Find a subject you like, read it, and then NEVER STOP."
I even read aloud to my students, to show them through vocal emphasis, tone, pause, and pitch how the story might "sound" in their heads. I give them the "back stories" of the authors and how the story was written. They ask me, "How do you know all this stuff?" My simple answer: "I read...A LOT. You should, too."
My school requires students to read two novels over the summer, and then write about them. When they complain, I say, "If we didn't make you read over the summer, you would do nothing but watch TV or play video games until you went blind." Nobody ever disagrees--which is sad.
42
@Jack Connolly
Ask your students if their parents read bedtime stories to them when they were young children. The most common response from my middle schoolers when I asked them was a vacant look. It was as if being read to was a completely foreign idea. When I reeled off a list of classic children's books there was barely a hint of recognition. ("Who's Dr. Suess?") Here's hoping that you get a more positive response from your students.
10
@Jack Connolly Keep doing what you're doing -- they are listening more than you think they are. The electronic soup does make teaching harder (every subject, not just English) than in the past but if anything, your strong belief in the value of this learning is even more important. I salute you!
13
@rab When my children were little, their mother and I made sure we read to them, every night, without fail. It was usually "Corduroy" or "Clifford the Big Red Dog," although my daughter preferred "Madeline." The only exception was on Christmas Eve. My daughter would snuggle in my lap, and my son would kneel by my armchair, and I would read them "The Night Before Christmas." Hey, traditions are important!
3
Hmmm. I am curious where we will all live? In some Tesla spaceship where except for our brains and spine, everything else is recycled efficiently by robotic surgeons?
4
@Linus See the movie wall-e
The printed word--in a book, on a scroll, on a sheaf--will outlast all of us and our digital closets. It is the tangible point of contact between eras.
The Incas, I think, so revered the ability to write that their word for paper was actually a phrase: the skin of God.
29
@Eric
The Incas did not have a writing system, not even pictographs (the Aztecs and Mayans from Meso America did). The did have another system of record keeping--kipus or quipus, based on colored strings and knots.
1
Truly powerful creativity. almost scary in many respects. Enjoyed such immensely. But the issue is how WELL the Verse version of, e.g., "Howard's End" is able to evoke the point of view of E. M. Forster. While the Verse version may be a terrific tale, it is not necessarily a better one because, well .... it isn't in fact "Howard's End". The Verse version of "Moby Dick" may put the harpoon in your hand, but I don't see how it can place you in the South Sea Doldrums as well as Melville.
8
@Brian Kramer
It can't. You are correct.
Guess what? Twenty years ago I heard the same thing!
24
@Dolly Patterson
I've been hearing the same thing for 30 years.
4
“Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.”—Joss Whedon.
7
So out of touch with the world of readers. Asleep for the past several years as bookstores continued, readers took joy in them and people became bored with their kindles? Frankly comes across as desperate to be relevant.
8
Um, Gutenberg did not invent printing or the printing press. It was invented centuries earlier in East Asia. It's pretty hard to make a convincing prediction of the future when your knowledge of the past is limited. People don't read for the "myths" and "stories," they read to lose themselves in the experience of the reading imagination. That "drug" always will be snorted in spite of the contraptions devised by techies.
11
@Ladyrantsalot
Yes, and No. Printing in Asia was different than what developed in Europe. Gutenberg invented interchangeable, moveable type which is what started the print revolution (within 50 years, every large city in Europe had a printing press. One of the fastest known diffusion of a technology), Asia used block printing, which is when a single page is carved an unchanging unit. This method was also used in Europe in the centuries before Gutenberg, mostly religious images with text.
4
@sjs The Chinese invented moveable type too, but it never caught on, for obvious reasons.
1. Nothing in the historical record suggests that Gutenberg was "eccentric"
2. Pages of the Gutenberg Bible were not "squashed beneath a wine press".
3. Gutenberg likely did invent the ink used to print the Bible and the western printing press.
4. Most copies of the Gutenberg Bible were not printed on vellum.
5. Most copies of the Gutenberg Bible were not bound in pigskin.
4
@Jack W. Stop with the facts, let's all live in the author's imagination world. /s
A very cleverly written article. I was about halfway through reading it when I realized the author was writing as if the year really were 2039. No references to nonagenarian Donald Trump serving his 6th term as U.S. president for life?
Actually, I'd put my money on Jeff Bezos (who will be 75 years old in 2039) being the unchallenged leader by that time of what will be known to all as the United States of Amazon.
5
Ms. Harrow's 2039 sounds like a nightmare. Stories in her alternative (or not) future may still be alive, but in her virtual reality infected world, imagination surely will not be. Prose only exists on the page, it is the reader who fills in the blanks.
5
Problems from the "Verse". No worries. Changes too fast. Problems come and go with the latest. Fad trends speed by. Without notice. Somebody said. Here today, gone tomorrow.
I have two words to contradict the premise of this opinion: Amazon Bookstore.
1
http://www.liveink.com/Walker/Books_die_but_Ink_Endures.htm
This article has been reformatted into Live Ink—see the link above.
Live Ink has been proven, in US Department of Eduction-funded research, to enhance learning, strengthen comprehension, and accelerate literacy growth for both reading and writing.
Live Ink is especially powerful in technical writing that imparts complex ideas.
As Aristotle said: Written words are the symbols of spoken words, and spoken words are the symbols of mental experience.
2
Alix, child -- your dystopian fantasy is bosh and balderdash. The printed word will survive simply because -- for it to even exist -- it must be engaged. It's an act of will to read and it requires an effort. There will always be those (our numbers, to be sure, may dwindle) who prefer to actively engage their minds with an art form, rather than passively sit and receive what's handed to them via Movies, TV or -- what you are envisioning -- a sort of super "feelies," grâce à Aldous Huxley.
5
Marvel at the ancient crabbed name inscribed in pencil on the flyleaf of an 1879 edition of poetry. Wonder at the notes in the margin, jotted down by some previous owner of your paper book. Inhale that lovely smell of time and must and paper and ink. Thumb through the books of your childhood and plan to pass them on to a child not yet born.
Try asking an author to sign your e-book.
6
I have a question: an electronic copy of a book is not a book?
5
Wouldn't this virtual reality flight of fancy also spell the doom of movies, television, streaming video and live stage performances as well?
One sure-fire way to write an amusing column: set out your vision of the future, file it away and retrieve it 30 years later. It will raise a chuckle. The readers of 2050 thank you.
If the printed word had to rely on the style (& content) of this author it would be extinct.
4
Story is the coin of the realm of intelligence.
A squirrel tells itself a “story” of how to go back whence it came. All mammals use the same trick. “ Over the river and through the woods”
projects a virtual map of terrain onto the imagination. This ability is key to survival and forms the basis of both books and the stories that books tell.
2
You can pry my actual, printed, bound and wonderfully smelling BOOKS from my cold dead Hands.
Seriously.
9
I heard that paintings are going away too because we now have cameras.
13
I've been reading all the articles in the NYT about climate change and have been listening, carefully to little Greta Thunberg and AOC. There is more than a good chance, we'll all be gone by 2039. Absolutely, nothing to worry about.
I once swore I would never read the New York Times on a computer screen. Now I read it on a screen every day and I often respond with comments both brilliant and idiotic, some of which actually get "printed" (I suspect that is not the right word.) I am surrounded by my favorite things, books, DVDs and classical music CDs, all of which my children will probably dispose of after my demise. I still refuse to even consider reading an E-book. I spend my retirement in a room full of bookcases filled with books which I continue to read by holding them in my hands. Like sex I prefer something I can get my hands on - there are still some things the Internet cannot adequately provide. Proust on the Internet is not my cup of tea.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
4
Books will never die. End. Of.Story.
4
I didn’t know they were alive to begin with.
This could not be further from the truth (hint: they declared the death of books a long time ago).
3
The quote attributed to Mark Twain comes to mind: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
3
I stopped reading this ridiculous piece. There are still plenty of publishers in business, and bookstores are cautiously thriving. Stop manipulating fears.
3
If it is possible in this fantasy world, can we convince Mr. Smuk's parents to stick carefully to their birth control regimen?
Or is it already too late?
Dearest Alix, I'll take is it utopia or dystopia for 400
2
“Microsoft’s much-mocked Awegment”
Aww don’t pick on the Awegment, the prehensile tail feature was great!
1
While I do not doubt that new forms of storytelling may become wildly popular, I do not think books will be "dead" in 2039, or ever, for that matter. What I am concerned about though is that it may become harder and harder for an individual writer to earn an income from any form of content creation, whether it be fiction, journalism, memoir, motion pictures, video games, songs and musical composition, or anything else. Websites, blogs, apps, smart phones and other delivery systems have made it easier and easier to obtain all sorts of content free of charge or for artificially low rates ("Alexa, play Motown." "I'm going to stay home tonight and bingewatch XXXX on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime). How will anyone be able to earn a living producing any type of original content without also having a couple of day jobs and/or heavy corporate sponsorship/censorship?
3
If the books are dead, so will be the brains of the people who used to read them.
2
And TV killed radio.
I will never give up my books
3
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
- Books in 2039.
2
Not buying it.
Didn’t think much of this “oh wow!” column. He gives no ink to the pleasure of reading for the artistry of language. He gives way too much to the debatable benefit of total immersion. They’re different realities and won’t necessarily murder the other.
2
I don't understand. Harrow is an author.
New York Times, STOP this publishing of delusions as if our civilization goes on and on, Tra-la.
We are spiraling toward agony for our grandchildren, followed by extinction.
Suicidal extinction, from our destruction of conditions for human life on Earth.
Try to turn your focus, and ours, toward reality.
1
In the future Harrow envisions, will people twit (or will twits tweet?) about the "Mils", or will they revert to saying "Millennia" instead of the ever present "Millenniums".....
1
Deeply stupid. Literature is not only about stories or experiences. (Which doesn't mean that a new technology offering stories and experiences wouldn't succeed, but it wouldn't be offering the same thing as literature.)
3
These "op-eds from the future" are infuriating. One clicks on an outrageous headline, only to find that one is reading a wholly constructed narrative. NYTimes, if you wish to publish fiction, that's fine. But please don't deceive readers by placing it in the op-ed section. Label it clearly, and put it somewhere else.
1
Excuse me, I hear my bookmark calling me. The kind you place in a book.
2
What a fantastic piece,Philip K Dick would be proud.Write On!!!!
1
Unable to finish the article. Goin' to youtube. Later...(maybe never)
This is the haughtiest thing I ever read in the NYT.
Books provide something that VR cannot - room for the individual's imagination. Does anyone really know what the narrator of the Inferno looks like? Or Bilbo Baggins? Or Alice in Wonderland? Or what Narnia looks like? Reading allows the reader to imagine those things, and many more, to place themselves inside the narrative, to add details, nuance and images as fanciful or mundane as comes to mind. That opportunity for imagination makes all the difference. Books will endure!
4
The future is not set. There's no immutable law that says books will become obsolete. If this comes to pass it's entirely due to choices we make as a society. The end of books would coincide with the end of ownership. We've already seen this with the rise of streaming versus owning DVD's or VHS before that. Video games are being played through similar services. Employment is also following this trend, as precarious gig economies replace real jobs. The constant state of anxiety, living on a permanent edge with no margin for error has effects on the brain and our ability to pay attention. Why sit to read a book when your gig economy boss can command you to a small shift at any time they choose.
The world being chosen is one that has no place for books, sees no value in them. This can be avoided but we must change our way of thinking, we must dare to dream of an alternative. We must have a future again.
7
“bookstores are now antique shops haunted by aging millennials and the kinds of effortlessly hip retro teenagers who might have collected vinyl records in previous decades.”
The Barnes and Noble near me is full of books and seems to be doing just fine. Our local libraries the same.
7
@W.H.
Agreed. Guess Harrow doesn't go to many bookstores.
1
No doubt your favorite book is “Pollyanna”?
@W.H.
And our (very popular) Barnes and Noble has a whole section full of -- vinyl records. So much better sound !
The question is not so much books vs electronics, but written text vs video.
2
Of course, for all practical purposes, books should have endured. They ran well without batteries and when you spilled a glass of water on them they didn’t cost $200 to replace.
But they also turned out to be very difficult to monitor, neither the Government nor Mark Zuckerberg could tell what you were reading at any given time, or what comments you wrote in the margins, or who you shared them with.
So, in the end, of course, they had to be burned.
13
RE: I fail to see how telling stories with smell and touch, with petrichor and heat and the shadows of leaves on pavement, is inherently inferior to telling them with words.
You have totally eliminated the use of imagination and likely messed with the processes though which a reader filters the written descriptions through their own life experiences. Also, reading isn't just about experiencing things --books contain descriptions of events and such, but also include lots of analysis and ideas. I tend to have written conversations with the authors I read in the margins of the page. Can I do that with your virtual reality experiences?
I do hope your predictions are way off base!
5
Drivel. Nothing will replace the printed book. Same goes for the pencil. The loss of book reading equals the loss of literate society; books are long-distance learning exemplified. When the power goes out, as it has repeatedly this year in California, a lantern and a book ate lasting refuge.
10
Books are clearly less interesting to younger people. Typical teens are reading far less in book form than their predecessors of twenty or thirty years ago. The diminution is reflected in the quality of their writing and levels of analysis. But will books go away? Probably not, but they may find a narrower and much audience, kind of like most symphony orchestras.
5
@Snowball
Which "younger people" are you thinking of? My grandkids, ages 11 and 9, have a lot of books, and are always happy to be taken to the bookstore (which we still have here) or the library to get more.
1
When I was a child somewhere along the line I received an Etch-a-Sketch. I spent hours and hours trying to form letters and write stories on that thing! I think of it as my first Kindle. I love reading books and magazines, however, I no longer buy hard copies of anything (with the exception of the latest Joy of Cooking)- everything I read is from an on-line version of a magazine or a Kindle book, an Audible book or a download from my public library. I don't miss the clutter and I don't miss dragging boxes of read books to a donation center. Times change and I am loving it-the accessibility of the written word is fantastic. And when I go anywhere, my entire library comes with me, all in carry-on. And when I die, just like the words on that Etch-a-Sketch-one push of a button and all content will be gone. The landfill gets nothing (except the Kindle itself).
1
@MaryAnn Ha, I was given an Etch-a-sketch when I was a child because someone noticed I “liked to draw.” After about ten minutes of utter frustration manipulating those little dials I shoved the horrid thing under my bed for good and went back to pencils and paints and paper. To each their own.
1
I cannot live without books. - Thomas Jefferson.
And neither can I !
11
When the Amazon Kindle was released, I thought that begin the end for books. Books, I thought, would one day be like fine art. Only the wealthy and educated would have them.
I am so happy to have been wrong! Sales of actual books have gone up in recent years. And books, e-books, and audio books all seem quite capable of co-existing. In fact, I use all 3, and have several books that I own in multiple platforms.
Long live books!
12
"But what was it you loved, really? Surely it wasn’t the bleached-wood-pulp and acid-free ink..."
Actually - yes. The bulk, the heft, the aroma, the physical weight of the contents. Surely yes, it is the bleached-wood-pulp and acid free ink that can be passed along from one generation to the next.
My son will have great attachment and substantial memories of his father by way of my early 1900's edition of "The Federalist Papers" – a book he used for several of his high school papers. I cannot imagine any emotional attachment had I provided him a link to Amazon or a downloaded copy of this same historical document from Audible.com. (No offense, I like Audible)
No, I don't expect to read the print edition of the NYTimes, or The Atlantic or the Economist etc. forever. But I feel that somehow books will survive. So far they have a pretty great track record.
14
I love that books are just words. I'm not interested in someone giving me the experience of every sense. I want to read the words and figure it out for myself.
16
"But it has also given us the same things we’ve always found in stories: ways to make sense of an increasingly senseless world, and ways to escape it."
Another effortless extension of Bread and Circus designed to create effortless pleasure and subdue the proletariat.
It's the HARD pleasures like deep thinking and rigorous training that will always seperate the weak minded from the strong and all that entails.
6
The folks running The Center for the Book at the University of Iowa would be distressed to hear this news. They and we are convinced that reading on paper is absorbed differently from reading a computer screen. Books last for many centuries, while digital media is so easily erased.
19
@Mike C.
I primarily read on a Kindle E-Reader. I walk around with hundreds of books tucked under my arm, including childhood favorites such as Huckleberry Finn. I don't worry that my books are going away; I don't feel deprived of the "paper book experience" as I download them from the public library. I don't have to drive in to pick up hardbacks; don't have to drive back in to return them. I no longer interrupt my reading to go drag out a dictionary for an unknown word as one is included on my reading device. I don't have to wonder "what page was that on?" when I can easily do a keyword search and find what I'm looking for. In short, there are lots of good reasons to enjoy the reading experience of my childhood with the convenience of a dedicated e-reader.
10
@Brown
YES! I also use the library to check out my kindle books...free..... and the Kindle weighs a lot less than a book to hold and you can adjust the size type and screen light to read at night in the dark
7
@Wayne
Exactly! There is a misunderstanding and a prejudice that e-books are not "real" books. One of the reasons that I own a dedicated e-reader is because I want no internet, news, or social media interfering with my reading experience.
4
My two young boys love books. Spend their allowances on them willingly. Book fairs at school are wildly popular. I don’t think this is an accurate article at all. I can’t imagine that much changes in 20 years. But who knows.
11
I love books, everything about them. Movies, VR, etc, will never be as good as the imagination. Books don’t limit you the way these other modalities do.
9
". . . but I fail to see how telling stories with smell and touch, with petrichor and heat and the shadows of leaves on pavement, is inherently inferior to telling them with words."
That, at least, comes close to insight. Print works in a way no other medium can match. Done right, print media allow ideas and images from an author to arise as if unbidden in the mind of a reader—as if the author had no role. It is a process with power to set aside for at least a useful interval the habitual skepticism with which each of us defends against persuasion by others. Instead, in that magical space which only reading creates, we encounter ideas as if we ourselves had invented them—which allows us to experience them unreservedly, until we choose to do otherwise.
If that capacity is driven from the culture, it will be a sad and degrading loss.
17
Alix, the written word didn't begin with Gutenberg. In the sense of literature, it began somewhere between 1900-1700 B.C.E., with the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is in no danger of disappearing, cheap neural threads notwithstanding.
And while you're right to say that stories have always been with us and always will be with us, stories are not spontaneous creations but art, i.e., they have to be crafted. Yes, they can be told with images only (c.f. any painting by Breughel the Elder), but story-telling paintings (as opposed to, say, still life) are not self-interpreting. Their images have to have some basis in language if people are to understand what they mean. Imagine trying to grapple with Breughel's work without any knowledge of both the Bible and the initial Dutch revolt against Spain.
8
This is a little like saying that movies should have killed books. Clearly that didn't happen.
Books currently live alongside movies, the internet, and other forms of media today. Perhaps the companies selling them will fail to adapt and thus fade away, but that's not the same thing as books themselves dying.
12
@David
Excellent point. As I posted earlier, I daily enjoy the reading experiences of my childhood--from a dedicated e-reader. (BTW, how many are reading and posting electronically in this comment section?!)
1
A light novel on a Kindle is convenient for traveling, but if I'm reading a great book, particularly non-fiction—David Blight's Frederick Douglass biography or Jane Mayer's Dark Money are recent examples—I like to flip back to earlier passages, take margin notes, and even dog-ear paper pages. It's a tactile as well as intellectual exercise that I believe strengthens content retention and synthesis. Digital reviews/e-commerce help me choose and order/quickly receive what I'm going to read next. Long live the printed word, including the NYT, which I read while also turning to the digital edition for developing news/stories throughout the 24-hr. news cycle.
36
@Susan It's even easier to bookmark, annotate or find an earlier passage in an e-book IMHO.
2
I read books as a means of getting away from the computer screen. That will never die; books will live on.
26
@Ambrose
God, I hope so.
2
@Ambrose I read books, many, many books. I can't go to bed without a book on my night table. I don't care about 2039. I'll be gone by then...
1
It's not about the books themselves, but the willingness and the ability of the public to read a substantial work. There's a guy in the White House who might be capable of reading at the high school level, but has no interest in anything much longer than 280 characters unless it is a paean to his brilliance. He probably skips over the 50-cent words in those, too. Not a great role model for reading....
As I have traveled around this country, there are many book deserts - cities or neighborhoods where it is extremely difficult to find physical books, much like the food deserts in cities (often the same ones) where it is difficult to find fresh fruits and veggies or a real, sit-down, non-chain restaurant.
Those people have little use for books today, and that won't change in 20 years. But the locations with a high percentage of college graduates and/or colleges and universities still have bookstores, mostly independent ones, selling both new and used books, even though their prices are typically higher than Amazon's. Powell's in Portland and the Strand in NYC attract lots of people of all ages who wander the aisles for hours. Physical books may become a niche market like vinyl records or film photography, but they are unlikely to disappear until our leaders follow the rulers in Fahrenheit 451 and decide that books and their content are dangerous.
18
Virtual reality will end books?
Why assume books and not live theater performance?
Saving $500 on Hamilton tickets makes sense.
But I'm still happy to pay for paper books. VR to replace books...strange suggestion.
8
Comparisons of books to movies and television always seem to ignore the fact that reading is an ACTIVE experience, requiring mental transformation of words on a page to view screens in readers' minds, whereas watching movies or television is a PASSIVE experience, in which the content is spoon-fed to quiescent viewers, requiring only that they be awake.
When it comes to fiction, movies and television have one glaring shortcoming: Other than with intrusive voice-over narration, they cannot reveal characters' interior dialog, the written word's strong suit.
20
@YourAverageVoter Fine actors bridge the gap. Lit and performance are different but equally important arts
1
The idea that books might be replaced by virtual reality, and the underlying technology pirated and distributed virally, thus killing the publishing industry, is, on reflection, not just plausible but likely!
The comments, mostly from lovers of hard cover books, which are largely critiques of now-fading e-books, suggest that few people even understand what Harrow is driving at here. I would have thought "book lovers" would have scored a bit higher on reading comprehension.
In any case, a fascinating fantasy, and one I hope I don't live to see.
3
I had pretty much abandoned my Great American Novel project back in 2031, and was working on an anthology of opening and closing paragraphs gleaned from the same aborted project, when the great silicon chip failure occurred. It was somewhat disconcerting to see society grind to a halt, and downright disturbing to watch aircraft plummet, Icarus-like.
Fortunately I had printed out the many pages of my many drafts, and was using the paper for grocery lists and such, when I recognized the potential for re-purposing the paper (made from recycled materials) to chronicle the disaster.
It will be available soon at your local book store. Ebook version not available.
13
Books will always be here if for no other reason than that I will always buy them over e-books.
8
@Phillip
e-books are great for novels, but for anything that contains graphs,maps or tables, they are a pain. Also, they make it hard to go back a few pages to some place you remember but have not marked.
10
Right there with you. I plan on being around in 20 years and as long as I am, so will my books.
7
@Fran You are so right. I bought the biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Isaacson for my glowlight ereader so I could read it in the dark (the way I read most novels), and I immediately knew I should have bought a hard cover. It was a great book, but I had to work to enlarge the pictures, and even then I was missing half the experience.
1
I am life long lover of and voracious reader of many kinds of books. It may be comforting too think that the value and beauty of old school books will prevail, but we have to get real here. In 20 years, it may be much more likely that water, air and food are so rare and precious that reading will not be a widely practiced pastime at all.
@NLL
"In 20 years, it may be much more likely that" most children have never learned to read or spell, and are therefore limited to emojis and "sound-alike" words to express themselves.
The printed book may soon die, but I hope something better than the current E-reader will take its place. If the book has maps, charts, illustrations, or photos, E-books are a real pain to read if you want to flip back and forth. Many E-books are formatted without table of contents links, so you have to guess and scroll forever to find something. E books can't be bought and sold, and you can't browse a shop for something to catch your eye.
The disappearance of print will be one of the most successful scams ever. If it works, that it.
7
I enjoy reading a printed book on paper I like far, far more than any digital reading device. That will never change for me. I also enjoy a hand written letter far, far more than any email. That will also never change for me.
My books and letters are my most treasured possessions.
18
I am life long lover of and voracious reader of many kinds of books. It may be comforting too think that the value and beauty of old school books will prevail, but we have to get real here. In 20 years, it may be much more likely that water, air and food are so rare and precious that reading will not be a widely practiced pastime at all.
3
If we consider all the ways that information has been saved in the last 100 years (since the end of the printed word?) none of them has lasted much more than a decade: cellulose, floppy discs, hard drives, CDs, 8-track, Polaroid, DVDs, and so much more are all obsolete or getting there. Only print survives because it is so sturdy and simple. The other media become technologically obsolete or just become unusable.
46
@Elwood Print survives, yes, until the climate catastrophe and accompanying floods, fires, etc. hit.
1
Arguably it's more than the stories—plenty of people today, and not just a handful of eccentric hobbyists, will happily pay a premium price for a beautifully-designed, well constructed hardcover even though they can get all of the same words in an inexpensive mass-market paperback.
16
I am thankful to be living in Seattle, the city with 23 branch libraries full of books and the city that reads more than any other in the country. We still have bookstores, used bookstores, book clubs, reading groups and little library neighborhood book exchanges all over the place.
One can take a book to the beach or to the mountainside, no machine or electricity necessary. When the electrical grid goes down, when the infrastructure fails, when all the data is unavailable because of the planned obsolescence of the machinery, when global warming scrags civilization, books will remain.
60
@Earthling
And if you buy (through Amazon in my case) a second-hand book from the Seattle Goodwill, chances are that it will be even better than described (plus: they ship promptly).
[We have a very good public library where I live, in Michigan, but sometimes it rains, or it is far too hot, or there is ice on the ground, or I feel my age .... so why not get the hardcover book from Amazon, second-hand for just a few dollars.]
@Earthling
The simplicity of a book is what will keep it relevant. Doesn't need power, doesn't care if it gets a signal, simple to operate, durable, doesn't break if dropped, can be used by one person or many people (either sequentially or in a read-aloud group). Books will be around a lot longer than I will
4
As a mostly blind person the printed word died years ago despite this post which is being read to me. So its back to the age of Homer when the spoken word passed on stories.
But I have learned that all stories are created in our minds whether projected there by written, spoken or direct visual means. Reading is always an act of creation and for me that is the bottom line.
Leaving the printed word behind has allowed me to do that creating more easily and directly without interpreting visual letters and symbols that are now hard for me to grasp. But here I am at a key board, ancient though it is, trying to make sense of a crazy world more challenging than ay fiction.
5
Very facile. Looking at the humble book--not plugged-in, private, tactile, quiet, personal--and saying it is doomed by the march of technology seems just so obvious to he or she would predict the future. My prediction is that this article is not one of the stories that will last over time.
41
@onkelhans Perhaps not.... but it will last in my head/heart.... it's a brilliant telling of a near future, going in very different directions than I thought, given the title and the setting (600th anniversary of Gutenberg).
And in the process, she affirms what most of us feel: our love of books.
1
What a great surprise. An Op-Ed written about a future problem I didn't even consider, that provides the answer to the problem so that I can file it away under "taken care of". Because I've had OCD all my life, there was a time when I couldn't read a book or even a pamphlet without triggering one thing or another so I just stopped reading altogether. When the drug companies developed Anti-Depressants that had the helpful side effect of altering the chemical imbalance that resulted in OCD, the first thing I did was hit the books. It was like coming up for air after being too long under water. Your funny and poignant fiction points to a future that is filled with possibilities, surely they'll be room for the feeling I got when I became reacquainted with the printed word.
6
@Rick Gage
Please write about this experience of yours.
1
Give me a challenging hardcover book, my dipping pen or fountain pen and leather bound notebook to jot down ideas, a glass of wine and uninterrupted quiet, and I'm in a perfect place.
43
Today I’m going to the Guadalajara International Bookfair (Feria Internacional de Libros FIL) and I’m looking forward to huge crowds looking at huge numbers of books. Ebooks are nice too, especially when traveling.
7
There is more to books than their words, although I love both words and books. Think of the beauty of illustrated stories and works of fiction for the youngest learners, for children and teens. I remember the illustrations within Dr Doolittle, The Water Babies, Little Women, The Jungle Book. Beautiful full-color book jackets and hardcover book covers. The creamy stock and gilt edges of expensive ("forever") books. Endpapers that are sometimes marbled. Really good typesetting, with "air" around the paragraphs and margins. Antique books like my 1929 edition of Voltaire's Candide, by Bennett Cerf's Random House, illustrated profusely in chapter headings and within paragraphs, by Rockwell Kent. Well made books are a feast, and I will always eat at this table!
28
This isn't simply an argument over modes of story telling. What we choose to make manifest, what we choose to actually carry around with us, what we bring into our homes, what we permit to share our physical space, is an indication of what we hold most important and what we choose to become physically intimate with.
Books are a form of physical intimacy. When they are reduced to the role of an appliance, a kind of efficient transport for Story, then we stop being readers and thinkers and become little more than the appliance's "end users."
We've become bewitched by the lightness of efficiency. But there's equal value in what anchors us, clings to us, and keeps us bound.
21
@S Jones
When I open "Of Human Bondage" on my dedicated e-reader I experience the same pleasure as when first read Mr. Maugham in print, 50 years ago. An e-reader is not an "appliance" for everyone. Just a comment from a life-long reader.
2
@Brown
It’s wonderful that you still feel that way. You were fortunate to have bonded with the printed copy so many years ago, which I’m sure has deepened your connection with and added to your ability to relate to the e-version today.
1
@Brown That's interesting. I get no pleasure at all from words on an e-reader.
2
Odd title. A "book" is not the physical medium that caries the words, but the content, which can be on a laptop, cellphone, recording, or whispered into the ear by a loved one.
A message conveyed by a quill on parchment is the same "book" as later set in hand type and printed one sheet at a time, to a century ago set by Linotype and printed on a high speed multi "web printer" that could produce a newspaper every second.
Certainly, print on paper is no longer the most efficient means of disseminating entertainment or information. This laptop I'm using, available now to those with minimal wealth, provides a facility I couldn't imagine in my youth in the 1940s. In a second I can search a name, a ratified subject and locate the article, and then the particular word.
No more traipsing to the library, waiting an hour to the book is delivered, and then searching the text. I'm constantly verifying my suppositions, and then sharing my own synthesis. Whether poetry, prose or data, the resources of the world are now at our fingertips, available to all.
This was my field, and I remember touring the Times fifty years ago on 43rd st. The Linotype had been replaced by computers, but the operators had a strong union. Every day a few dozen of them were in a recreation room, enjoying themselves on the negotiated contract income.
2
Although I disagree with some of the predictions expressed by Harrow, I must admit: This is a very imaginative and beautifully crafted piece, especially the final two sentences. Harrow writes elegant prose in which any workmanship is rendered invisible to the reader's eye. I also enjoyed the shades of Bradbury.
5
Twenty years ago I remember hearing an interview on NPR with someone who said physical books would be dead in 20 years. The book entitled, "The end of Print," has been reprinted. It is always early to predict the end of something that has been around for 600 years. You won't be able to fire up your iPad in 20 years but your physical books will still be readable.
46
It's worth mentioning that Bi Sheng of China invented the first moveable type printing system in the 1040s during the Song Dynasty, some 400 years before Gutenberg.
10
@Kyle Hudson
Like so many inventions in the past, his invention went no where and had little impact (although his invention lasted long enough to be improved by others who switched to using bronze type). Gutenberg's invention transformed the world.
2
Literacy is fairly recent phenomenon. Who is to say it isn't a phase? I hate to say this, as a teacher of young people and a book lover, but I really don't think most people are going to be reading in 100 years. My brightest students are directing all their energy into their phones, not books.
6
@Constant Gardener
you're a teacher and not leading by example?
As was pointed out by another reader, words can handle far more complexity than images. That's why 99% of movies are not as good as the book. They're thrilling, and done with incredible skill, but they can only suggest the ideological depth and resonance of a well-written book. Those who love that depth will not find it in the "experience" described in this piece, as alluring and enjoyable as it may be. It's like the overblown intellectualism that some people heap on Superhero movies: you can dress it up as much as you want, but really just showing how much you wish you could have effortless consumption and spiritually satisfying art.
Highly recommend Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" for the definitive and prescient take on the shift to image/entertainment culture that this article portends.
Plus, I'm not sure widespread high-tech will still be a thing in 2039.
22
Musicians/music/cds have been in the disappearing boat for a while now. Other than live performances, musicians have mostly lost their ability to earn money from their recordings. As stated in this article, we don't "own" anything anymore. We simply rent it, over and over again. The online purveyors reap the profits while we're trapped in the pay-until-you-die mode, whether it's books, music, software...
I'm not sure what the solution is but technology has outsmarted us once again and our bank accounts are poorer for it.
7
Don't think so. Physical books help with the retention of information better than ebooks due to the spatial component of a books physicality (i.e. its pages). Secondly, there is an ever growing blue light problem with all devices such as macular issues, eyestrain, and brain wakefulness at bedtime, although there may come a time when tech manufacturers fix this. Thirdly, a book doesn't need to be recharged ever and just like we still have audio cassettes and vinyl for philes of the type who keep it alive, the book format will never fully die.
24
Print is (was?) an essential mechanism of cultural progress.
Absent the necessity of investment to produce printed copies, there is no need of editorship; so what cultivation, husbandry, or curation will ever arise to elevate any canon? When channels were dear -- there were once upon a time only 3 national TV networks -- a great sifting separated much chaff before it could be broadcast; but nowadays any kind of authoritative winnowing is obsolete. Unless we find equivalent replacement for the implicit wisdom imposed by the industry of publication, I fear cultural disintegration.
3
a circle is the simplest symmetry, and around and around we go!
I really enjoyed Alix Harrow's op-ed, especially the humour and economy displayed on such a vast topic....of change/progress/future... hey wait a minute!
When we have 7 or 8 billion monkeys pounding away on our smart phones, I don't think we'll come up with any new Shakespeare.
7
I was just in a bookstore, and it was packed with customers. Most of the people in it were much younger than I am. Even the kids' area was full of kids on the floor reading books. My grandchildren love to read actual books, too. From everything I've been seeing in the newspapers, independent bookstores are making a comeback. I too love the feeling of turning paper pages of a hardcover book. I tried to read on a Kindle and an iPad, and gave it up. I'm on computers all day, so holding an actual book is a joy and a relief. It's a totally different sensory experience.
47
For decades now, so called "wise men" and soothsayers have been predicting the impending demise of the book. Hasn't happened yet and will NOT happen in the foreseeable future. As a retired longtime librarian, I can tell you that books are very much alive and well. And my grandchildren enjoy reading real books just as much as I did as a kid, and just as much as their grandchildren will--if global warming doesn't kill everyone off first.
22
Please.
Ask any archivist. In the aughts the Library of Congress had a basement filled with early, dead technologies containing files rendered unreadable by changing formats.
You always want to host a stable, accessible record, especially for niche/obscure/unpopular materials. That still means paper for most of us.
This piece assumes that all materials will find a forever home online. The market doesn’t work that way. And given the current coarseness of the national conversation, what’s commonly, readily available will likely be equivalents of Tucker Carlson and Keto for Carb Lovers.
Kind of like thinking that Netflix has every movie ever made. Not every work will make it.
Librarian here.
43
I read even more now that I have kindle, I only wish borrowing from the library was easier (read more convenient and immediate), and I cannot regret sparing a tree (though I doubt the trees are being spared).
Kudos to author's apt satire in the naming of the platforms - esp awegment vs Amazon's Universal Experience (AUE -teehee) - this made me laugh out loud.
My cousin and I were surprised last week to discover that some old family videos we wanted to copy could be transferred to a thumb drive but not to a DVD because no one plays DVDs any more. I am quite sure that in 5-10 years no one will be playing thumb drives either--and then what? A late friend--a former publishing professional turned archivist--once told me that if you want to preserve something, put it on paper. I may never be able to view those family videos again, but I intend to be sure I will always be able to read my beloved printed books.
16
I've never owned an electronic reader. Not only do I like printed books, I'm very leery of the digital rights management sinkholes that have already caused some people to lose books they purchased--unfortunately, they didn't realize that in the digital world you don't "own" anything, you just purchase a license for its use.
I'm old. Perhaps no one after me will appreciate my books, but they'll keep me company until the end. All things considered, they've probably been my best friends most of my life.
72
Every prediction, or even imaginative exploration, of "the death of the book" reveals an author whose aesthetic sense is compromised. No one, of course, who is lacking in finer taste understands the quality of the aesthetic experiences that inform those with better taste. But superior taste, like genuine love, isn't agitated by the need to defend itself. It knows what it knows, and knows it's hopeless to try to explain that knowledge to those who "don't get it."
6
I think in 20 years a whole LOT of the things we loved and depended on will be gone; books, snail mail, fish from the sea, privacy, even feigned democracy, etc.
Not a problem for me of course, because I won't be around either.
I'm not happy with the comfort that "I'll be dead", but it does bring some feeling of relief.
11
Interesting premise and an enjoyable read, but the heart of this saga is really the permanence of thought. Ancient philosophers and mathematicians were able to achieve a degree of immortality thanks not only to the content of their ideas: the written word gave them permanence, and perhaps without it their thoughts would be lost to us. The Pythagorean theorem would almost certainty have faded into obscurity if the standard for its survival had been mere storytelling poignancy. Where the criticality, permanence and integrity of information is the most critical, for example, in law or science, or in truly great literature, I do not think the written word is in any danger from more ethereal communication technologies.
10
There is still something to be said about the power of beautiful language expressing complex ideas. Language is more precise than any visual could be. Nor does stimulation of the senses provide everything that people need, although some may think it enough. And I doubt anyone will want to learn empathy by "experiencing" a slog through the sewers of Paris, or by throwing themselves under a train. There will no doubt be lots of people wanting to experience "up." But experiencing "down" is where empathy comes from.
So, you will all be less human for the loss of beautiful, meaningful language on a page or a screen. I say "you" because I happily will not be around to experience a bookless world.
7
Words only take us so far. They challenge the imagination to make the phrase, the image, the story come alive in the mind, originally for each reader. Making the story 'real', making it into experience, we lose that challenge, the creativity of reading. We're controlled by the VR author, who may give us decisions to make, but our options are determined, leaving the imagination little work to do. If there's no stopping the popularity of VR, it will narrow, not expand, the experience of the human imagination.
5
Why the all or nothing mentality. We can always have books, along with other, higher-tech communication. The beauty of a free society is to increase, not decrease, the number of available options (in everything.)
5
@Michael - Could not have put it better myself. There's a reason the movie is always worse than the book, and it's because movies or experiences or whatever trendy thing you come up with is interposing the experience of the author's language with some personal interpretation by the performer. Movie actor, experiential performer, all the same, and they all stand between the author's words and what they mean to me. The author of this piece doesn't get that. I want to see and imagine for myself what worlds the author has for me. The written word is not dead to me.
6
I love books and hope they will always be available. They must. Is there any substitute for sitting in front of a fireplace on a cold winter day reading a great novel? (Cue - cup of hot chocolate.) A good author can take your mind to a whole new world that is a collaberative experience - a kind of virtual reality created inside our own minds at no cost. Reading the printed word is a unique human experience that technology will not ever be able to duplicate. Children should read books in addition to any kind of virtual reality medium. I also agree with Michael in Toronto that reading strongly stimulates the human creative process and strengthens our intellectual capacity because it is not pre-fabricated.
2
There is a lot less of certain kinds of books but in other areas like fiction there has never been more. Things change and I suspect that people will enjoy e-readers and books in the future.
2
Ms. Harrow succeeds in provoking those of us haunting bookstores in our ghostly fashion. While it's true that I prefer paper over the screen, I read both. As long as serious careful reading endures I care little for the debate over whether paper of pixels are superior. Maryanne Wolf's studies of the reading brain, as elaborated in her books 'Proust and the Squid' and 'Reader Come Home: the reading brain in a digital world', indicate that it's reading that matters.
7
This argument has been going on for a while & I suspect that people will be writing about it (in books) long after I am gone & forgotten. Other readers have already pointed out the shifting lights and pesky shadows of an instantly re-editable Virtual world, what worries me is the assumption in what is supposed to be a "science fiction futurist piece" that future technology will be pleasant extensions of the present. Who now remembers 'My Space"? America On Line? Floppy disks? Zip disks?The books that my father passed on to my care are just as "accessible" in 2019 as -in one case- they were in 1506. I have the Lord knows how many bytes of letters and papers on media that might as well be on the moon in terms of my ability to read it. Yeah, I actually found a Zip Disk reader, but Microsoft stopped writing drivers for it twenty years ago...
9
Huh, 1439? Really? So by the time this piece is supposedly from we've discovered some reliable evidence about when Gutenberg first experimented with his press? Is it worse to imagine that we've moved on from paper books or worse to imagine that we're still relying on Wikipedia for information?
2
As I recall, the demise of printed books was predicted in 2000. Yet, here we are in almost 2020 and we’re still buying them and reading them.
9
As described this is a future that resembles the world BEFORE writing and printing. It is a world where anyone can create a shared experience. But this is what humans did millennia ago. The only difference being the size of the audience. Hunter-gatherers held an audience of perhaps a few dozen. Future "creators" will have an audience of thousands for the average bloke. It also describes a future where the common is elevated above the unique as the iceberg of culture stands on its head.
1
Ah remember what they said in the 1950’s when television first appeared, “Radio is dead it will disappear “, hmmmm, of course that will happen, maybe sometime, not in to past 70 years. Radio is now transmitted from satellites. Think of paper disappearing, replaced by recycled plastic. Fun article!
4
@B Wright and don't forget Video killed the Radio star
1
Harrow thinks it's "strange to mourn a format, particularly when the new format has made storytelling more accessible and widespread than ever before." However, if books were to disappear, it's not the format that we would mourn but the things this format has enabled. I don't see virtual reality exploring the nature of memory like Proust or the criminal mind like Dostoevsky or consciousness like Woolf or a whole region's socio-cultural beliefs like Faulkner and Garcia Marquez.
Harrow premises her argument on the ways new technologies can replace storytelling. While stories are essential to human lives, they're not the only things that are recorded in books. What of poetry and philosophy, of the ephemeral and the lyrical, the abstract and the intellectual?
Technology doesn't have as good place for these as does a book.
Because of the book's unique strengths, therefore, I don't believe it will vanish, Harrow's jeremiad notwithstanding.
I taught a 450 page novel by Wilkie Collins to my community college students this semester, most of them teens. Their enthusiasm was both surprising and heartening. And a sign that the book is not going anywhere soon, other than into a reader's hungry hands.
52
@Jim Love Wilkie Collins. Much of his work was of print for a very long time and given its date seems modern (and was considered scandalous in its day) given its date. "The Law and the Lady" is both early feminist lit, a heroine who wants to use science to investigate crime, and turns on a Scottish legal peculiarity that you can be found neither guilty nor innocent.
@Jim Ms. Harrow isn't making an argument, she is imaginining an op-ed written by someone else in the future—with the intention, I take it, of provoking us to defend books.
No, I don't want virtual "experiences." I want to read the passage about the Sorting Hat and imagine for myself what it looks and feels like. That's also why I largely forego movie adaptations of my favorite books: I've already imagined the characters, their voices and appearance, and everything else. Anything else is *someone else's* interpretation.
41
NYT:
I may be a dinosaur, but my passion for books goes beyond the ideas and stories they hold. I love holding books, sitting among my many thousands of friends that have been my fellow travelers throughout my life’s journey, and visiting with them again and again. I appreciate the spirit in which you tell of stories living on beyond 2039, but I am comforted by the knowledge that I am unlikely to see the world in which books have disappeared.
75
@Theodore M. Shaw
I cant stand the feel of paper on my fingers..... To me its gross. Oh, and I'm 39 and definitely remember HAVING to thumb thru ragged, raw paper. NOT FUN!
Sure, its there when the power goes out, but that's all it has going for it.
2
@Raymond
Well, it takes all kinds.
4
@Jerseytime,
So says The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
1
It's likely that we were already rife with stories as we came out of Africa and headed West. Yes, we tell, we recount, we enthrall and regale, repeating the most outstanding tales until they are canon. classics. We are not writers, however, we are not the great artists honing their craft, until we set the words just so and then have the courage to say: "Just like that! That's my story. Just exactly like that." Anyone can tell a story; few can forge great literature. I have no defense of what I say except the works that remain dear and momentous, which tower over other codifications of language.
8
I personally prefer books. If I had to rely on a device during the last power outage which lasted 10 days, I wouldn't have been able to get as much reading done.
31
I'll be long gone. As will most of the world's literature.
4
In an age in which electronic material can be deleted from digital libraries (publishers, etc) I want something much more permanent. I remember some years back when I had some digital music the publisher made some sort of change that ended my ownership through some sort of Digital Rights Management mechanism. Censorship will be so much more effective in a digital world as well. We already have governments trying to install trapdoor software into social media and how easy would it be to eliminate famous works if they were digital only and had codes to uniquely identify them to prying computers. Do you want unknown person or organisation remotely assembling a catalogue to your digital archives and reading habits. Books are also immensely practical for lounging around on holidays in remote areas lacking power.
63
I re-read Dickens periodically and own copies of all of his works, but my favorite copy of “Bleak House” was one I came upon on our local (small) public library. Printed in the early 1900’s the pages had high linen content and were soft, yet substantial. The cover was thick cardboard covered in leather with gold embossed title on the spine. The scent of the book was not musty, just pleasantly old. I hated to return it and the fact that I can remember the tactile experience of reading it now, many years later, proves that there is more to a book than the words printed inside. Bound books will never die.
131
@Darby Fleming
I inherited my mom's edition of Great Expectations. It is one of my most treasured possessions. It is hard to accept the thought that the experience of reading such a book page by page will disappear in the not too distant future. Although there are countless great pieces of literature in this world, the way Dickens unfolds the story with such masterful description and rich characters who come to life, it stands at the very top of my list of must have books. If I was ever homeless that book would be in my knapsack...
13
@Darby Fleming What a lovely description! Thank you.
9
What Alix Harrow's piece ignores is the power of language. People love stories, but they also love words. We are linguistic animals. Part of the delight of a told (or written) story comes from how it's told. This is not to mention poetry, in which the word's (much of) the thing, or the social cachet the good conversationalist accrues.
30
@Tess ,
Perhaps you have read Murdoch's 'Word Child', where Hilary is the narrator.
I remember a book about a man who went to sleep for periods of a hundred years or so, over around a thousand years- and , at one waking session, (around our time now), found that all humans had they're teeth surgically removed because-as the explanation went-the meat and food were so inferior or tough, that no human could posibly chew it. Rather than use a knife and fork-or cook it to some semblance of edibility, the Americans of the future had their =food pre masticated by mschines we now now as "blenders".
I always thought it a great lesson in the humility of authors nwho wish to project todays prejudices on tomorow's peoples. However-the one part of the prediction that came true was I found I could give my mother-all but toothless in her last years-whatever foods she desired without the hassle and worry of of insisting she wear her awful "
19th century" invented dentures.
Had she been a generation younger-I'd have had the orthodontists give her artificial teeth, where her molars were gone.
In too many allegedly advanced nations we give short shrift to dental hygeine and , then call dentistry and orthodontics a "cosmetic" not a medical treatment for people. American zoologists will spend hundreds of thousands to replace a canine in a tiger with gold, but humans may eat jelloed soup and mush.
If we survive as a race-I hope we do not repeat the errors of neglecting our teeth, again.
The future will be too strange to even begin to predict with a semblance of accuracy.
5
Our thoughts and inner dialogue are primarily via a language such as English. Writing records thoughts, and reading makes another's thoughts accessible to you. As long as we think via English, there will be stuff to read written in English.
4
Ha! The Verse with its nonexistent barriers to entry sounds like the glut of self-published Kindle fiction. People buy it, sure, but it runs no risk of displacing printed books, now or ever.
5
Books are forever. Gadgets? Here today, gone tomorrow.
103
I don't buy it; there will always be hardbound books and people who want to own them.
254
@sansacro Why are you so sure of this?
3
@sansacro
And blank books and people who want to record private thoughts in them.
6
@AnotherOldGuy
I am pretty sure of this too. However, an economic incentive to print and attempt to sell them may become ever more meager.
Hardcover, soft cover too: always there will be those who want a full collection of Maigret's unusual mysteries.
4
What medium will enable individuals to make a complex, subtle, and sustained argument -- or to comprehend one?
Look around: see what happens when no such medium or skillset exists.
60
imagine what a standardized test might look like in this dystopia. For right now, at least, the SAT & ACT are old-school. I like it that way.
2
Hopefully those racist tests will be gone by next year.
Some of us love books. I love the smell of a new book and the smell of an old one. I love the feel of the paper as I turn the pages. I love being able to stop and think about a passage; to leave my book on the couch and come back to it when I'm ready. I throw the poems of John Keats into my backpack and head to the local cemetery, where I can read without worrying about internet access. I love looking at my old books on the shelves and thinking, hmm, haven't read that one in a while, pulling it down and falling in love all over again. Luckily I have hundreds of books to keep me company when the bookstores are all gone, and the only technology I need to access them are my eyes and my brain.
170
In 1989, I attended the American Bookseller's Association's Annual Convention, held that year in Washington, D.C. The Tiananmen Square protests were unfolding on our hotel TV, the images seared into my memory. I also heard Isaac Asimov speak on the topic, The End of the Book during one of the convention's programs. He offered a futurists' argument on why the book could not possibly survive. He concluded his elegy for the book with an impassioned and hopeful description of something that might endure and outlast the book. He described an object that would be portable; it would need no power source but light, natural or artificial; would last for years if cared for, could easily be shared with others; could be mass-produced and sold cheaply. He then reached into the back pocket of his faded jeans and pulled out a dog-eared paperback book. He held it up and told us we were looking at the endpoint of technology, an invention that could never be improved upon, and that would never be replaced. Harrow's piece is fascinating and inventive, but I'm sticking with Asimov.
226
@Joseph Durepos ". . . I'm sticking with Asimov." Always. Great man, great mind. Excuse me, I need dig into my books to read the "Foundation" trilogy again.
20
@Joseph Durepos And you can still read it when you can't get WiFi!
14
@Joseph Durepos Great comment, Joseph! My city of Santa Rosa, not far from the recent Kincaid fire, was without power for almost a week, a preventative measure since our PGandE grids are aging and woefully risky. No WIFI, no TV, but I had my books. I read two wonderful works of fiction - by flashlight - when it got dark, and I loved every minute of it. Indeed, the book is "an invention that could never be improved upon..."
14
First to the author's suggestion, that "books" are without impact anymore and can simply disappear, I can attest to the opposite.. because I'm the author of a book that was essentially suppressed and made to disappear (for political/legal reasons). It even cost someone dollars to make that happen!
Secondly, notwithstanding some (glibly worded) truths in this essay, it's essentially illiterate. Proof is in this quote: "Stories are shape-shifters, infinite and immortal: They’ve been painted on the walls of Chauvet Cave..." .. which demonstrates (to me) that the author may not appreciate core media intersections, between fixed discourse, the imagination, and the matrix of circulation. A fictional story on paper is an artifact, not a "sensory event in the history of telling a private truth." A prose story (about historical people, or about a problems of life) is not a stone-age dreamscape. It's a point of reference in the evolution of knowledge; it doesn't get shape-shifted; it gets tested in the battle for being wise.
11
I agree that stories, not books, are our greatest treasure. But my love of books has always been twofold: for the stories and for the books themselves. I do, in fact, love paper and ink, bindings and covers, too. You can call me and my kind anachronistic but you can't say books weren't what we loved. Really, I did love books. I still do.
29
I fear that not only is the book dead, but reading, whether on e readers, print, or paper books. Smart phones continually destroy the capacity for the human mind to attend to a topic/task for more than 10 seconds or so. Whenever I see a young person on a train reading a book, I compliment them for their anachronistic behavior. They always laughs and lament the fact that books are rarely read these days. Even a newspaper such as this. When I see someone 'reading' the NY Times on their phone I have to ask 'how many individuals have actually read an entire article on their devices'? Very few, I would surmise. Attention concentration skills are becoming a lost art and that is a danger to a society far greater than simply the loss of the capacity to enjoy a narrative on a book or device.
17
I am actually much more likely to finish an article on my phone than when I have to hunt for the rest of it by flipping extremely large unwieldy pages aka a physical newspaper. Much harder than scrolling down and skimming to the end. And If I get interrupted then my phone brings me right back to the spot where I left off.
But when I want to retain what I read, reading physical copies are better. It’s a different experience interacting with the printed page. There is room for both ebooks and physical books in my life.
3
@boji3 "Smart phones continually destroy the capacity for the human mind to attend to a topic/task for more than 10 seconds or so."
I beg to differ. I (and surely I am not alone in this) make use of the electronic medium to avoid becoming that most annoying of modern pedestrians, the 'cell phone zombie' - by using my phone together with an audio-book or podcast to listen to whilst commuting on foot to work.
1
"I fail to see how telling stories with smell and touch, with petrichor and heat and the shadows of leaves on pavement, is inherently inferior to telling them with words."
Unfortunately, the fact that you fail to see it does not mean that it is not true.
48
Well, book sales may or may not fade in the near future, but like many things - including LP records and turtleneck sweaters- former trends often will make a retro comeback (perhaps in an updated version tbd). It seems that future generations always seem to discover (or is it "rediscover") past fashion items, TV shows, decor (do Lava Lamps and disco balls qualify?). For that reason alone I would not be in too much of a hurry to write the obit for the printed newspaper. Frankly, I would not be surprised to see polyester double knit suits for men return. Well, I hope to be long dead before then...if hip hop music does not kill me first. One of us has to go (yes, I stole that line from Wilde. So?).
4
And when the electricity goes out permanently after an inevitable catastrophe won't people look around and find ... nothing? I believe the world will rue the day it migrated, step by step by step, into immateriality.
148
@Anthony Electricity is and will continue to be the lifeblood of modern humans, and as such its production will be protected from destruction. After all, without electricity you can’t run the presses to print books and make them widely available. Sure, you could have small runs of hand-crafted books. But their scarcity would drive up their prices to the point where only the very wealthy could afford to buy them.
2
@Anthony
Bingo.
After the climate catastrophe collapses civilisation (before 2039) you will find that paper reigns supreme again.
5
To all and sundry: reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
Sincerely,
The Printed Word
408
@dej1939 Anyone remember Burgess Meridith in the Twilight Zone where he only wanted to read. Then a bomb destroyed everything and he had time, no disruptions, etc. As he sat down to read, he broke his glasses. Even as a child, I could so identify with that.
23
@dej1939 The sales of e-books peaked about 10 years ago and have been flat ever since. Meanwhile independent book shops are flourishing, and even on Amazon most secondhand printed books are far cheaper than the kindle version, which AFAIC only a zombie would prefer over the real thing.
16
@dej1939
A newspaper (yes, newspaper) story from 2050:
The Verse ended its bankruptcy reorganization yesterday, emerging a shell of its former self. "It's part of the backlash against the internet, a hunger for life that isn't connected to a network that governments and corporations can monitor," said Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books. Only 25 years ago, it was common to see subway passengers and coffee shop customers staring at screens; since the eye cancer scare of 2040, everyone carries around the latest New Yorker, Atlantic, or Paris Review (and oh yeah, the New York Times). The papers and magazines are of course later dumped in non-polluting solar powered energy generators which have solved climate change.
Storytelling with smells and illusions seemed cool for a while, but the experience was a passive one that left most people craving the reading experience. Curling up with a book, turning the words into ideas and images in our individual minds, may turn out to be a permanent human desire, like live theater.
9
The scenario seems extremely unlikely and, should it come to pass, highly undesirable.
One. Books tell stories, yes, but many kinds of books offer much more: they analyze the stories people tell. How can a virtual "experience" do that? Books of philosophy, history, criticism and literary art tell complex stories but also require the reader to engage in thinking - how is a virtual experience that inundates one in sensory input going to activate the critical faculties? And without an informed citizenry with the ability to question authority how are we going to sustain democracy? (see any day's news stories).
Two. I am fascinated with what will happen when virtual reality meets the physical realities of the climate emergency? I suspect that virtual reality will disappear as everyone struggles for survival in the real world.
82
Recently I re-read a little-known book that had thrilled me at the age of twelve or so: "Mists of Dawn" by Chad Oliver, the story of a teenage boy who goes back to the Ice Age in his uncle's time-space machine, makes friends with a Cro-Magnon family, fights Neanderthals alongside a Cro-Magnon friend of his own age and with the help of a loyal wolf-dog--and suddenly, I was twelve again, living that adventure of the imagination. Sure, it's a corny book, a book for boys, and its anthropology is outdated: the Neanderthals are monstrous "half-men," and the very term Cro-Magnon is now passé. Still, that printed-word adventure played itself as vividly in my mind as if I were seeing it on Netflix. Since most of my reading nowadays is online and for professional purposes, it was the first book I had read merely for pleasure in many years. But . . .what magic! What a theater of the mind! That kind of experience will never be duplicated by any other form of technology. For make no mistake: books are themselves "experiential" in a way that no other "experience" is. Anything else that comes along will be different, sure--but not better, just different, just as hearing Homer recited by bards, as he was in pre-literate Greece, was, we may be sure, just as magical for that audience as reading Homer in a book can be for us-- different, yes, and maybe--who knows?--even more thrilling for them than even the best of books can be for us.
18
Virtual reality and its fictions and non-fictions will one day supersede books, films; humanity by technological and narrative advancement, sophistication, will devise a multitude of immersive experiences and society will leap forward?
I find this difficult to believe. It's not so much the capacity for technological and narrative advancement I doubt, the imagination of humanity, but its tremendous fear and suspicion of the imagination, both dreams and nightmares, and its evident distrust of the difficult and actual lines of development both in evolutionary and historical-cultural sense the human race has taken, all we have left behind in the name of progress.
For all of human progress, books, internet, art, film, social media, etc. the emphasis appears to be on the creation of a sterile, predictable, safe socio-political environment, this the official non-fiction reality, and if dreams and nightmares are to intrude, the various fictions, they must be strictly policed to preserve the stability of society.
And this is obvious when we reflect on the grim politics of the day, to "overcome humanity's problems", and all the grappling with the fake news, deceptions, propaganda, narrow agendas, gossip, rumor, and conspiracy theory on the internet. There is a profound suspicion of the range of capacity of human dreams and nightmares, not to mention the effect of such on reality.
Really, a greater choice in dreams, nightmares, realities that we can have awaits us?
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The end of the printed book is near or in fact has arrived. I like to read five or six books on my computer, shifting from one to the other on my 50 inch screen. But this fictional narrative, excellent by the way, suggests the texts themselves, paper or electronic will be replaced by neural implants that create virtual realities where books are "experienced" rather than just read.
No doubt about it, sometime in this century virtual reality and the killer app, a neural implant will transmogrify the human brain turning everyone into cyborgs with what should approximate native superintelligence. So everyone will be able to converse in any number of languages, understand string theory and post doctoral level literary theory. Everyone will have instantaneous access to all the information stored in the public domain. Being human will be something else entirely and mere books will be from a distant age. I believe it. It is going to happen
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@Yankelnevich — I thank god I am too old to live to see that, if it happens.
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