There is reading and then there is reading a book. Books are essential. That statement holds true for me. I can’t really imagine my future without a good book, neither do I intend on getting rid of my books. Other objects that I have inadvertently amassed over the years will eventually find another home, otherwise a recycling bin. Books however, are not just simply objects. Books have content, they are an open world to a wealth of ideas and imagination and beyond that mere status of object, we have a media and a medium that is a wonderful technology.
Technology is perhaps not a word I would have pronounced in my youth to designate a book. This connection is a contemporary link which began to take on deeper meanings since the arrival of the computer. And with this label comes a responsibility to which modern day critics are willing to challenge. The responsibility to last. For, not so long ago, many were quick to rise and pronounce the counted days of the book. The book would be a thing of the past, a cultural dodo to be laid down in a museum as a relic of past inventions. Well, how wrong they were these so-called experts of ours who foresaw no further than the end of their noses.
“The book is like the spoon: Once invented, it cannot be bettered.”
Umberto’s words resonate throughout my thinking. Yet, in my career as a teacher, there was a clear period of time in which other teachers were pushing their students to explore the potential of digital media as a means to somehow surpass or augment the book. There was some sort of frenzy, like a mad search for that one project that would put the book to its grave. I even had close friends who were swearing by their new e-reader and taking their books to the Sunday car-boot sale. Others were content to simply read their morning news on their phones, huddled together in the tube, swiping through the night’s messages and affirming status with on-line international contacts.
There is reading and then there is reading a book. The activities are not the same. The digital has brought about many changes in how we read. The digital has also brought many opportunities to explore new ways of reading and it is here that we can find an interesting divide and one that we should accept as a divergence. The digital is something different and the quicker we begin to understand this as opposed to always wanting to imitate our world, then the better we will find a more acceptable place for our little computers.
I’m currently reading a brillant discussion between Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco. (currently was 2019) And yes, I’m reading this in a book entitled, This is Not The End Of The Book. As you can well guess from the title, there is a strong link with what I have just outlined and the contents of this wonderful exchange. The book was first published in 2009 which pinpoints a moment in our cultural history where the e-readers were starting to be talked about, the Internet was in full swing and the manner in which we were reading in general was bringing questions to the fore about how we access, read, assimilate, and eventually memorise (or not) this abundance of text.