{"id":1694,"date":"2009-11-02T08:59:20","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T12:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2009-11-02T11:05:06","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T15:05:06","slug":"is-the-printed-book-nearing-end-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/11\/02\/is-the-printed-book-nearing-end-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the printed book nearing end-of-life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terry Teachout<\/a> considers the wonders of the printed book and contemplates its looming obsolescence:<\/p>\n

\n

Regular readers of this blog know that I believe the printed book to be well on its way to ultimate extinction. As I put it in a “Sightings” column written in 2006, a year before the introduction of the Kindle:<\/p>\n

The printed book is a beautiful object, “elegant” in both the aesthetic and mathematical senses of the word, and its invention was a pivotal moment in the history of Western culture. But it is also a technology — a means, not an end. Like all technologies, it has a finite lifespan, and its time is almost up.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the other hand, I have yet to buy a Kindle, and at the moment I have no plans to do so. This is partly because I prefer to wait until the kinks are ironed out (I’ve never been a truly<\/em> early adopter) and partly because, like most middle-aged authors, I remain enamored of the sheer physicality of the old-fashioned printed book.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

So am I really a closet Luddite, a technological Moses who can’t bring himself to enter the promised land of the e-book? Maybe. Six years ago I declared myself<\/em> to be “open, at least in theory, to the possibility of abandoning the book-as-art-object.” Now that technology has finally caught up with me, I find myself unexpectedly unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Yet I believe no less firmly than ever that the printed book is a technology whose time has come and gone. Am I, then, a hypocrite? Or merely a middle-aged man who, like most middle-aged men, is reluctant to put aside the youthful things that remind me of myself when young?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I find myself in the same position as Terry . . . I’m not a leading edge early adopter, but I’ve been eager to “get to the future faster” for most of my life. I still remember Usenet when it was “the internet” as far as most people were concerned. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t consider my email far more important and urgent than “snail mail”, and I was a fan of “telecommuting” back when 2400 baud was “high speed”.<\/p>\n

And yet . . . I don’t want to give up the book. I just got back from a book-buying spree in Stratford over the weekend, and don’t plan on buying a Kindle any time soon. I’ve got ebooks on my iPhone, but I consider them “emergency” reading material . . . when I don’t have a physical book to hand.<\/p>\n

Am I also a luddite?<\/p>\n

\n

I hasten to point out that I no longer own any long-playing records or cassettes, and that I spend more time listening to music on my MacBook and iPod than on my CD player. No doubt the time will also come when I spend more time reading books on a Kindle, or something like it, than reading the handsomely bound volumes shelved in my living room. Not for me the self-conscious posturing of those curmudgeonly poseurs who wail Change and decay in all around I see!<\/em> at every opportunity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I had largely gotten out of the habit of listening to music until I got my iPhone last year. Since then, I’ve bought more CDs and MP3s than in the ten years before. I’ve still got a few vinyl LPs and a large collection of cassettes, but they’re just gathering dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Teachout considers the wonders of the printed book and contemplates its looming obsolescence: Regular readers of this blog know that I believe the printed book to be well on its way to ultimate extinction. As I put it in a “Sightings” column written in 2006, a year before the introduction of the Kindle: The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,15],"tags":[59,27],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-technology","tag-addiction","tag-iphone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-rk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}