BOOKED SOLID :

The end of the book? : The rise of interactive multimedia technology is widely regarded as the death knell of the printed word, although some charge that interactive multimedia are "a solution in search of a problem"--they do everything that books do, only more expensively. There are good reasons why this "revolution" will not happen, and good reasons why it shouldn't. (D. T. Max, May 31, 2002, Jewish World Review)

When I had first called Wired's co-founder, Louis Rossetto, in the summer of 1993, I got through to him immediately, and he had, if anything, too much time to speculate about the shape of things to come. Several months later I had to go through a secretary and a publicist for my interview, and once I arrived, I was made to wait while more-urgent calls were put through. What happened in the interim is that the information highway became a hot subject. Rossetto was now every media journalist's and Hollywood agent's first call.

What I wanted from Louis Rossetto was his opinion on whether the rise of the computer culture that his magazine covered would end with the elimination by CD-ROMS and networked computer databases of the hardcover, the paperback, and the world of libraries and literate culture that had grown up alongside them. Was print on its way out? And if it was, what would happen to the publishers who had for generations put out books, and to the writers who had written them? Or was there something special about the book that would ensure that no technical innovation could ever supplant it? Would the book resist the CD-ROM and the Internet just as it has resisted radio, television, and the movies?

Twenty years ago, when his book, Megatrends, came out, I saw an interview with John Naisbitt. He was asked whether he thought computers would replace books and newspapers. His response was that while computers could reproduce the text, they could not reproduce the tactile sensation and the comforting rituals, like reading your newspaper at the breakfast table. That seems intuitively correct.

But a couple years ago they had a fascinating exhibit at our local library. It showed these computer displays that essentially duplicate paper. They're thin films that will hopefully one day feel feel like paper to the touch and will eventually have a kind of passive display that will be lit by available light, just like any page of a book or newspaper that you are reading. Of course, the great advantage is that with a little bit of memory connected, your one or several pages would allow you access to an unlimited amount of reading material.

Would these developments mark the end of the book? Only, in a strictly literal sense; in fact, we'd be making technology fit our desire for the traditional and the familiar. That was actually one of Mr. Naisbitt's trends :

From technology being forced into use, to technology being pulled into use where it is appealing to people.

Maybe he was on to something, eh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 4, 2002 7:29 AM