The inevitable end of printed media

Dad is a librarian and a poet laureate. He use to talk to Arthur Miller. I grew up in a house filled with books. Instead of taking me to the playground, we use to go hunting at used bookstores for rare editions. We still exchange printed material during Christmas and all the males in our family have the same reaction when getting a book.

We smell them.

Theres something very warm and very relaxing about the smell of an old book. Theres a certain tactile quality to having another physical or sensory input, not just holding something in your hand and feeling the paper stock. You find things like errors that exist in one printing but not the next or how certain ones have improper inking in them. Or autographs or tip-in plates or you-name-it. I have books signed by Zahn, Scott Card, Matheson...

These are not things digital media can replicate. You turn a kindle off - the information evaporates into the ether. I close a book and it still exists.

I don't think printed media is going away. Theres going to be a VERY vocal, very small group of people who aren't going to let it die and its going to become a very profitable niche market. Same for CDs - I absolutely refuse to buy downloadable media for anything aside from maybe the occasional pop tune. But Leonard Bernstein? In a 128 AAC file? Fuck that. Even if they put it out in some lossless format I don't want it; a harddrive crashes. I don't lose a book or a CD. I have collections of things on my shelf that likely won't ever be printed in that format again.

The digital age will lower costs and make stuff enviromentally friendly - but will also drive up secondary market values, prevent people from finding proper editions, make editing exisiting copies to be more PC infinitely easier.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by DieSeLFueLeD

I guess one could call the idea of purchasing a thing once (in this case a book) and the ability to keep it forever "romantic" (especially if you've got a disposable income). I would call it frugality, especially in an age with DRM and the "leasing" of books.

More than that - there is a historical need for printed media. This is not something that can be overemphasized.

Digital media is iffy at best. Movie directors will re-edit scenes or digitally touch-up effects. DRM on books means that after X amount of time, you no longer have that information for your own use. Music people now use digital touch-up techniques to prevent off-pitched sounds.

The great thing about books - and analog as a whole, really - is that they're a measuring stick for their point in time. People are dumb enough to think that Orwell's 1984 is some overarching criticism of all forms of government - but what it is is a criticism from Orwell's time of writing the book. But the digital age allows you to now go in and re-edit that book, make it what the author didn't want. Other times, if the writer is still alive, he can go back in and re-edit the book and make a new edition. Which edition would you want more? The original, the new one by the author or the one that was edited by someone trying to be politically correct or (current) historically factual or whatever?

And which one is more Orwellian? The book 1984 - or the fact that digital print allows this form of Newspeak so easily?

No, the digital age is just bad news as a whole. It has its place as something fun and small like Internet Forums but the idea that important literary works for the future of a literate race are going to survive on it is just plain silly. Its going to become harder to record history because now anyone can join in - theres no accrediting people posting stuff on CNN blogs or Wikipedias, so if 50 really diligent people decide that HEY GHANDI WAS A FAGGOT, they can really make it a tough time for people who are looking for the facts.

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