For as long as I can remember, books have been an important element in my life. The hours of reading and re-reading both the volumes in my own personal library and ones borrowed from friends and from public libraries have brought me a great deal of joy. Where else could I learn about early twentieth century France, the philosophy of Gurdjieff? Where else could I take a guided trip through Patagonia or to a distant star? On television? Hardly.
To be honest, I become visibly nervous when companies such as Apple Computers and Kodak join forces to transfer books to the computer screen and make these books interactive. I become queasy when the self-proclaimed heralds zestfully seize this technological triumph and loudly trumpet the impending death of the age of books.
Of course the death of the book has been announced before. In the early 80s, the so-called "talking books" - cassette tapes of books read by various distinguished actors - appeared. While the market for them has grown, they have hardly put a dent in the book market.
This time around, the threat is far more powerful and far more pervasive than a simple audio cassette. It's multimedia computer software, specifically the CD-ROM. Briefly, CD-ROM stores data on and retrieves it from a simple compact disk which can hold massive amounts of information. However, the books on CD are not merely text. They contain pictures that move and change. There is sound, voice and music. Best of all, say the pundits, these computerized books allow true interaction between the software and the reader.
With this power being levelled at Gutenberg's legacy, you can see why a book lover such of myself has cause to worry. But will a stack of CDs replace a shelf full of books? I don't think they can. The car didn't kill off walking and cycling. And the computer will never kill off the book.
There's something undeniably comforting about the weight of a book in one's hand, of its feel and its smell. An intangible which psychologists could spend years trying to explain. A book is tangible. If you want to read it, you don't have to go through a tedious process of turning on the computer, loading a CD and typing the commands to start the program. You simply have to pick the book up. Besides, the books on shelves surrounding me as I write this article are physically more impressive than the collection of computer and compact disks on my desk.
As one who sits before a computer screen for five hours or more a day, I can tell you how tired your eyes become staring at the color or monochrome monitor for extended periods. Do you know how difficult it is to get comfortable sitting in front of a computer? You can curl up quickly and comfortably with a book. A computer, forget it.
The average price of a CD-ROM drive (the device that allows you to use multimedia software with your computer) is around $250. An individual CD title goes for about $25 and up. For the price of a CD-ROM drive and an application, I could buy fifteen or more new books and who knows how many more used one. Books, for now anyway, will be the cheapest and most efficient way to bring reading to the masses.
One of the biggest selling point of the new technology is something called hypertext. Hypertext allows you to jump to another part of the book you are reading by simply pointing the mouse and clicking. You don't have to scroll through page after page to get where you want to go. In the tradition of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children's books, you can decide how the story will unfold and how it will end. A hypertext Wuthering Heights could end with Heathcliffe and Cathy living happily ever after or Holmes being killed in his plunge with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls.
Proponents of hypertext claim that this technology frees the reader from the tyranny of the writer. The plot line is fluid and the events are malleable. Actually, this is only partially true. The action is still fixed and the plot choices are limited. The reader is still shackled, only the chains are now a bit longer.
Multimedia computer gear is touted as being able to bring reading and, hence, learning "alive". In the not-so-distant days of my childhood, I and others like me were able to do this without the aid of CD-ROM. We used a far-more advanced technology known as the human imagination. The words I read and the images those words conveyed took definite shape in my mind. The images I was able to conjure were far more vivid than those created with the most expensive Hollywood special effects. Believe it or not, imagination can be a vivid and powerful tool for use in education. Rather, it can be if imagination encouraged to develop. But like television, I fear multimedia technology will rob young people of the need or desire to use and develop their imaginations. Why bother performing feats of mental extrapolative gymnastics if someone else can do it for you?
I could be wrong.
In any case, I think there will always be hope for the book's survival regardless of the future's technological wizardry. On the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation the denizens of the twenty-fourth century appear to have all-but done away with books, opting to do their reading on small rectangular computer screens. But lead character Captain Picard is often seen toting or reading one leather-bound tome or another.
If the tomorrow without books ever comes, will the cyberpunks of that era trade in their personal computers and bulletin boards for desktop publishing rigs and diligently practice the alchemy of converting electronic pulses into printed text?
I hope so.