As far back as you look in human history it can be said that there is some form of writing, whether it is drawings on cave walls or when the first alphabet was actually created. The idea of writing has never really changed, it is used to write down stories and facts and arguments. The materiality of writing on the other hand has had quite the evolution from its early stages. I’m sure that by now you have noticed that you are not reading this paper on a cave wall, so how did we get to this, and why, and where will we go from here. Well There are many historians that can sit down and tell you how writing as we know it came to be, through papyrus, codex and book to where we are now. However what we do not know is where we are going and if this evolution will continue. Right now we are at a crossroads when it comes to writing, we have the printed book, which has been present for quite some time and has dictated the textual word, but at the same time we as a society are starting to explore the new possibilities that writing on the Internet and the computer can offer. Both sides have unique benefits that the other really cannot offer. So truthfully when it comes to the question of where is writing at now, and where is it headed? The best I can do is shrug my shoulders and say “merh”. We are currently at a stand still between the two forms of writing and there’s a possibility that either side could prevail. So we are faced with the decision of whether or not to keep a method that has worked for us for centuries, or to embrace a new method that is still just emerging as a writing tool. To figure out what we should do, we have to first realize what the advantages of both are.
First let’s start with the advantages that exist in printed text. According to Jay David Bolter “for most of us today, the printed book remains the embodiment of text” (Bolter) and he is right, if I talk about a novel most people would get the image of a book in there heads. The printed text still has a hold on our minds; it is what writing should be for most of us. The majority of people learned how to read out of a textbook or some form of printed text. Because of this, these people will most likely regard the printed book as the primary form of writing, because to those people it is first and it was in much more abundance. There is nothing wrong with the printed book, and because of this and our comfort with it, it is going to make it even harder for us to change from this form of writing. Perhaps the number one thing that the printed book has going for it is that it was first, before the electronic book and the Internet. Seeing as the printed book has always worked, there is no immediate need to fix it. So not only is the new form of writing that replaces going to have to improve on it, but it is going to have to improve on it so much that we are willing to take the chance to switch from the one form of writing to the other.
The second thing that gives the printed book an advantage is its tangibility. Even Alex Breen in a blog post saying that he became a computer geek admits “I still feel attached to both the physicality and literary structure of a real novel” (Breen). There is something about the feel of a book that captivates people; they are drawn to the touch of the pages, and the ability to turn each individual page as they continue to read. I personally find a comfort in the smell of a new book, and that sent helps me to get lost in the words as the jump off of the pages at me. These are things that electronic books cannot have. EBooks can never imitate the smell or feel of a book, they may be programmed to look like a book and seemingly turn pages the same way a book would, but anyone who has read a book and then used an eBook reading device can tell you that it is not the same thing. Somewhere in the worn down torn up pages of an old book there is a sense of home, and a connection made with everyone else who has read that book before you. An eBook cannot offer that, you cannot see the finger marks on an eBook that you can find on every page of an old book. Printed books become more than just text, they are things that seem to hold not just the story written on it’s pages but also the stories of everyone who has read the book, and new books give you the ability to put your own story on it.
The eBook on the other hand offers us a range of new abilities with the accompaniment of the Internet. One of these abilities is convenience. With printed books you have to go to a book store to buy the book you want, and once you are there you have to find the book somewhere on the multitude of shelves that fill the store. This problem is eliminated with most eBook readers. Most eBook readers allow you to purchase the book you want from just about anywhere with Internet service. And beyond that you do not have to look through dozens of shelves to find the book you want. Instead you can just type in the title or author into a search bar and the book that you are looking for should come up in a matter of seconds, there for your reading. The convenience of eBooks is a vast improvement over the process of buying printed books, and it also gives you other options in shopping for the book. In most eBook stores you can pull up comments on a book in seconds. This allows you to see what other people think of the book before you actually purchase it so that you can see if it is worth your money, or if it is really what you are looking for.
The Convenience of the eBook doesn’t stop there however. Using computers and the Internet we can amass a library of thousands of books in a space no larger than your hand. Humans have always tried to organize all of their knowledge and information in one place, it’s this desire that lead to the creation of libraries and encyclopedia. In the form of these computers and trough the Internet we are given another option for gathering all of our information under one roof, so to say. The Internet offers us an ability that has not been truly available, and that is the idea to store all of our books, writings, and teachings in one place for anyone to access. As Bolter says “as full texts become available online, we see the urge to create a ‘universal’ database”(Bolter 93). This quote is saying that because all of these texts and writings are appearing online anyway, we see the opportunity to organize them in one place for everyone to access. This has never been attainable because of the massive amounts of writings and texts. It would take an enormous building to house all of these books, to a point where it would be pointless to even try to get all of these texts in one place. The second reason you would not be able to do this with printed books is because they would all have to be in one location. So say this grand library was in New York, even someone from Boston would have to travel some two hundred miles to use these books, and someone in china would have to travel to the other side of the globe. Using computers and the Internet all of these books could be compressed into one building of memory and using the Internet anyone could access these books from there own computer or eBook reader from all over the world. The eBook and electronic writing gives us large advancements when it comes to the ability to obtain materials as well as the ability to store materials.
Both of these two options provide something different than the other. In the eBook there is an ability to amass great amounts of information to be accessed my the masses, however to get that you have to give up the comfort and the home-like feeling that people get from printed books. So even examining both sides of this evolution of writing we are still faced with an extremely difficult decision. However the solution may be much easier than we realize. Earlier in this piece I referred to this dilemma of electronic writing versus print writing as being in a state of what I call merh. However perhaps this state is better than we think. In the stand still that we are currently in we get the best of both worlds. Using the Internet and computers we can still distribute writing easily and quickly to the masses. However by keeping printed books as well we create a standard that writers want to meet, to be able to have people by the book in print and receive that home-like feeling of it. I believe that we will not sacrifice the comfort that comes with printed books, because in them we find a tangible escape. At the same time I believe that we will continue to explore what the Internet and electronic writing has to offer because we are always looking to improve upon what we have. So if you ask me what the materiality of writing is now and what it will be, I believe that it is “merh” and I think that it will remain in that state for a long time to come.
Bibliography
Bolter, Jay D. Second Edition ed. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Print.
"Response to Bolter." Breenbrain. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://breenbrain.blogspot.com/2011/03/response-to-bolter.html>.
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