Arguments for Hard Copy in a Virtualized World
Posted by on 03/04/2010
Listening to NPR on the way into work this morning—my usual habit—I heard Tina Brown’s book recommendations. I wasn’t all that interested until I heard her quote publisher, Jason Epstein, about his compelling arguments against total digitization of publishing.
Now, she had my attention. I love to read and not only that, but I love the smell, look, and feel of a book in my hands—no Kindle for me. My nightstand is overflowing with the ‘next’ reads. If the stack begins to shrink, I might panic. I say ‘might’ because it has never happened and so, I really don’t know.
I work with a lot of people younger than me, and I haven’t taken a poll on reading habits, but I would guess that for a goodly percentage, an all-digital publishing industry might not strike fear in them as it does in moi. That said, I have not had good arguments for my stance, if I chose to take one; hard copy is important in this digitized world. Thanks to Jason Epstein, I now have a very good one, and why I had never thought of it before is beyond me. Mr. Epstein points out that the “whole fragility of life online is such that . . . with one terrible sabotage thrust, you could wipe out the whole of our cultural civilization.” He has a very good point.
On Tuesday evening, I listened to the local news, reporting that our county library had gotten rid of its vinyl recordings (you know, albums and records). They listed several really important collections that a local music resale shop had bought for nearly nothing. I suppose one of their points in selling the recordings was that all the music is available online and that the records were taking up valuable space. I had a sinking feeling right in the pit of my stomach. The feeling was a preamble to the ‘what if’ that Jason Epstein posits.
What if suddenly there was no Internet. What if all that precious ‘stuff’ was no longer accessible, and we had no hard copy. Would we go back to the days of ‘word of mouth’ to keep our stories alive, and who would remember what had been lost? I realize that not everything stored online is precious. There are stories, ramblings, and photos, my own included, that I might wish to just go away, but what if the Library of Congress decided to go digital and keep no hard copies. Or what if, all libraries decided to get rid of hard copies of old books, recordings, and films in order to create more space. And, what if Murphy’s Law is as real as we’ve all found it to be and the worst does happen—suddenly the Internet is vandalized permanently and everything has to be rebuilt from scratch. Where do we begin without those hard copies? Sure, not everything valuable would be lost, but think if only ten percent of the world’s greatest literature, music, and films were completely gone. What part of our heritage would be totally irretrievable?
We are entering a world where even bookstore inventories could become virtualized instead of warehoused for delivery. The delivery would be a click of the mouse after the use of a credit card and then a download. I am in no way suggesting that we “say no” to the virtual world, but I am suggesting that we go there carefully and mindfully.
Thank you Jason Epstein, who I had never heard of before Tina Brown’s NPR five minute segment, for the argument for hard copy. Mr. Epstein had a second concern in his article, regarding the fragility of copyright and the impoverishment of writers, but I’ll leave that particular argument for another day.
I agree! I love reading on the computer. But the books…………well when you see them on the shelf, you know where to go with ease to find what your looking for. On the computer, sometimes the info is buried so that it takes a while to find it. It’s there. You have read about it, but under what heading???????