Page 15 - 4188

13

5. "The future is digital." True enough, but misleading. In 10, 20,
or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly
digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean
that printed material will cease to be important. Research in the

relatively new discipline of book history has demonstrated that new
modes of communication do not displace old ones, at least not in the
short run. Manuscript publishing actually expanded after Gutenberg and

continued to thrive for the next three centuries. Radio did not destroy the
newspaper; television did not kill radio; and the Internet did not make
TV extinct. In each case, the information environment became richer
and more complex. That is what we are experiencing in this crucial

phase of transition to a dominantly digital ecology.
I mention these misconceptions because I think they stand in the
way of understanding shifts in the information environment. They make

the changes appear too dramatic. They present things ahistorically and in
sharp contrasts—before and after, either/or, black and white. A more
nuanced view would reject the common notion that old books and e-

books occupy opposite and antagonistic extremes on a technological
spectrum. Old books and e-books should be thought of as allies, not
enemies. To illustrate this argument, I would like to make some brief

observations about the book trade, reading, and writing.
Last year the sale of e-books (digitized texts designed for hand-
held readers) doubled, accounting for 10 percent of sales in the trade-
book market. This year they are expected to reach 15 or even 20 percent.

But there are indications that the sale of printed books has increased at
the same time. The enthusiasm for e-books may have stimulated reading
in general, and the market as a whole seems to be expanding. New book

machines, which operate like ATM's, have reinforced this tendency. A
customer enters a bookstore and orders a digitized text from a computer.
The text is downloaded in the book machine, printed, and delivered as a
paperback within four minutes. This version of print-on-demand shows

how the old-fashioned printed codex can gain new life with the adaption
of electronic technology.
Many of us worry about a decline in deep, reflective, cover-to-

cover reading. We deplore the shift to blogs, snippets, and tweets. In the
case of research, we might concede that word searches have advantages,
but we refuse to believe that they can lead to the kind of understanding

that comes with the continuous study of an entire book. Is it true,
however, that deep reading has declined, or even that it always