They're Freaking Me Out

So we've had an interesting series of conversations in my Technologies of the Book class, about the nature of technology, what is meant by "the book", where technology and the book will go next, etc. As you might expect in a room full of kids who have grown up with computers and iPods, there are some in the room who are all for digital formats and eliminating the printed book, if not altogether, then at least from general use. Others are purists who insist that an e-reader, no matter how good, will never replace a physical book.

I really would love to have a room
like this in my house. Source.

In this as in so many other things, I'm on the fence, with a stack of books at one hand and an e-reader in the other. I own somewhere around 400 books (probably closer to 500 or 600 if you count all the books that I've never retrieved from my parents' house), and nothing makes me happier than sitting down with one. I love the smell and texture of books. I like how it feels in my hands. I enjoy putting a literal bookmark at my literal page in a literal book. My friend Brandon likens them to trophies-- once read, a book sits on the shelf to proclaim its read-ness to all. That's a fair way of looking at it, but considering that I re-read my books until they are in pieces, I can't say that I treat them like trophies. (And further considering that I get many books from the library, most of the ones I've read are in someone else's trophy case.)

On the other hand, my 600 books could all fit onto an e-reader with room to spare for expansion, and the reader itself doesn't take up the amount of shelf space of a single one of my literal books. And quite frankly, it's the words themselves that I'm after, not the texture or smell. So I'm almost to the point of saying about the kind of book the same thing that I say about tortilla chips-- I don't care what kind of chip it is, as long as it delivers the salsa to my mouth.

Anyway, on to the freaked-out part. One of the young men of the "we don't need paper" persuasion (who I've nicknamed Walking Argument) was talking about the future of interface-- we'll all have chips implanted, and can access books or the internet or whatever with a literal blink of the eyes, so that the image is projected across the visual field. (I leaned to the girl next to me and said, "I hope we stop using cars before that happens." I mean, really-- we think texting and driving is bad! Imagine playing Mario Kart while driving!) The general consensus of the room was that none of us were going to volunteer for chipping, so Walking Argument said, "No one is going to volunteer. That's why we should just experiment on prisoners."

Ew. Ew ew ew ick ick ick. I get that to him this seems like a reasonable idea, but to me it's abhorrent. First of all, we don't incarcerate people because we need test subjects. That's a lot too much like a dystopia novel to me. And even more to the point, I seem to remember my high school history teacher telling us that the Nazis did a great deal of medical experimentation in the concentration camps. I do not, under any circumstances, want to start down a road that the Nazis thought was a good idea. No, no, no. So while having a computer in my brain may be the future, the future will have to wait until willing test subjects come forward. In the meantime, we have computers and e-readers and phones and actual books that are working just fine, thank you.

What kind of reader are you? Real book? E-book? Either one? Or are you in the "computer in the brain" camp?