Are Books Replaceable?

A book is “a means of transportation through the space of experience, at the speed of a turning page,” the poet Joseph Brodsky once said. “But now that the rustle of the book’s turning page competes with the flicker of the screen’s twitching pixel, we must consider the possibility that the book may not be around much longer,” writes Christine Rosen at the New Atlantis . “If it isn’t—if we choose to replace the book—what will become of reading and the print culture it fostered?” Rosen continues:

We have already taken the first steps on our journey to a new form of literacy—”digital literacy.” . . .

Enthusiasts and self-appointed experts assure us that this new digital literacy represents an advance for mankind; the book is evolving, progressing, improving, they argue, and every improvement demands an uneasy period of adjustment. Sophisticated forms of collaborative “information foraging” will replace solitary deep reading; the connected screen will replace the disconnected book. Perhaps, eons from now, our love affair with the printed word will be remembered as but a brief episode in our cultural maturation, and the book as a once-beloved technology we’ve outgrown.

Read the rest of this fine essay here .