The Sky Still Isn’t Falling
The appearance of Amazon’s new ebook reader, Kindle, has rekindled online debates about The End of Literature As We Know It and the probability that piracy will shortly reduce all writers to starving in garrets (if they’re not already doing so). One particularly strident member of one of my Internet discussion groups is predicting that all content will now be up for grabs to whomever wants it and that online content is merely another way to spell “screw the writer.”
And while some of these concerns are real and justified, the reality is that technology is at the helm these days. If it can be done, it will be done, and instead of complaining we’d all perhaps do best to adapt. The Navajo talk about being in harmony with one’s environment, including change in that environment; and the Darwininan notion of adaptation or extinction is very much relevant here. Reading is no longer confined to peering at words written on dead trees, and the faster we incorporate that notion into our thinking, the better we’ll all be able to weather some of the storms ahead.
For there will be storms. No birth occurs without pain, and in many ways we’re still enduring the pangs of the naiscent Technology Age. Computer use and the Internet have changed nearly everything about everything we do, and so it’s no small surprise that reading and writing are affected as well.
Many people still prefer to hold physical books in their hands. Many others happily read from laptop or ebook reader screens or even mobile devices. There’s no question of which is better, either from a quality or a moral standpoint; there’s simply a question of how we’re going to adapt.
In a recent New York Times articles entitled “Crossover Dreams,” Motoko Rich notes the number of books that appeared first online (either as blogs or in fact as serialized or full ebook offerings, all of them free) and that were later sold as print books, in some cases for very impressive advances. While they are not necessarily the norm, they do exist, one of many ways that new technologies and subsequent reader habits are changing the way books are published.
Will there be theft? Of course there will be: it’s apparently part of human nature to want something for nothing. Will those thefts overwhelm the system and destroy content creators? Of course they won’t: the majority of people do still pay for what they receive and will continue to do so, whether the format is traditional or electronic.
The sky isn’t falling yet. But it will for those who believe that they can control the way the world is moving. For the rest of us, keeping up is keeping us … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Books, Tools, Doing the Right Thing, About Writing, The Cutting Edge, Creativity, Technology, Reading on December 16th, 2007