2000-07-20
HARK! THE HERALD
READING NOTEBOOK
The primacy of the book follows naturally from its form. It has a protective shell that keeps dust and sunlight off the fragile printed pages, allowing the words within to be legible for centuries. This primacy will disappear when the book becomes as evanescent as an image on a TV screen. Without its physical advantages, how long will the book's authority persist, and what, in turn--if anything--will take its place? Probably nothing, because nothing will ever again have the physical properties to do so. This absence will in turn change our mental lives. The codex was proof (some would say misleading evidence) that there were ideas that lasted, that deserved special respect. The invention of the e-book will push us to the reverse conclusion--that knowledge is in perpetual flux. It will make relativists of us all. Looked at in this way, the e-book may represent an unprecedented and even dangerous innovation. It is not merely the latest gizmo thrown off by the forces that, over the last twenty-five years, have been separating words from paper; word processors, electronic dictionaries, CD-ROMs, the Web. Unlike these, the e-book will knock a key strut out from under us all.
--D. T. Max, "The Electronic Book," The American Scholar, Summer 2000, p. 18
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