There's a Dewey Decimal-numbered app for that!

[captainsblog]

Interesting article in Slate last week (which I got to today courtesy of baseballchica03) about the perhaps unintended consequences of our rapid trending towards Kindles and Nooks and other such books, and away from the paper and ink that have brought us so far as a well-read people. It's not just the tactile nature of the printed page that is being lost (from what I've seen of at least the Kindle version, they've kept much of that functionality, if not the appeal to bookworms of the literal kind). Rather, it's their role as a printed piece of common ground between two people that may now be going by the wayside:

Remember when you could tell a lot about a guy by what cassette tapes—Journey or the Smiths?—littered the floor of his used station wagon? No more, because now the music of our lives is stored on MP3 players and iPhones. Our important papers live on hard drives or in the computing cloud, and DVDs are becoming obsolete, as we stream movies on demand. One by one, the meaningful artifacts that we used to scatter about our apartments and cars, disclosing our habits to any visitor, are vanishing from sight.

Nowhere is this problem more apparent, and more serious, than in the imperilment of the Public Book—the book that people identify us by because they can glimpse it on our bookshelves, or on a coffee table, or in our hands. As the Kindle and Nook march on, people's reading choices will increasingly be hidden from view. We'll go into people's houses or squeeze next to them on the subway, and we'll no longer be able to know them, or judge them, or love them, or reject them, based on the books they carry.

Books were certainly one of the things that brought, and keep, all of us together in this home. We learned a lot about each other by what we came to the marriage with, in terms of both memories and actual holdings, especially the relative few we each brought in a copy of (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, racist Oompa-Loompas and all, is the one that comes to mind). And when one of us passes on a newly-found or long-loved tome to the other spouse or to the child- more than occasionally making its way through all three of us- it truly resonates as something special.  Missing out on the visual cues of the cover, the dust jacket, the "oooh! what's THAT?!?" will be felt even here, and I agree with the writer that it'll be even harder to get to know what your lover loves when it's hidden away on the obverse of a blank "back page."

In time, I suspect, both the hardware and software ends of things will compensate for this.  You can see the same sort of trend looking back at how early cell phones (especially the "flip" kind) evolved from no outer display, to a rudimentary display of the caller's number, to, now, semi-full displays on the outside of what lies within.  It wouldn't take much extra programming or display hardware to make the outside of a Kindle the same as the outside of a hardcover, providing those tactile clues to the friend, the relative, especially the would-be soulmate.

Trouble is, once you start, you set things up for all kind of shenanigans- of the kind the National Lampoon crowd made fun of, 30-odd years ago, in showing the type of high-brow literary accroutrements seen, then and probably now, in the Sunday supplement of the masses which they parodied as Pomade magazine:



At least we know that the iPad would never allow something as immoral as that. In time, though, people would start carrel-breaking their readers and it'll be a subway car full of fresh hell.

Comments

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Yeah, the very first thing I would do in anyone's house was to look at the bookcases. (Or note, hautilly, that there were none).

Do those things hav e indexes or content lists? Perhaps someday a first step in flirting would be to have your devices swap inventories.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I think before it comes to that, we had really better rename the device for such purposes, which is generally referred to these days as a "dongle."

At least until after the wedding.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

One of the delightful discoveries when the Unindicted Co-Conspirator and I merged libraries was how little we had in common. Not including dictionaries and thesauri, I believe the only overlaps were Strunk & White's Elements of Style ("Write tight!"), and Tolkien's trilogy.

I, for one, welcome our new electronic overlords. First: Ever try to find something in a paper book? I know I read it somewhere in here... Ever try to find something in a series? (Where was it that Maturin said "You have debauched my sloth!"?) Electronic means searchable!

Second, I am somewhere between a clutterer and a hoarder, and it's getting worse. My bibliophilia is composed of the least attractive aspects of methamphetamine addiction and miserliness. I've got a box of books on the front porch that I absolutely positively loath and want to throw away or dump in a book collection box. Want to know how long they've been there? Don't ask! At least the books on my iPad are all in one small place.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Amen, sir, amen. While I'm concerned about my ability to open my electronic content fifty years from now, searchability and electronic storage space mean I can fight clutter a lot better.

But then, I'm a science librarian so of course I prefer this. Historians cringe at people like me. I didn't become a librarian for books, the way many people do. I like books... but I just want the information in a handy package.

They still need to solve the problem that a book is easier to salvage when dropped in a puddle, though....

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Now, see, I would bemoan the loss of shelves and shelves full of books in the house of someone I visit, because it's awfully hard to peruse a Kindle and/or grab something to read when I'm staying overnight unexpectedly. But I feel that a lot of the complaining about the loss of the "public book" is being done by people who subscribe to the Great Book Edges school - they are upset that other people cannot see what highbrow fare they're reading on the subway and be suitably impressed.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking e-books ought to have a "flirt" function, where they exchange catalogs; the modern equivalent to browsing someone else's bookshelves.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Okay, that would be AMAZING.