Role Reversal

For years, people predicted that paper would go extinct, but in all honesty, I do not think that day will ever come. It is human nature for us to want to assume that when some new technology comes into our existence, we should abandon an old one. Out with the old, in with the new as they say. What Alessandro Ludovico points out in The death of paper (which never happened) from his book Post-Digital Print is that we have been predicting the future of paper for years, especially against threats like the telegraph and audio. There will always be some threat to the printed medium with the rise of technology, but paper will always be around. At least that is what I think…

“And yet, despite its widespread use and incontestably tremendous potential, the hypertext has not yet succeeded in supplanting the ‘traditional’ text. The development of various ‘wiki’ platforms has dramatically expanded the hypertext’s possibilities for collective authorship and the compilation of resources. It’s clear that the hyperlink is now definitely embedded in our culture.” (pg. 28)

In this passage from the text, Ludovico describes hypertext as a new language. Hypertext allows for something paper can never be, he says. With the advent of this new language, we should not fear the extinction of paper but embrace the new possibilities that hypertext allows for, which is access to numerous material. On the contrary, what Ludovico says we should be aware of is the role reversal of the medium of paper and the medium of the Web. The Web has become more preferred over printed material in terms of archival purposes. The medium of print has become secondhand.

The Immortality of Books

William Gass proclaims, “We shall not understand what a book is, and why a book has the value many persons have, and is even less replaceable than a person, if we forget how important to it is its body, the building that has been built to hold its lines of language safely together through many adventures and a long time.” 

In the statement above from Gass' article In Defense of the Book, he makes his argument between print and digital becomes clear when he compares books to people. It is this statement and comparison that struck me the most when I read the article. While it is true that people come and go, books, along with the content within them, remain according to Gass. Although it seems that books have more of a sense of permanence than human beings, both people and books age with time. And unlike people, books cannot talk back. Books can be held, carried, marked up. And more importantly, books age. It is this exact quality of humanity that I believe Gass is arguing for and in which digital reproductions do not achieve. 

Gass makes a vital discrepancy between words on a screen and words on the pages of a book when he says, off the screen, words do not exist as words. They do not wait to be reseen, reread like in a book, they only wait to be remade, relit. I started thinking about how I read on a screen compared to how I read in actual books. I am more likely to read such things like articles, news, etc. rather than novels on screen. When I read physical books, I feel like I can return to it more easily spend more time with it. The tangible qualities of books are more inviting to me. Like Gass says, books have sentimentality and nostalgia embedded in them. Books act as records around us, acting as physical and symbolic building blocks. Unlike books reproduced on screen, books carry histories of sorts with them. Not only the history of the actual words on the page, but history of where the book has been and where it will go next. 

A book that came to mind after reading Gass' article was a book I received a little over a year ago from a resident at my work. I work at a retirement home where I run activities with a small group of residents. There is one resident I am very close with there. Her name is Carol. I talk to her about everything. She has book stacks all over her room, so many you can barely see the floor. Carol lent me a book of hers one day, one that she said has had a significant impact on her life. The title of the memoir is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. When I started reading the book, I noticed specific lines she had highlighted, certain pages that had remained bookmarked, and notes she had written for herself. Although I was not aware of this at the time, these markings changed the way I myself read the book. It's almost as though I was more connected to Carol and her thoughts because of the markings she left behind.