When I first heard about e-readers, I was rather disturbed. This was an over-reaction, of course, but I'm the kind of student who can't bear reading articles off Blackboard without printing them out. When I think of reading, I think of cracking the spine and the smell of weathered pages. I think of struggling to find the right position as I'm sitting on my porch in the rain or laying out on a blanket in the park. I think of the feeling of pages on my fingers, feeling the weight of words in my hands and underlining passages that I have to put down in order to fully appreciate.
And then I heard about e-readers, where the entire experience of reading is altered and almost unrecognizable. But, then I think about how I'm currently typing into a computer at this very moment. I think about how many people actually mail hand-written letters instead of e-mails. I think about how we drive instead of walk, call on cell phones instead of land lines, buy clothes from stores instead of sew them. How much of the experience is lost in all of these actions?
I'm going to quibble with your word choice here-- I don't think the experience is being lost so much as replaced. When you choose to drive instead of walk, you don't end up with less experience-- you just have a different experience, that of driving. You may find this experience more or less valuable than the alternative, but that's purely a value judgement.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people are raising the issue of authenticity, as if reading on an ereader isn't a valid way of obtaining information. According to Sartre, what characterizes the human experience is our freedom, and this is precisely what I find exciting about ereaders. It isn't that I find the the prospect of reading from an ereader particularly exhilarating, but everything we've taken for granted about reading is already beginning to come under scrutiny-- and it is only the beginning. The definition of reading, what it means to "read", is currently in flux. Our generation is the one which will determine where this definition eventually settles, if it settles at all. We have the freedom to decide what it means to read, and I find that immeasurably exciting.
I meant to make the point somewhere in there that authenticity = the ability to exercise freedom, but I don't think I did. Consider it made.
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