The Future of Books: More than just the Printing Press

By Earl Wynn

A lot of us grew up with classic libraries– those long, crisp halls created by shelves lined with books of all sizes, shapes, and colors, each fending off the dust with plastic covers that announce their ISBN numbers from that little white box placed at the bases of gently curved spines. These libraries were all the same– stone and wood, with brown the predominant color, and that same smell of aging paper that tickles your senses every time you stick your nose in a book– or in the doors of a library.

I can’t speak for everyone, but as a child of the eighties, that image of a library seemed eternal to me. Levar Burton passed through book after paper-and-binding book on Reading Rainbow and the easily recognizable look characteristic of so many books stayed the same in his hands there as it did when he picked up his visor and played the distant-future engineer Geordi LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That look, that paper-page tome design was something that remained unchanged in practically every future portrayed in the science fiction programs of the time, with each tome an easily recognizable piece of the past that grounded the future and proclaimed, however subtly, that some things really are eternal, that the same bound sheaf of paper pages can persist in hardcopy on through the centuries despite changes in technology and lifestyle. To me, books had reached their final stage of development, the sort of apex of Caxtonian evolution that would never change much more than the corded telephone or the toaster because it was so inherently perfect. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected computers to play any sort of role in the next phase books were to go through, nor did I ever imagine that libraries of software and coding stored in neat rows represented on a computer screen and sent across miles and miles of cable and wireless from a distant server could be something that the future might hold, much less make a viable alternative to hardcopy. After all, how far could the descendants of our once-venerable and valued Apple II-E’s go beyond “sweet” green-and-black pixel games and dot-matrix print-outs? Certainly not to something capable of holding the complete text of a book, much less a library, right? And even then– who would want to read Shakespeare or Mark Twain in one-inch high font the color of radioactive waste?

Thank goodness for the innovations of the future.

All the technology that makes reading on the computer easier, more reasonable and more comfortable aside, the conversion of books to computer coding and text (I.E. Analog to Digital) is probably one of the greatest innovations in computer science that is continually overlooked because people just don’t read as much anymore.

Luckily, that is changing.

The internet itself has revolutionized reading– with audio and video that tantalize the imagination (and can, at times, almost reach the same level of wondrous detail) readily available through any number of different mediums, it’s easy to overlook books and just go straight to the instant gratification of having a whole crew of film-makers or programmers think for you– but when it comes to the most pertinent info (especially simple navigation), the data available through the Internet still requires its fair share of reading (which, granted is still a long shot from regular consumption of books, but is still better than what was available when the channel buttons on the remote were the only things we really had to read to fill our minds with the light and sound of television entertainment.)

In the literary arena, however, perhaps the most incredible advancement we’ve seen through the Internet comes in the form of digital encoding, or E-books. Sure, we take them for granted, but they have to be one of the single most wonderful ideas to spring to life and find a niche in the fast-paced environment of a full blown information age. Just think about it– Adobe Acrobat’s PDF files serve as the preferred wrapping and serving tray for most important online texts, from literary classics and recently published E-Books to freely distributed, home-brewed texts (everything from house-rules for games to informative research documents) and even online E-Zines like the one you’re reading now, seeming almost synonymous with professionalism, if anything else is. Sure, we also see E-books being distributed in a number of other, equally impressive formats, (Microsoft Reader is nice) but like most things Adobe (think Photoshop) nothing has become a household name like Acrobat.

And the E-Book idea has a lot going for it. Converting a paper medium to digital bits means less impact on the environment, (and therefore lower costs, which means more content more easily accessed by more people) as well as easier portability (E-books can be sent VIA email or stored on a portable data device, like a USB key or a mini SD card). Sure, this means they have to be read from a screen (and that can get tedious sometimes, especially if you’re not accustomed to getting irradiated by a computer terminal on a daily basis) but that’s not so bad when you consider the ease of paging through a book on a handheld PC (the technology is getting much easier and cheaper) and knowing that practically the entire stock of any municipal library could easily be stored in a chunk of plastic and software smaller than your average mass-market paperback.

This ease of distribution has also allowed humanity to take one very important intellectual leap forward as well, not only providing access to hundreds of books either donated or past copyright limitations to those who might otherwise not have access to them, but also preserving such texts for generations to come. This is a dream that has been realized by non-profit organizations like Project Gutenberg, and has been carried on by colleges and universities across the globe, supported by thousands of donors and volunteers with an eye to the future, an eye seeking the kind of intellectually open future that humanity deserves, a future where the creative are free to create, and everyone, no matter their location or profession, is free to enjoy the fruits at their leisure and be enriched.

So where will the future of books go? It’s hard to say. While we can (and do) hope for a time of unparalleled intellectual availability and enrichment, the backbone of a system built on the exchange of financial resources for enrichment is a hard one to bend, and even if it could be bent in the near future, we can’t completely dismiss the value of the controls it has in place for quality and consistency. Could it be done better? Yes, without question. Every system has room for improvement, and the current literary market/process is no exception, but that doesn’t mean it’s likely to happen overnight or that we’re likely to see an end to printed books anytime soon (I like my 6x9 paperbacks, thank you very much!). In the meantime, we have the power to watch and point and bend the system, even if only ever-so-slightly, toward a better future, carving a better system out of the old one with fresh publishing houses, new talents, and each turnover of staff in the offices of stagnant industry mainstays where money speaks the loudest and artistic talent is still judged by sales and the trends of the top 100.

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