Widely recognized esteemed writer John Updike challenges the digitization of books in a talk this morning before the 2006 BookExpo America in Washington, DC. He titled his talk “Terrorists,” the title of his soon to be released new book. Watch for Book TV to link to coverage of this session soon. It sometimes takes 24 hours after an event for it to appear online.
But Updike didn’t talk about this book. Instead, he offered a brief disclaimer that he did not necessarily consider digitizers of books as terrorists. But for readers of his Rabbit series of books, the juxtapositioning of his title to his comments make the disclaimer seem tongue in cheek.
Updike quoted others who praise the digitization of books, any and all printed books, who then sort them by anonymous electronic search engines into virtual bookshelves of words, phrases, paragraphs, chapters, and sometimes whole books. He quotes further that digitization leads to desired (fictional) virtual sharing communities of diverse online users. He snickered when mentioning virtual communities.
Updike reasons that books are more than digitized snippets available for search engines and “pirated” “juvenile” “personalized” use and comment. Books have edges, limits, meaning they consist of a beginning, middle and an end. They use words to create the whole which is more than the sum of its parts. Writers create books from inspiration, insight and effort of real people who commit clock time to share their ideas with each reader as a respected partner. (I’ve taken liberties to reduce his comments to a paragraph.)
He summarized his talk by appealing to booksellers to defend printed books against digitizers, because, since the Guttenberg revolution, books with their edges make us human. His summary drew a standing ovation.
I like printed books, buy and try to read several each week, have tons of them and have donated tons to libraries and individuals.
I also appreciate using digitized books. Sometimes the light from my Tablet PC screen allows me to read a digitized book when other lights would bother people near by. I oppose digitizers and anyone else violating copyrights and other protections of writers’ and publishers’ legal and ethical rights.
I admit I have sometimes ignored Updike’s point about the whole book being different from digitized reproductions. And I have read uncounted numbers of pages by students, many of whom are now teachers, professors and education policy developers, who snipped from digitized reproductions. Some educator preparation programs require use of online sources.
Updike seems to say that digitized books are to printed books as an original Rembrandt canvas is to a digitized image of the canvas. And he seems further to say that snippets from books have different meaning from when in their original context. I accept his points. He seems consistent with traditional Tier 1 thinking.
Yet, digitizing will probably continue to occur. Online users will probably read, snip, pirate, and plagerize books. I wonder how digitization of books changes insights learners gain from their reading?
I plan to continue reading both printed and digitized books. However, as with other arts, I prefer to work with originals when possible, and with reproductions when I must accomplish something without originals.
How about you? What do you think of Updike’s points about digitized books and about their digitizers. Do you prefer reading originals or reproductions? Do you gain different meanings from each?