Regular readers will not that I continue to push back against the dire warnings that e-books will replace print books. My resistance comes not because I’m a bookman (which I’m not) but because sweeping, generalized statement leave out so much.

Everyone points to how cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, but there are so many examples where a new technology did not replace previous methods. Yes, e-books will shift print books, publishing, and booksellers in new directions but that doesn’t mean the eradication of print.

In the 1800s the public lecture was a popular and effective way to convey information. Radio did not entirely replace the gathering of individuals to hear someone speak. Cinema did not replace theater. DVD replaced VHS but not movie theaters. MP3s replaced CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, & vinyl but none of that replace live concerts.

Moving-going, attending concerts and lectures: those are all communal activities but reading is not. In that way, reading is more akin to the solitary viewing of a movie at home or listening to music on an iPod. Yet, when we go to the movies, or sit through the performance of an opera, we process that experience in solitary ways, as individuals. Part of our sensory experience may feed from the audience (particularly at a rock concert) but much of our pleasure at enjoying movies in a theater or a classical concert stems from the environment of the theater and other perceptions. Who is not annoyed at that guy talking two rows over? (And, honestly, I do have to say that I can think of very few lectures that I have enjoyed in person. For that, please, please just give me the lecture on YouTube.)

There are ways that we interact with books through typography, design, and the format of print itself that are so successful that it’s practically transparent to most. For many books – and I don’t say all – print will remain the most effective medium because the book itself has a form that suits our senses.

In a decade or two from now, with advances in digital displays, this will certainly change but I still doubt that even by 2025 we will have seen the complete absence of print books. I know I must sound like a Luddite to all those who are convinced that everyone – right now – should be reading books on their iPhones.

What I do expect is that digital media will create new forms of interacting with a large body of textual and image-based material (the common ingredients of books), ways that go far beyond what we see with the current generation of e-book reading devices. Yet, the capabilities of rich Internet-based digital media have been with us for more than a decade now and, honestly, we’ve not seen a very significant shift towards utilizing this new media in creative and impactful ways. For that, I do blame academia and publishing. There’s a lot more that needs to be done and it will probably come about with the generation that was born into a world where digital media is not considered “new”.

We need to learn what it means to write with digital media.
We need to learn what it means to read a digital text that is not an e-facsimile of a book.