The End of Print

Since my days in journalism, I’ve heard about the end of print media and the fall of the daily paper. In a recent East Bay Express article, the question: “Can the dailies survive by charging online?” was asked. This made me think three things. One, no they cannot because most people will get their news free from other sources. Two, newspapers can’t be called “papers” without actual paper. If they go online, they will have to be information centers or something like that. Three, if newspapers and magazines disappear, what next? Novels (in paper form)?

It’s true that technology makes things obsolete or archaic, and forces change. I think about all the letters I used to write by hand to girlfriends before the advent of e-mail. These days, handwritten letters are a big to do. There is no <---backspace button (erasable ink does not count) and it takes at least two days for the person to get it—and in that time, multiple e-mails or phone calls may have already taken place. So, why send anything handwritten at all?

Some would argue that technology has revolutionized the way we listen and purchase music, that people no longer buy CDs (which impacted vinyl, cassettes and the gnarly eight-track), but rather, download whole albums or single songs. The difference is that recorded music is still being played electronically. The containers or storage devices may be different, but energy is still needed to play them. Print, on the other hand, is battery free, portable, and, if it’s too dark to read, candles can be lit.

Robert Coover writes in his essay “The End of Books” that:

“…in the world of video transmissions, cellular phones, fax machines, computer networks, and in particular out in the humming digitalized precincts of avant-garde computer hackers, cyberpunks and hyperspace freaks, you will often hear it said that the print medium is a doomed and outdated technology, a mere curiosity of bygone days destined soon to be consigned forever to those dusty unattended museums we now call libraries.”

If there were no print, if there were no books readily available (only at the library), what would happen if the electricity stopped or the gadgets failed? Y2K-type pandemonium? What would become of the information? Backup storage units are not useful if the power to operate the computer is not available. What about viruses? Also, there is something to be said about holding a book. It’s hard to imagine getting comfortable on a rainy afternoon and reading a novel from an iPad or Kindle or a similar device. The eye strain is not fun. Reading from a book feels more natural and connected…even if it’s typed, even if it’s mass-produced, something about the paper and the binding and the cover is magical and still very practical. A dictionary, for example, you just pick it up and find a definition. True, it cannot be updated without buying another version of the dictionary, which some may argue is wasting paper, but having to boot up a device or rely the internet seems like just as much of an energy waste.

Coover goes on to talk about how “hypertext provides multiple paths between text segments, now often called ‘lexias’.” This is convenient. And, to be clear, technology and the internet are crazy useful. Downloading and linking and submitting files and data help to get things done fast. But going from print to digital only seems like an unnecessary extreme.
Coover also writes that:

“‘Hypertext’" is not a system but a generic term, coined a quarter of a century ago by a computer populist named Ted Nelson to describe the writing done in the nonlinear or nonsequential space made possible by the computer...With its webs of linked lexias, its networks of alternate routes (as opposed to print's fixed unidirectional page-turning) hypertext presents a radically divergent technology, interactive and polyvocal, favoring a plurality of discourses over definitive utterance and freeing the reader from domination by the author. Hypertext reader and writer are said to become co-learners or co-writers, as it were, fellow-travelers in the mapping and remapping of textual (and visual, kinetic and aural) components, not all of which are provided by what used to be called the author.’”

This is insane. When my novel is published, I don’t want a hypertext version to be created for the simple fact that it would break the atmosphere I will have worked so hard to create. If the reader can click click away to other places, I might as well write a news article. Not to knock the news or say that journalism isn’t creative, but novels carry more weight than just delivering information via words on a page. There are emotions and thoughts and craft that go into their creation and to have a point and click adventure while reading them is undermining unless the author is creating a point and click adventure. Who wants to read a hypertextualized Faulkner? Save that shit for notes at the end of the book. Footnotes could be seen as sort of hypertext, but the reader can glance down and stay inside the story (depending on how the footnotes are done—not everyone digs footnotes) as opposed to clicking and having another window pop up.

Coover makes a good point that something is happening in “the subversion of the traditional bourgeois novel and in fictions that challenge linearity,” and I agree. It’s good to challenge the norm and find new modes and avenues. But to make obsolete a system that works and is more organic seems unnecessarily extreme. Why not have both and end the talk about the end of books? Otherwise, there will be war. There will be fire.

Here is a quote about the end of print books that I found on the internet (kind of ironic):

“The loss of print in books magazines and newspapers means the loss of historical perspective.These things have stood immutable in the face of those wishing to change history for centuries.
Their loss is tragic.
The past can now be changed with a keystroke.
None of those embarrassing witnesses in print,or those tedious book burnings.
How tidy!
A book shelf is cold storage, the Internet is a huge garbage can!
Each has enormous capacity to store information, but the loss of print simply makes the revisionist's job that much easier.
The people can now be "re-VISIONed" at will,leaving everyone with an Orwellian view....except pigs’”