Yes, we can — so we do
A friend wrote me the following yesterday, in response to my piece about the iPod. He suggested I do a follow-up, but I can’t improve on this.
Thesis: Technophoria, rather than technophobia, is what led us to the current dismal state of the music industry. It isn’t so much (or only) that the big labels failed to respond to the technological innovations of Napster and other digitizing file sharers, it’s that the digitizing, in and of itself, carried the seeds of music’s destruction, in terms of the weakening of the influence of the major labels, the de-professionalization of music, the cheapening and commoditization of music, the lower sampling (bit) rates of digital versus analogue, the poorer sound quality, and on and on.
Now the same thing is on the verge of happening to books. As in music, we’re beginning to do things only because they’re possible, not because they’re desirable. But do we really want to see all books digitized (and their contents commoditized and cheapened) merely because we’re all afraid of being accused of being old fogeys and technophobes? Do we really want to throw away thousands of years of printed history just because it’s possible to digitize books? Not all technological innovations are good ones (cf. nukes and frozen burritos.) E-books, in and of themselves, are not a bad idea — but the possibility that printed books and other forms of printed literature will as a result entirely disappear will be very, very bad for literature, in my opinion.
The irony is that the techno geeks who want to shove everything analogue into the shadows are themselves less capable of envisioning the future than the old-fogey technophobes. Because they clearly didn’t see what digitization would do to music, and they can’t see how digitization will destroy books the way it’s destroyed music.
Now, I am not a Luddite. I love my MacBook and my Blackberry Curve. But, in terms of the quality of experience, it seems to me self-evident that:
A home library is better than a Kindle.
The New York Times paper is better than the New York Times online.
The New York Times Book Review is better than the book review section of Popmatters. (And I write for the latter!)
Compact Discs are better than Mp3s.
A stereo sound system is better than an iPod.
Talking on the phone is better than texting.
A letter is better than email.
A great bookstore is better than Amazon.
A great record store is better than iTunes.
But, in ten years, we’re likely not to have the New York Times, CDs, and book and record stores, while talking on the phone (at least for my 17 year old), the letter (we call it “snail mail”!), and home stereo systems are virtually gone already. And, as my friend suggests, will books be far behind? What is it about our culture that we happily trade quality of experience for convenience, portability, and quantity of experience?
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The problem, of course, is that “better” is subjective and sometimes situational. There are some people I would rather text, because I don’t want a full conversation. To me, my neighbor’s iPod is much nicer than his stereo. Personally, I don’t prefer the New York Times paper to the New York Times online.
While it is true that we will never again experience the hugging of the White Album that you described in your previous piece, I don’t lament the lack of overhead and the unemployed record execs. I enjoy the portability and compactness enough that for most tracks, it outweighs the loss of sound quality. That freedom to choose how I will experience my music (or book or newspaper) is wonderful.
Jason,
One response to your comments could be that as (in some cases “if”) newspapers, CDs, even books go away, you won’t have that choice. If there is no market for print books, they won’t be made or sold, not for mass retail anyway. So you won’t really have a choice of what format to read that book in, or that choice will not include a printed book but instead a variety of electronic versions. I take no position on that here — the market will provide what people want. If they don’t want paper, paper will go away. I am not prepared to make an argument that the format going away is itself a problem, despite my attachment to real books.
More to the point, one of Christopher’s concerns here and in his earlier post, and maybe especially Michael Antman’s concern in his piece “Is print really dead?”, seems to be that the new forms will affect the content in ways that you will not prefer. That is, you might like reading a newspaper better online (I generally do) than on paper, but if the nature of the audience for online content is such that these publications can no longer make enough ad revenue to pay editors or reporters, the content will suffer. So you’ll have the convenience of reading it in an electronic form, but what you’re reading will more and more likely be shared content and there will be fewer and fewer reporters doing actual reporting (to the extent any of them do any even now); fewer professionally produced and edited books and articles; and so on.
Again, I take no position on whether this is likely. I can’t predict the future. Maybe people will pay for these materials and businesses will find a way to still provide professional-level writing and music and all the rest. Just because I don’t know how the market might adjust to this doesn’t mean it won’t adjust. But the future is tricky that way, having not happened yet and all.
And certainly the quality of content from the standard bearers is partly to blame — if the NY Times were a better product that offered more real journalism and honest reporting, it would not be losing readers the way it is, and ad revenue. It isn’t just about competition from online sources. I happen to generally dislike the NYT Book Review.
I take it, you guys haven’t seen this: http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/
I could, of course,have said the WSJ or your hometown paper, and the Washington Post Book Review or The New York Review of Books. And, to my friend’s point, technological advances are not bad in themselves and have their purpose. It’s how they eventually take over that is troubling. That “the market decides” is no comfort, and is, after all, the problem. Among other things, the market is teenagers stealing billions of songs online simply because they can. The market is what it is, but I don’t have to like it.