@CarlaJDouglas
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| Image by shordzi flickr |
The print book is a bit like the typewriter — functional, durable, often an object of beauty — but ultimately, it’s a one-trick pony, a single-use device.
Have you heard anyone recently (say, in the last 20 years) complain that they miss the snap of the key against paper or the hum of the machine — distinctive sounds familiar to anyone who has used an old (really old) electric typewriter? Or, more to the point, have they said they miss tearing up a nearly finished page because of a typo or that they long for the smell of the ribbon and the greasy ink on their fingers and clothing?
Setting aside the fact that so many writers’ websites feature a picture of a vintage Remington or Smith Corona, is it safe to say that we’re over the typewriter?
Have you heard anyone recently (say, in the last 20 years) complain that they miss the snap of the key against paper or the hum of the machine — distinctive sounds familiar to anyone who has used an old (really old) electric typewriter? Or, more to the point, have they said they miss tearing up a nearly finished page because of a typo or that they long for the smell of the ribbon and the greasy ink on their fingers and clothing?
Setting aside the fact that so many writers’ websites feature a picture of a vintage Remington or Smith Corona, is it safe to say that we’re over the typewriter?
We all remember our first computer — mine was a Macintosh Classic. It replaced an ancient Underwood electric, nearly identical to the one in the picture. I loved my typewriter, and it served me well through four years of university. It failed me spectacularly, however, the night in late April of the year I was to graduate, when my professor phoned to ask if I had “a spare copy” of my 26-page final paper because he had dropped the one I gave him into the bathtub! Amidst the ensuing panic and efforts to block the visuals associated with this news, I cobbled together a passable substitute from a rough draft and from memory.
No one wants to return to the days of old technology. Now, though, several years into the e-reading revolution, we still hear a lament for the paper book: ebooks and e-readers don’t have the familiar heft of paper books, people say; they don’t have that bookish smell or provide that tactile pleasure; and, without physical dimensions, you can’t see at a glance how far into a book you are, how far you have left to go, or, indeed, how long the journey is to begin with.
No one wants to return to the days of old technology. Now, though, several years into the e-reading revolution, we still hear a lament for the paper book: ebooks and e-readers don’t have the familiar heft of paper books, people say; they don’t have that bookish smell or provide that tactile pleasure; and, without physical dimensions, you can’t see at a glance how far into a book you are, how far you have left to go, or, indeed, how long the journey is to begin with.
Most of us who have moved from paper to ebook have made at
least some of these observations. You might have experienced this yourself: as you’re reading a print book, you want to refer back
to a passage you’ve read, and you can remember with certainty where it is in
the book, which page — left or right? — and how far down the page you’ll find
it. You can easily flip back in the book to the right spot.
In an ebook, you can’t flip around like this, and it's this tactile navigation of books that people comment on most when they try to switch to an e-reader. There’s some research, too, that focuses on the geography of reading, suggesting that learning and memory are connected to our spatial capabilities and that how we so effectively navigate physical books bears this out. If you're interested, articles in Time (March 2012) and Scientific American (October 2013) go into some detail about how the brain experiences digital text.
Of course e-readers do have design features that try to replicate the geographical landscape of the print book — the progress bar, indicating what percentage of the text you’ve read; bookmarks; the page numbers that some e-readers have (my Kobo Touch is one), which become irrelevant when you change the font size; and the location numbers in Kindle books that substitute for the awkward page numbers and put a pin on a digital place in the text — as close as the ebook gets to providing a spatial marking. (Tip from CNET: divide the location number by 20 for a rough estimate of the book’s “real” pages.) Ebooks are also searchable, so that you can easily find the passage of text you’re looking for (if you can remember a word or phrase to search for).
So there are actually many ways to “get around” in an ebook. Granted, some of them are a bit clumsy, but it’s still early days for the ebook and e-reader. Some apps and devices are better than others, and new ones are being developed all the time. And while most readers don’t find Kindle’s locations helpful, some teachers are using them to make sure all their students are on the same page, so to speak. So many of the advantages of ebooks and e-readers — they’re compact, portable, provide infinite storage and options to customize, for instance — aren’t visible until they’ve been given a good test-drive.
Nearly every step forward comes with a learning curve, and we’ve proven in the past that we’re adaptable creatures. When personal computers became affordable for the average writer, many claimed they couldn’t compose at a keyboard. Instead, they wrote drafts in longhand and then copied and revised at the computer. By now, most have made the transition.
The standing desk provides a more current example of humans resisting — and adapting to — change. Some of us have quickly adopted the standing desk for health reasons — one editor I know has ingeniously co-opted her ironing board as a station for her laptop. Others, though, report that they can’t focus properly while standing, that standing just doesn’t work for them.
The move from print to ebook is proving to be a bumpy ride for some readers. But if they’ll just get on board, they’ll find that digital is trying to smooth the way, and that the potential rewards are many.
So there are actually many ways to “get around” in an ebook. Granted, some of them are a bit clumsy, but it’s still early days for the ebook and e-reader. Some apps and devices are better than others, and new ones are being developed all the time. And while most readers don’t find Kindle’s locations helpful, some teachers are using them to make sure all their students are on the same page, so to speak. So many of the advantages of ebooks and e-readers — they’re compact, portable, provide infinite storage and options to customize, for instance — aren’t visible until they’ve been given a good test-drive.
Nearly every step forward comes with a learning curve, and we’ve proven in the past that we’re adaptable creatures. When personal computers became affordable for the average writer, many claimed they couldn’t compose at a keyboard. Instead, they wrote drafts in longhand and then copied and revised at the computer. By now, most have made the transition.
The standing desk provides a more current example of humans resisting — and adapting to — change. Some of us have quickly adopted the standing desk for health reasons — one editor I know has ingeniously co-opted her ironing board as a station for her laptop. Others, though, report that they can’t focus properly while standing, that standing just doesn’t work for them.
The move from print to ebook is proving to be a bumpy ride for some readers. But if they’ll just get on board, they’ll find that digital is trying to smooth the way, and that the potential rewards are many.
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